5 things that made me smile...

It has been a while since I blogged. There have been a lot of incidences that made me smile in the last 4 months. It was then when I realized, moments that make us smile will be cherished more than moments than make us laugh. Here I am, recalling some of them.

1. I have an incredible set of friends. We didn't get to hang out much in the past few months. And when we did spend time together, we had so much fun and those minutes were filled with bantering! It usually creeps me out when somebody guesses what I'm up to, and more so, when they say "That's because I know you!". But I realized, a thoughtful gesture from a friend, and when I act surprised, the reply "Hey, I know you!" makes it such a beautiful moment. The most beautiful moment!

2. I spent about a little less than a month in the Paediatric ward. One morning I was just watching a newborn, when he was sleeping. All of a sudden I got to be a spectator to something splendid. I got to see the newborn yawn in his sleep and stretch a little. That made my day. The most beautiful moment!

3. One evening, it was a picture perfect moment here at Tirunelveli. We had a cool breeze, mild drizzle and a tinge of yellow on everything from the setting sun! The most beautiful moment!

4. My day would be incomplete if I hadn't logged into Twitter. Here are some of the most beautiful tweets I got to read recently

• @NeelaVanam To whom does the plant belong~ to the bird that dropped the seed~ or to the master who owns the field?

• @arattaigirl நீ சொன்ன பொய்கள் அனைத்தையும் நம்பினேனே... நான் சொல்லும் இந்த ஒரு பொய்யை நம்பக் கூடாதா?

• @nelsonnium If there's a tear rolling down your cheek, and you haven't the slightest clue why, don't blame it on a tearduct leak, your soul just sighed.
  

• @antoniOanbu வெளிச்சத்தை நோக்கிய ஒரு நீண்ட தேடலே இரவு

• @nandu Your visit to an Indian wedding is incomplete if you've not scaled and proudly installed yourself on a towering stack of plastic chairs.

Since I had a blogpost written on giving up the habit of dealing with stuff in multiples of five, I'm stopping with writing about just 4 of the places where I smiled!

And there are always the freebies, that make me smile! (Read: Grin)

P.S. This post comes after desperate attempts from me to overcome my blogger's block!

Records And Me

If you’ve started reading this, thinking it’s going to be about the records I made/broke, I’m sorry, you’re wrong!

BTW, I haven’t made/broken any “records”, yet!

My Twitter friends would know what this is about because I’ve been ranting about the record-writing work I’ve got to do now. I even warned them that I might be coming up with this blog post since I was so obsessed with the record work I’ve been doing.

I’ve been writing this Social and Preventive Medicine record for quite sometime now. It’s not a big deal, since we’ve finished half the record already. But I hate doing record work, no matter how much!

My experiences with records and record submissions have been tragic. I am that person who keeps writing the record till the last minute of the deadline. And the last minute, well I spend it for covering the record with the laminated brown sheet, which, most of the time, I manage not to make a mess out of it. Thanks to the adequate training I already got in school for the covering-under-emergency skills!

One probable reason why I hate records is that, after the record submission and after the professor corrects it, the one word he/she is going to write on my record note is going to be either “Rewrite” or “Redraw”! Yep, I’m so bad at it! There was this one time when one of the profs asked me to redraw every diagram in the record. I was so pissed off, I just erased those “redraw”s and submitted back, without redrawing! God knows what happened to that record, as I had to go back to that department only during exams.

But this time I’m giving my best shot at this record-writing thing and I just hope things turn out well! Okay, now I guess I should get back and resume my war with the SPM record! Ciao!

A Case Presentation…

Don’t worry… I’m not going to present a case here!

Case presentation… This is a page which, I’m sure, will have a place in every medico’s diary! This is something over which we would have given enough thought during our clinical years.

To the non-medicos out there, case presentation is nothing but we’ll be given a patient, we’ll have to ask his history, examine him and come to a diagnosis and then present it to a professor. Sounds simple, right?! But it isn’t so! Why?! That’s what this post is about. Read on…

The case presentation part of the clinical life is never going to be easy. The problem lies not just on one point, but on a variety of factors, which makes the probability of you screwing your presentation near infinity (I know that the maximum probability of an incident is 1. But let me tell you, case presentation is beyond the limits of mathematics).

The difficulty in a case presentation starts from us. First of all, the fear in students is the most important factor. We are scared that we would go wrong in our presentation. And that obviously poses serious troubles when you are about to present a case, standing in a special location in the hall, in front of the professor and 50 students. And of course, it goes without saying, we go wrong in the examination part. Examining a patient doesn’t just have few/some/many/too many/way too many rules. It has loads⁵⁰ of rules and even more exceptions! Here again the probability of missing out on relevant point shoots up.

Okay, if you get through all this and if you are one person who can fly solo, hold on… You have the professors and the patient himself to make things worse! However, I don’t blame them!

The professor is there to teach us, to correct our mistakes. But because of our clumsy presentation he/she ends up only correcting us. Sometimes we start feeling if the professors are there only to point out the mistakes in the presentation. And some corrections will be pointless. But you will have to stand in front of them, not to have a nervous look on you face and correct your presentation even if you are sure that the book says otherwise. Here comes the most important problem, “What is right? What is wrong? Should you add this point in you presentation or not?!”. This is because, there are instances when the text book is wrong and the professor corrects it. But it’s not the same with another professor. He/she might want to go with the textbook. So, it is upto the student to decide which to follow, and how to present, depending on the professor. Most of the time, we won’t know what a professor will be expecting. So, no doubt we are going to go wrong in presenting!

If you had been wondering how the patient will be a problem, here comes… Most of the time the patient gives different histories to the student and the professor. There have been a lot of incidences where the student presents that the patient has some particular complaints and when the professor asks the patient, he/she comes up with a few more complaints (which, with our ill luck, will be vital details taking us closer to the diagnosis!), the professor stares at the student presenting the case and he/she looks helplessly at his/her classmates who will be giggling at their dismal friend by then!

Whatever, case presentations are meant to be a learning process. You are allowed to make mistakes (but only as long as you are ready to correct them and learn quickly). When you are about to begin your presentation, you will feel that you are going to end up as an epitome of embarrassment, but by the end you will have only climbed two rungs on the ladder of your self-confidence and four rungs on your ladder of knowledge!

Case presentation is definitely a thrilling experience with some pit holes, rugged terrain and a saccharine destination!

I, me and my life!

      The past month was a real test to my character! Had so much going on around me, over which I had no control! This is one truth that hit me hard right on my face! Till then I was thinking I was on top of the world, I always had a feeling, everything is under MY control! And last month taught me it isn’t so!

     I was made to face completely new situations, situations which I haven’t experienced even once in my life so far! There were a lot of incidences which made me doubt my own abilities… And this is one thing that I haven’t been exposed to very often! I hate evaluating my capacities! I would say I’ve always been a go-getter!

     There were days in last month when I felt if I should even get up from bed! (No, I’m not talking about my laziness again here! I mean, I was just reluctant to start my day!)  I was actually scared to face my life! I was worried about what might go wrong once I set out on anything! I was worried what MORE might go wrong if I did anything!

     And about 75% of what went wrong wasn’t under my control! I had no power over them! And this realization of life’s frailty came really bad on me! And last month saw me losing faith in life, losing faith in me… for the first time ever! I could see life wasn’t so cool, it had its share of shortcomings!

     There were so many things that went really wrong last month! Don’t ask me what! Not just one thing! It was a month of realizations for me! Realization of bitter truth!

       Hope I can face difficulties boldly in the future! I have never been a coward! But I’ve had problems in sorting out what went wrong last month!

      But now, things have improved. And I’m happy to have found my groove again! I guess my life is cool and back!