Getting Ready

It was an emotional send-off for Dad yesterday. And that does NOT include tears and sad sorry farewells. What it included was a lotta questions like "Did you take your ticket?", "Did you take the passport?'' , " What about the policy?", " Have you locked all the bags?", "Should you really carry that watch with you?", " How much of Indian Currency d'u have? Give it to me!", "Where is your handbag?", and last but not the least " Have you taken you passport, ticket ( better keep the xerox copies in every bag) , the policy and the letters? Lemme check it all!" The list is really endless but you just have to be so careful with him. Its not like Dad can't travel alone, but God!, we all are dead worried about him till he reaches his destination safely. He should have reached by now. I'll message him after I finish this.
As my Dad's busy crossing the Arabian Sea, Europe and the Atlantic, we all are busy getting ready for our VISA interviews, as in basically, me. Mom's been a show trying to tell me everything possible she can and actually looks quite sure about us doing well. Hopefully she'll be allowed with my brother and me for the interview. I've been trying to mug up what all I've kept in which file and things just get hazzier and hazzier. I'm just more excited about the trip to Mumbai. I just go back all the trips I took in the month of April to the city for all my entrance exams, and I really enjoyed the 'going there' journey. We'd wake up early in the morning and then start off at like 5 am.....It seems like a different world now. All so long ago when nothing was sure, when all did was to wait for May 8th, when I was actually just a kid preparing for her exam and nothing else.....
And this time when I make a trip, I'm an adult trying to stand up on her two feet, a girl going for her OWN VISA interview, a doctor in the making, and just not a kid! Tomorrow I might have to suffer the very first rejection of my life and that too straight on my face. There will be no waiting for a written result saying 'Your Rejected'. If it has to be done, it will be done then and there. Hows that for a girl who's turned 18 just two weeks back? I guess it'll be a cool reminder of sorts about what the not-so-rosy world out there is all about. And if I get a yes, it'll be my first success as an adult and ,well, that'll definitely give me a bigger outlook of life and a first step towards achieving the Ultimate Dream! I'll definitely become more of an adult than I am now with the entire trip where I will have to take care of myself, where I will have to behave in a particular way......and it is all so exciting!!! I miss my old days of fun and frolic, but I am so looking forward to taking my own responsibilties and living my own life on my terms. So it all happens in probably half an hour tomorrow. Just wait and watch!
I'm confident of speaking well, after all English is my forte`, so guess I'll be okay. Hope I get the papers right, thats all.
Going back to my dad leaving, I didn't go for dissection in college yesterday ( not it actually happened. Nobody turned up on my table). And l'il brother caught a rickshaw and came home as fast as he could to see Dad off. After all, if he took his school bus he'd take ages to come home and never get to farewell Dad. Sweet na!
Thats it. We have a holiday today and day after, so its a holiday for me for three whole days!!!

A Poster I Don't Understand

The past three days haven't exactly been the best I could get, but then life is not always happy and rosy, so I guess, have to accept them and move on. We had to pay some money and submit a form yesterday to the MUHS to register our Eligibilty for the course which started 2 months back. As I start to take more control of my life now on, I also do my work on my own. So that led to having to stand in the scorching sun of 10 am for half an hour in front of the bank, an hour and a half in a double line inside the office which is so small, you wouldn't even notice it if you walked across, and a final hour just inches from the counter. It was madness, to tell the truth. I seriously prefer the AC banks with four different counters doing the same thing. Of course, this time it wasn't my choice and I had to settle for something I would very well have avoided. In a way it was fun but the sweating-as-u-stand definitely didn't work on me. To add on, there was just one small air cool which blew cool air through half of its actual surface area. Yeah, well, its done. Thankfully, by the time I reached the college office to submit the form, there wasn't a line there. That work got over in a like a min and a half!
I felt more satisfied than ever after having done my bit of standing in the line. Two of my friends went away after half an hour and then came back to get stuck in that heat for more time than I did, so it does pay off to listen to your mom's advice people!!!
I'm eagerly awaiting Wednesday, when we will have our US VISA interview. I really want to get that VISA and I really hope it all goes extremely well.
And finally, onto the title of today: We have this poster on the topic 'Intrinsic Muscles of Hand'. There are so many of them , its hard to remember each and every one. And the clinical anatomy just goes on and on and on. Just have to sit with a dictionary by my side for it all. But I'm confident that we'll do well and win the competition.

Slums, D'u Call 'Em?

I wouldn't. Not when they have their own television, their own refrigerator, their own music systems, dress decently enough to look like they have a 1BHK home. But it was an interesting experience to walk through the slums for the PSM Pracs today. We visited an Urban Health Centre, and then the slum adjoining it. It has population of 15000 people, and yeah, they all don't exactly have a lot of space to themselves. The hygeinic conditions are more towards the bad side, with water flowing along their doorstep, and the women washing clothes pretty much in your path. But, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. We even got a few pics with these two school girls and they replied a "Welcome" to all our Thank Yous. So a good trip. It was interesting and quite a change from the scenes of BJ Medical College. We'll be given a family per person later on in our student-career and we have to graph their health and all. Its all an interesting task and I'm looking forward to that challenge. Moving on with describing today, I did dissection!!! After 1 month and 21 days. Not that it was all interesting. I still got as bored as usual. But yeah, i did have comments like, "Pranjali, aaj kya khake aayi ho ki tum dissection kar rahi ho? ( Pranjali, what have you eaten today that you're doing the dissection?)" Thats actually all that was out of usual today....

This a photo of us with the two girls I've talked about. I'm the one, whose yellow top's been seen. This seriously was fun!!

Ah Well, May Be Its Not Done!

The last few days have been more of a I-don't-wanna-go-to-college in the morning and a tired soul in the evening, by the time I came back. yesterday was perhaps the best time I've had with dissection. We had already detached the arm from the torso, so we hardly had anything to really do. We read for the first hour and talked and just sorta wasted time. Then our batch teacher came and he asked us questions for another 15 mins, after which he himself told us to read! So the three of us ( Ekta, Prajakta and I) sat together to do the actions and nerve supply of all the muscles ! It was fun! We were doing it aloud and in a chorus, so we looked like we were singing aloud. People from the other tables were just staring! And the best part of it all is that we managed to get them all rote! So I'm done with all of the most messy parts of Anatomy! We had our snatches of idiosyncrasies of sorts. Ekta asked me what the nerve supply of Supraspinatus was. I said, " Suprascapular." Then she asked, " What about subscapularis?" Prajakta replied, " Thats a mucsle na!" God, we just burst into laughter that shook our entire table.
Those three hours took my entire attention of my ring-finger which was paining from the two pricks I'd taken for the blood smear, in the Physio pracs. Not that I got my blood smear right ( it was just average, but , yeah, I can work with it for the next prac.), I just got two deep prickes, a blue-black segment of my ring-finger and a frown on my face. Why do we have to prick ourselves so many times? Any way, my body's crazy when it come to healing of wounds. It takes ages for it to do so. And now, I've already had about 20 pricks on the ring finger alone, in the same region! The marks haven't even gone! The marks make me even more scared. How can you prick yourself in a region where ther is already a prick, which hurts and oozes blood at times?
Thats what my day had been like, yesterday. I did have a funny doubt. I notice every time I get a prick, my ring finger becomes warm and my little finger becomes excessively cold. The other two fingers and thumb are at normal temperature. My mom was also puzled with the phenomenon. We're still trying to look for a good answer to this problem. Any one know why it is so?

The Day When I'd Studied

Yeah, the day lives up to its name really. I did everything that had to be done about the Humerus ( bone of the arm), and had a lecture in its actual sense today. The feeling of having done all that our batch teacher ( a new one now. A Dr. Kailash) told us, a feeling of revising the stuff, a feeling of 'I'm-not-learning-anything-new'. For the first time I really liked the LCD. And I'm really proud of that fact!
The lectures today were good too. The one cardiac cycle was just so enlightening. And that sir, Dr. Jaltare was extremely good at the topic too! Basically, it was better day than I expected it to be, after having woken up with my left leg paining like anything. Plus, Mom and Dad got their visas for the US, so thats one worry of today gone.
For the prac from 11 to 1, we went to the tuberculosis centre. It was a good trip! We were told and showed all the medicines that patient has to take, according to the category of his disease, plus we were made to see what the bacilli look like under the microscope. They look like thin lines of pink. We call them rod-shaped. The smell in the lab ( of sputem) made me really sick, and what was worse is that all the people out there worked without masks. The lady making the slides wore gloves, but the one checking the slides, was bare-handed! I wonder whether its safe. After all, tuberculosis is an infectious disease, and when you are working in such a centre, you just have to maintain the precautions. You don't wanna have tuberculosis as an occupation-hazard! When, later, in the Ladies' Room, I mentioned this fact aloud, the lady who had taken us on the tour, was found standing just behind me! It was embarrassing, but I really want her to have heard what I said and ,hopefully, do something about it. Thats all there was today. Interesting, that is. Life goes on otherwise in the med-school. Met a school friend of mine after college. I felt more lively than I have ever in the past one month. What they say is true. Friends made in school are friends for life, and nobody can ever take their place!

The Week Preceeding The Most Important Day Of My Life

Submission was great. I managed to score a 19 out of 25, which I think, is a decent score, considering that I'd only done half the portion really well. I was totally blanched before the viva. I couldn't even think properly. My heart had gone completely weak, n I felt I'd just drop onto the floor out of nervousness. Thankfully, by the time I reached the table, I was a little calmed down and that helped me answer all the questions well. I'm pretty happy.
Moving on, the rest of the week has been more of a wait for Sunday. So, I was dying to have the Friday come. We attended the solo singing competition in the Vedant festival. Enjoyed a bit. There was a tour of the entire of Sassoon Hospital as a Preventive And Social Medicine practical. We had to walk in the sun, the only sad part of the entire walk. We even went into the 'dead-house', the common name for the cold room in the forensic department. The dead bodies had been kept there after having been post-mortemed. Our cadavers have trained us for everything. The dead bodies just looked like people sleeping, naked.
Birthday yesterday was great. A nice and quiet family get-together, with lots of friends calling up and bothering to remember my b'day. Thats always special. We watched 'A Wednesday', a fantastic movie. I loved it! Over all, I couldn't have thought of a better day to turn 18 and a better day to celebrate it. I want a guitar as my b'day gift and I hope I can get it soon.
And a last word of hope and peace for all the victims of 9/11. As every year goes by, I wish that it can only push you towards a new dawn, a new desire to move on, and the persistence to fight for peace and brotherhood. To all those lost souls, may they all rest in peace. Amen.

Ha Ha! Not Bad!

The tutotrial turned out to be quite good, except for the writing part. I've hated writing long answers. I mean, you have to start froma place that isn't even mentioned in the question just because you have to write a long answer! But, thats what's required so who can challenge? So, as I've said, I hate writing long answers and yesterday was no different. But, I managed it somehow and got past it all. I still need to repolish my answers a bit, but I guess since it was a first attempt, I'll improve. I'm praying with all my heart that tomorrow's lower extremity submission is on the same lines.
That reminds me, one of the PG students has a project going on where she takes our height, head length ( ant. to post.), the outline of our palms and feet. It was funny when she asked us for that. What kind of a project is that? But it may give some grest results so too early to comment.
My friends think I'm getting too angry now-a-days, at small things. I've always been short-tempered but this seems to be reflecting a little more than usual. Is it college frustration getting to me? Or is it simply something else? Still gotta find that out. But I wonder you know. I mean I don't feel anger and frustration showing in my writing right now. In fact it looks happy and excited about the next challege. Tc Bye!

Teachers' Day

Nothing special....Just wanted to remember all my teachers once and thank my stars for having them. I hardly am responsible for my success. They are people who have toiled like anything to make even a small amount of what I am today.....So thank you. Especially, my school teachers, 'coz you are the people who created a me out of an uncooth young bud brought before you. So Thank You.......There is nothing that can repay what you've given me.....and I guess trying to repay would very well insult your efforts.......
I'm bugged. Got a tutorial tomorrow....Hoping it goes well.....I mean, yeah, i kinda know whatever I do, but I hope I can write it all.....Gotta study and write my article so cya!!!!

The Rainy Days

We've had tremendous rainfall every day for the past three days. There's been flooding, slum-damage, accidents, tree-falls, motor-vehicle breakdowns, traffic-jams all over the city. With the drainage the way it is in the city, the water could just stop short of getting into the first floors of buildings. Watching helpless people stuck with their broken down vehicles, old people trying to walk around on foot in the rivers on the streets, melts my heart to its last bit. I wish I could talk more about it.
On to college, we had another pricking session on Tuesday. And my earlier prick hadn't even healed. To make matters worse, I was selected as a volunteer for the session. So the Sir pricked my ring-finger one hard time and did it all, and then I had to do it all myself again. Having the cold, hard and fast and a runny nose, I was breathing through my mouth half the time. So after taking my first prick, I started sucking the blood slowly and steadily, without any air bubble coming in, before my breath began to give way. The teacher was there saying, "Good, good, very good" and then suddenly, " Don't suck with your mouth!" Had to prick myself again and did the same thing again! The teacher got tired and my cold increased. I asked her whether I could do it with somebody else. I'd had enough of pricks. The first time I was pricking myself, I pulled hard at the needle out of its cover and got it stuck in the back of my fore-finger. That hurt. Seriously hurt. And that blew my confidence to pieces. First the paining prick from the volunteering, now another one from my mistake. And then two more! Ask yourself why I wasn't ready for a fifth prick on my hand.
But had to do it finally. The teacher appreciated my cadour. She had to. And I did it all. Maybe not exactly smooth, but I managed it. She was delighted when I showed her my own Leucocyte count. " Very Good!" Those words really put some ease to my aching hand. The back of my fore-finger still pains, but the rest is fine.
We had the Staff Debate today. Topic-" Sex Education is a Must" Interesting. It was fun watching the staff fight it all out. And we were allowed to give the Dissection a miss. So anything will do. Even a boring debate would have done it for me. Luckily it wasn't.
We've got a tutorial and submission coming up. Finally have to study now!...Good Night!!