The Day Before

I can't believe I'm being like this. Although, I actually believe it. yes, that blasted day is just round the corner and all I can think of and wish for is Jan 12th to return back.....ahhh...those wonderful first few days after exams got over....so relaxed, so carefree, so alive and so real....I can't bring them back, but I keep wishing for it.

I have no expectations this year, that I have to stay true to. The Rank 2 from last year managed to get that demon off my chest. Of course, I won't be terrified the moment I know the result is out (like last year. I freaked myself out. I swear I have a dual personality disorder. One is as cool as a cucumber, the other as Type A a personality as can be.). I know I probably did all I could for those exams. I was just glad to see them through and know, just know that I had managed to do enough to see the back of them. It isn't the same as last year. It is different. Yet, the fear of the result does not go away. Thanks to my awesome 2nd year result, I now have expectations that are so sky high, I simply know I haven't done that much hard work to do justice to them. I want to do so well. I want that No. 1 and that hurts.....it is no use asking for that No. 1 when you haven't put in the same amount of effort. When I haven't done enough, why should I want it? 

That is the question that plants the fear of tomorrow in my head. The passionate desire and the practical common sense clash, and that irrational desire always gets the upper hand. Whoever said that practicality is always victorious. I know exactly how I'll be feeling minutes before I open that page:

"Please please please God, let me pass (with really awesome marks, I'm not going to lie to you).

No God, just let me pass, I don't care about those 'awesome' marks (but I do!!).

NO God, let me pass....and let me get what I truly deserve (maybe a teeny weeny bit more?)

NO ABSOLUTELY NOT. I know there are many others who have done much more than me, so you know, just give me what I deserve and get it over with. Nobody is going to ask me about this 10 years down the line (oh but they will, because more marks, stronger CV, better chances. Logic, girl.)

Damn your 'logic'. You know better than myself what I've managed to do and not do. I know you'll be just, because you have many people to care about, and frankly, all of them are asking you for the same thing as I am. So, thank you for some wonderful results in the past 2 years. Hope it is the same this year, at least enough for this year."

Yes, that will be the conversation in my head....between that Desire and that Practicality. Ultimately, the Practicality will get strong enough to drown that Desire's voice, but my Desire isn't one to back down so easy....it'll continue screaming...at a really low volume yes, but it shall continue. I hate myself for being like this (for being human actually....who doesn't aspire things out of their reach, eh?)...I'm not one of those self-centred people who think they are so important for the world to survive, so I do feel wrong when I pray the way my Desire just prayed. But, it is a trait I haven't been able to get rid of. All thanks to identifying my true potential after the disasterous first year. This does not just include the exam performance. It includes all those small post-end examinations that managed to make me believe I was good at Medicine.

Any way, I've enrolled for a Basic Life Support and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (BLS & ACLS), conducted under the aegis of Symbiosis Institute of Health Sciences in association with the American Heart Association. It starts tomorrow. I shall try and concentrate on the course and not answer any calls/messages or communication of any kind that says, "Results are out." Lets hope this has the same effect as taking a journey to a destination unknown.....to try calm my nerves down a little. I do have a strange feeling that that isn't going to happen....and that this course is not going to be as great as I'd initially thought it was going to be. I'm not much of a hands-on person...and that is exactly what this course requires. But, it is essential in my endeavour to be eligible for Universities abroad, so need to do it. Sigh.

Help me, Dear God....calm me down, let tomorrow be a happy day, and let this year come to a decent end :-)

Crazy Worry

February has begun, and now that dreaded countdown begins. As I sit and think now, I realize that it is worse to wait for the result than to wait for the examination that gives rise to that result. As much as I live for exams, with the passage of time, I have only become weaker and weaker in handling the stress of that result. Is that a part of growing up? Or is it my B12 defc acting up? Or is this simply me finally shedding my cool-as-a-cucumber image and going the Type A personality way? No idea.

When I look back over the past 4 years and my reactions to my result, they have been interesting in a way. First year, I had no clue. Absolutely no clue. I was out choosing tiles for our new home (yeah, imagine all my colour-coordination and artistic thoughts being sqashed by “YOUR RESULTS HAVE ARRIVED”). It was a shock, but since I wasn’t going anywhere near a computer for the next 2 hours at least, I was able to be myself when I finally laid my hands on the computer. Phew. That was my scariest result, because there was a danger I was going to fail Anatomy. I did not. Yay!!

Second year, I was at home, down with an upset stomach, watching my favourite event- ICC Cricket World Cup, 2011. It was my favourite match – Aus Vs Nz. It was a nice day, Aus was doing so well, they’d gotten NZ out for an under 200 score (I think around 161). When I watch cricket, I’m usually far away from my cellphone, which was precisely the case at that time too. Messages went unnoticed,  phone calls too. I still don’t know what made me go and check my cellphone to have my friends calling and telling me my big news- that I’d topped. I’m not going into the details of that day. I was unprepared and that helped me keep my cool a little.

Third Minor year was when I lost it. I did. It was the pressure of that second year result, and I lost it. Today, looking back, I don’t know what else I could have done to get more marks, but I wasn’t happy about my result and that day does not stand as one of my happy days. When I started studying after that, I thought that the pressure to top was off me, now that I’d relinquished that throne. In fact, during my I-don’t-care-a-damn moments, I don’t have that pressure at all. But, ever since February started, those nice moments have been few.

I end up thinking about all the things that went wrong in all those practicals, all the ways I could have managed to cram up my timetable more than I managed, all the luck I could have had in the world if I’d just tried harder (Have I mentioned that I believe in the philosophy “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves”? I think I have mentioned it before in one of my posts). It hurts. This feeling of inadequacy hurts. I know I could not possibly have done any more than I managed. I know that my efforts are good enough to get me my MBBS degree. I also happen to know that my parents are going to me incredibly proud of me for finishing this course in a sane manner.

And I also know a few things about myself:

1.       I’ve become greedy. You’ve shown me that coveted Rank 1 once. Now I keep wanting it again. Even when I know, I don’t deserve it.

2.       I may say that marks don’t matter, but damn you, they DO. A lot.

3.       I don’t really care about other people’s marks, but then I do care about them any way. Especially a few ‘special’ people.

4.       I just know that my marksheet is never going to live up to my expectations. The only reason for that anomaly is that my expectations are tall mountains the height of Everest, and the effort I put it, just about scales the local hill in my city.

5.       Even 10 years down the line, I’ll always look back on these undergraduate years and decide which year was best according to the marks I scored in that examination. So, first year is the worst, 2^nd the best and the two parts of final year still have to decide their places. I won’t look at all the things I managed to do, all the fun I had, all the friends I made, all the gossip I shared, all the quarrels I had. No, it’ll be those marks and that marks-covered glass through which I will view these 4.5 years.

I’m shit nervous right now. And this nervousness will only increase. The tentative date currently is 28^th Feb. Lucky me, I have my Basic Life Support training course on that day. It is going to last for 8 whole hours. So, I shall not be very close to my cell phone. In fact, I think I’ll change a few settings on my phone, so that I can only answer my family phone calls and messages. The rest of the world will be blocked, until I am ready to show my face to that world. You know, they say you’re whole life flashes before your eyes when you die. My whole undergraduate course flashes before my eyes, when I look at those marksheets; also, some decent memories from before my BJ years. All my achievements flash before my eyes. And that is good enough to make me look at that marksheet and be depressed for the rest of the day.

Dear God, give me strength. 

Theory Examination Over

Over the past 2 weeks, I’ve realized the following:

1.       I hate exams. I thought I lived for them, but I don’t.

2.       If Final year is supposed to be hard, it doesn’t even compare to the stress you go through during the exam. Looking back, I don’t know how I made it through in one piece.

3.       Papers always turn out differently this year. They are all expected questions, yes, but you don’t feel like you’ve written expected answers (or this might just be me talking).

4.       The age old superstition : the lesser you’ve done something, higher the chance of it actually ending up in the paper. It sucks through your brain. Oh, it SO does! And probably, that’s why you end up staying awake the whole night.

5.       Everybody but you, seems to be less concerned about the examination. It’s almost as if, you’re in one boat and everybody else in the other. It actually isn’t like that, but that’s how the world looks to you.

6.       The MUHS does NOT care about us students. They prepare papers full of spelling mistakes, repeat short notes in the same question (which is: Answer any three out of five. So that effectively reduces us to answering 3 out of 4. Or taking that bold step of writing the same answer twice hoping you’ll get 3 marks two times over.

7.       Surgery still freaks me out. I did it almost twice. Almost, because, there were a few chapters I did not do twice. Yet the day before both my papers, I was freaking out. And I was almost wishing I hadn’t taken up this course of Medicine.

8.       I always fall sick before my exams. Thing is, the week before my immune system decides to take a holiday, and I suffer. Surprisingly, this time, I got better like 2 days before the exam began, to reach my designated centre and end up with the flu AGAIN. Seriously, there was a time during the paper I had to allot to clearing my blocked sinuses!!

9.       I am exhausted. I don’t want any more testing, I don’t want any more theory answers to be written. I’m so tired of taking all this stress, it’s reduced my weight to more than is normal during a preparation leave.

10.   And, did I mention, I’m still hating Final year? Oh yeah, I’m still hating it, and I simply can’t wait enough for 13 Jan to come.

So how were these exams? The same exams I was so worried about, the exams on which nothing depended, my parents had absolutely no expectations from, I had no expectations from, the exams for which I literally turned the entire household’s lives upside down….yeah they were ok….all of my papers were more or less the same…I didn’t find any paper extremely easy, but no paper was pathetic either….I liked my Obstetrics paper best, because I drew a lot of diagrams, and they didn’t ask the questions I’d dreaded. I think I like my Paediatrics paper least, but that’s just because I couldn’t give the finishing touches I’m so used to giving all my papers. And it sucks to end your undergraduate examination on that note.

It’s what I’ve been through in these past 2 weeks, that’s so important. I suck at managing stress. Oh man, I really suck. My mind plays all sorts of games with me, and it’s so freaky. My usual method of calming myself down went to the dogs this year. When I told myself, “Shut up, stupid little girl, you’ve prepared well!!”, another louder voice used to come up behind me slowly and say, “Oh yes, little girl, you’ve prepared well. Tell me, do you know that you can’t remember the treatment charts? Or diagrams? Oh and by the way, you’ve not even touched contraception yet….and what about Skin….and you have even done your usual dose of MCQs this year.” It’s so hard to get rid of that voice once it starts.

This past month has been dreadful. I don’t think I’ve ever suffered so much in any preparation leave. It has been a combination of low confidence, sucky memory and a vast portion that refuses to even come close to the finishing line. The result : a complete wreck of a person, worried parents, indecision about the future and an ardent desire to just let go. They say Medicine is tough, so this is just the beginning. I’m really worried about my brain and its tolerance capacity. So, yes, there are some tough decisions to make in the coming month- regarding my future, what I want to do, how I want to do it, and the best way to keep my brain stable. I almost resorted to some anti-depressants and I don’t want to go down that road ever again. That’s why this decision will be so important to me.

Right now, I’m already worried sick about my practicals. The worry doesn’t make it any easier to start studying again, but it does affect the general day. I wish I had some confidence in myself. I really do. I hate this low self-esteem I have about my case-taking and practical skills. Of course, I have good enough reasons to feel this way, but I also have good reasons NOT to feel this way. Our timetable isn’t out yet. All we know is that, practicals in our college will be held from 1^st to 12^th of Jan, 2013. Nothing more. I want to know the exact details as fast as possible…that way, once I have a deadline to get to, it’ll make it easier to manage my study timetable.

God bless me and my case-taking skills. One ordeal over, another to start very soon. Oh I hate Final Year!  

The Effects of an Illness

Ok, so as a part of growing up, you have to deal with illnesses. Some are small, the flu kind...they make you lie in bed for a few days, give you a headache, a sore throat, fever...u take analgesics, anti-pyretics, anti-histaminics and within a week, you get back to work. Then there are some other illnesses that lurk around inside your body for years before you come to know they existed. There are a few others that tend to show themselves now and then. We just fail to identify the symptoms.
I seem to have the third category. In past few months, there has been a lot of buzz about Vitamin B12 deficiency in my family. My very first patient correctly diagnosed was my mom. She had complains of burning patches over her toes. They used to just come and go. I asked her to get her B12 profile done and it did turn out to be B12 deficiency. A few injections down the line, she said she had never felt better! Her Physician pointed out a lot of other signs of B12 deficiency that she had. So, it had been around for quite some time. My grandmom has had problems with haemorrhagic patches over her skin. A little trauma and the next thing you know, there is a sizeable reddish purple patch over her arm. When my mom told her to get her profile done, she was diagnosed with B12 deficiency too. She can't tolerate the injections, but she takes them once a month to just feel better.
I did not think I was going to end up with it too. But, over the past year, I've been feeling that I'm having memory issues. I don't remember my friends' birthdays, can't remember people favourite foods, toys, cars, etc...and most bugging, can't remember things I've read like hours before. I could feel the contrast between Me of 2nd year and Me of third year. We got my profile done, and it was really really really low. I had a 137 where the normal lower limit is 211. I was put on injections immediately. The funny little patient I am, I can't tolerate pain much. I had some fainting episodes after the third and fourth injections. My parents decided no more injections for me. I was to stay of medication only.
Funny thing about oral medication is, you never know how much is exactly going into your body. So I even started with all the milk eggs and stuff. I couldn't feel much of difference really. I still had episodes of tingling and still felt my memory wasn't back to normal. But, yes, it did improve a bit.
It was only in this last week in my PL, that I have really started to think I might have gotten back to my really low levels of B12. B 12 deficiency is characterised by a lot of things. Among them, there is a point about mood swings. I don't have mood swings, but over the past week, I had started getting worried about my exams, worried about finishing my portion, missing my friends like crazy (to the extent that I messaged sentimentally to a few), missing my family when they'd go out for work. I kept thinking about the future and how it was all going to wrong for me. And these episodes would just turn up spontaneously. Next thing I knew, I'd have tears in my eyes and I'd be crying like there wasn't an end. It freaked me out. Because, I am not like this. I don't think about results and study. I just study. I don't think about the future. I live in the present. And, yes, I do miss my childhood like crazy and get sentimental, but I do NOT cry in this manner.
When I broke down in front of my parents, it was the last straw. Because I didn't even know what I was crying about. I was nervous and tense. About everything. Anything specific? I had no answer to that. We all knew I was ruining everything- my health, my mental capacity, and my chances of seeing these exams through. It was very frightening. Was this year so bad, that I'd turned into a mass of nervous wreck?
When I calmed down a little, I thought back to the time this had first happened (before my Surgery Paper during the prelims). I'd broken down at that time without any warning too. Then when I had my B12 tablet, I'd felt a little better, more in control of my emotions and senses. Then I thought about all the mornings nowadays, when I take that tablet. I'm not very tense at that time. The time I freak out is 5 am in the morning when I get up because of that fear. And, in the evenings. The period around 9 am -12 noon is a calm serene one. That got me thinking that I should start with the injections. Maybe not every day, but at least once a week. I am not the kind of a person thwarted by exams. I kinda live for them. SO there had to be another reason for my erratic behaviour.
And you know what, it has actually helped! I took an injection on Monday, and since then, I haven't felt any of that fear of destruction and that insane need to cry. I'm still a little concerned about staying alone at home, in case I go back my last-week self, but I managed to stay alone at home today afternoon and I'm just fine. So, yes, it has been my B12 acting up again. I'm actually a little shocked, because I sudden;y feel like a patient. A patient who was totally utterly lost and defeated and now, one shot of the medication has given him a new life. I think I'm going to take the injection monthly for the rest of my life. If I could get so tense about a stupid exam that I just need to pass, imagine what sort of hell I shall put myself through later on, when there are bigger and scarier things to deal with (patients' lives, for example).
Mom says I shouldn't take weekly injections right now. But, I so don't want all this to repeat again in my PL, I'll try convincing her to give me one more a week before my exams or something. Till then, its oral medication and being my normal self.
Phew!! Scary, freaky experience. For a moment I thought I'd have to go get myself a psychiatrist's consultation with a few prescribed medications. Let's hope it doesn't get down to that.