The "Pump Handle" Test

Study vacations are here again, and at around 3 am this morning, the already minuscule "common sense" area in my brain decided to call it a day. As I sat there reading Orthopaedics, I decided suddenly, after 21 years, to try out that whole 'learning-by-doing' thing.

I therefore stretched out on the floor, and attempted to bring my right knee to my left shoulder. A rational person of course would tell you immediately that this was not possible. But these are study vacations. I havent been rational in a while now.

This test is apparently positive in a person with ankylosing spondylitis, where it causes pain. What kind of sadistic psychopath comes up with tests like these anyway? The only way this wouldnt hurt someone was if they were comatose. 

I, unfortunately, was not. So as I lay there writhing in pain, I decided that I either have ankylosing spondylitis or I fractured a bone or two while attempting to check.

Either way. I'm going to go find myself an Analgin now.

Poda Podi: "It’s cool man, it’s cool"

A brief synopsis for anyone who missed this gem of a movie.

It begins with the hero (I will henceforth call him Mr. Hero for the sake of simplicity) mis-quoting Hamlet, saying “To love or not to love: that is the question” while violently moving his body to what appears to be music.

Mr. Hero then goes to a bar, meets some girl who dances with him simply because he’s filthy rich, and then instantly becomes his girlfriend. After a few jokes involving lodges in Mahabalipuram, she becomes Mrs. Hero.

Unfortunately for Mr. Hero, his wife likes to dance salsa, which he finds terribly offensive. So he decides that the only solution is for his wife to get pregnant. Mr. and Mrs. Hero then have a baby (doll).

Thanks to some brilliant script-writing, we now enter the intermission while faced with this massive ground-breaking twist in the storyline.

In Part-2, Mr. Hero decides to go bash up his wife’s dance partner, and his wife repays him by *accidentally* killing their baby. She then gets angry with Mr. Hero for several months because it's all his fault. Mr. Hero then tries to re-kindle his lost love by declaring to his wife's dance instructor “I want to have 10 more babies and I cant do it by myself”. This seems to be a satisfactory apology, so Mrs. Hero moves back in with him.

But their marital problems continue; not because of the dead baby, but because of the salsa dancing, which of course is way more important. After much visual and auditory trauma to my senses, they both finally decide that the only way to win the dance competition would be to dance together. Unfortunately he’s useless at this, so the judges all go “You’re terrible. But we’re still putting you through to round 2”

Mr. Hero then decides that he is a “kuthu dancer” and so Mr. and Mrs. Hero both simultaneously have a 3-minute long generalised tonic-clonic seizure on stage, and in response the judges jump up and start dancing. This of course means that they win round 2.

They then have baby #2 and we are informed that there are 14 more rounds to go. Thankfully, this is where the movie ends with a “To be continued” notice as the credits start to roll.

Poda Podi is quite a movie. This is 1 hour and 58 minutes of acting, which takes place despite several drawbacks:

1) It has a total cast of 4 characters (Mr. and Mrs. Hero plus a completely mad chitappa with an even madder wife)

2) There is no real story-line

3) It takes place entirely in London and Disneyland, where people seem to neither know english nor tamil properly

Despite all of this, it still relentlessly plods on for almost two hours, and for that it must be applauded.

(PS. It's still better than "Enthiran")

How to fix a road. Chengalpet style.

Step 1: Find a small tiny road which is simultaneously used by lorries, trucks, cars, share autos, bikes, stray dogs, grazing cows, a couple of pigs and my cycle. This road must be too small to permit two-way traffic, and so who has to go off-road depends on a clear hierarchy based on size (though pedestrians still rank higher than my cycle)

Step 2: Dig up the entire side of the road making it tinier by half, because it wasnt a big enough challenge already to look death in the face every time you pass someone

Step 3: Wait for the rains to convert your open grave on the side of the road into a swimming pool

Step 4: Add a bunch of stones to spill all over the road. Because punctured tyres are fun.

Step 4: Watch as this small tiny road continues to simultaneously be used by lorries, trucks, cars, share autos, bikes, stray dogs, grazing cows, a couple of pigs and my cycle, effectively disproving Pauli's exclusion principle.

Of course there is always the alternative route. In this particular case, it looks like this:

As the saying goes, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And they were both equally bad"

But then I complain too much. I'm sure the road will be fixed one day, and the two opposing lanes of traffic will live in harmony once more. 

And when that day comes, I'm sure my grandkids will be around to enjoy it.

"GBM"

Nomenclature is a funny thing. Words often come to be used in contexts that are diametrically opposite to their actual meaning.

Take, for example, the word referring to 'professional guidance of the individual'. Counselling. Ask any twelfth standard kid waiting to be sentenced counselled to a college. Before going in he will understandably be close to a nervous breakdown. After coming out he will require another form of counselling. Grief counselling.

Another interesting phrase is the "General Body Meeting", or what college students affectionately call a GBM. Every now and then, there arises an issue that requires the full participation of the entire student fraternity to help resolve. This of course is through free and open exchange of ideas in a public forum.

At least, thats what I used to think.

The next time I'm heading to a GBM, I'm bringing popcorn.

New-born babies are ugly. There, I said it.

My classmates of course screamed bloody murder when I made my little observation, but that does not make it any less true. Babies become cute only about ten minutes after they're born, until which time they compete with earthworms and slugs in terms of cuteness.

After an entire week of night internship in the labour ward, I find the place about as appealing as a concentration camp. It's perpetually filled with screaming women, all flailing about on four-foot high metal beds (and occasionally falling off, IV line and all) with the entire room smelling of an aroma that comes from a cocktail of shed placenta, faeces, blood, and sometimes vomit (some textbooks call it "vomitus" with the clearly mistaken belief that that makes it somewhat less revolting)

But then all of this is normal. Abnormal happens every now and then too, like the one woman who got up to go to the bathroom and ended up coming out with a baby in her hands. I try not to think about what might have happened in there.

To put up with all of this on a daily basis, the people who work in the labour ward obviously have to make some modifications to their thinking processes. This acclimatisation involves disconnecting the part of the brain which deals with empathy and upping the sarcasm tenfold, resulting in responses like "Oh, you want a caesarean? The doctor's at the tea shop, let me just go get her"!

In the midst of all this chaos and screaming, out comes a baby, bathed in blood and choking for air.

Forgive me, but "cute" isnt what comes to mind.

The internet is like a drug

You keep telling yourself that it isnt. But it is. I realised this today, after two days and 14 hours of no internet, and two days and 14 hours of aimlessly wandering the house (the two are of course not related in any way)

There are three stages of addiction apparently.

Stage 1: Preoccupation/Anticipation:

"Constant cravings for a drug are the very first sign that addiction is taking hold."

We're all in this stage, lets be honest. But when you unplug and re-plug all the telephones in the house and move them around and change the wires and repeat that a couple of times in a pathetic attempt to bring the internet back, that's a pretty clear sign.

Stage 2: Binge/Intoxication:

"As the drug is introduced into the body more frequently, larger amounts are necessary to continue experiencing the same high."

With the intention of engaging the mathematically inclined readers of this blog, I am going to draw a graph, because maths people usually like that (Physics people like graphs too, but they're usually just boring horizontal and diagonal lines. Maths people came up with the Batman equation)

Res ipsa loquitur.

Stage 3: Withdrawal:

"The withdrawal symptoms experienced anytime the drug is not present cause tremendous suffering"

"Tremendous suffering" is putting it mildly. Over the past two and a half days, I have played around fifty games of solitaire and hearts (each), picked up the telephone once every 10 minutes to check if it was working, went to some fancy doctors meeting out of sheer boredom (the use of words less than five syllables long was strictly prohibited), and even contemplated going back to Chengalpet to use the internet there.

So obviously I have a problem. But then so do lots of people. They just dont know it yet. And its a very simple test to know if you're one of them. Throw your modem off the second floor (or just the computer table will usually suffice) and see what happens to you.

So I'm a final year now. Apparently.

It is now three and a half years since I joined college. That's 43 months. Or 1315 days. Considering the fact that I am supposed to be "working" as an intern in another year, I somehow thought I would feel a little less dumb by now. I dont know what gave me such a ridiculous idea.

The last few days involved a bunch of random people whom we've never met before, asking us things that they knew we didnt know, while being visibly entertained in the process. These people are what we call external examiners. They are a kind of sub-species of the human race who delight in the sorrow and misery of others. Much like demontors, but in real life.

One of them kept mumbling something that I presume was English, but I cant say for sure. The only clear thing I heard him say to me was "You can go". Another one kept setting us random tasks, one of which was a make-shift ex-tempo acting assessment, in tamil. While I think my excellent command over the language held up quite well initially, it may have started to crumble when I told my fictional patient (translating literally) "your cochlea broke". And by the time I had got to explaining what lip-reading was, the smile on the examiner's face was so wide, I decided it was time to wind up.

And as if the externals werent bad enough, the patients that I was allotted had equally strange personalities. One mentioned quite casually that she was electrocuted 6 months ago, but she was too busy hoarding biscuits to answer any of my other questions properly. One thought I was a proper doctor and started telling me all of his life's problems. In the interest of transparency I told him that I was a third year having a final exam. He became surprisingly quiet after that. I wonder why. I proceeded to write down a previously memorised diet for him, while his son watched me fill up my paper. He apparently works at Kalaignar TV, so it is possible that I might be in the news some time.

Either way, I am finally a final year. Or third year part 2, if we're going to get technical. After a year that included "field visits" (which meant knocking on people's houses at 2.00 in the afternoon to measure the sizes of their rooms and to look inside their bathrooms), and had enough drama to take a new TV serial through at least two seasons, final year cant possibly be that bad.

I hope.

Park's Textbook Of Preventive And Social Medicine: 21st Edition

The general consensus is that this textbook is the best there is for third years.

We'll just see about that, shall we? The following are direct quotes from the book.

General dumbness/randomness/failed punch lines:

• Insects, rodents, animals and plants are constantly working for their survival^(p.35)
• Accidents are no longer considered accidental^(p.374)
• "Use of stolen vehicles" is one of the precipitating factors for accidents^(p.378)
• Damage from accidents may be minimised by "wearing leather clothes and boots"^(p.378)
• Years wrinkle the skin, but worry, doubt, fear, anxiety and self-distrust wrinkle the soul^(p.547)
• "Times of India" listed as one of the references^(p.560)
• In Kwashiorkar, oedema is present in the lower legs and lower arms^(p.591)
• It is possible to classify individuals with reference to two poles: children with insufficient but proportioned growth and those with normal height, but who are wasted^(p.591)
• Nations and civilisations are linked together not only by ideas but also by bread^(p.602)
• Anger can cause a person to be rude and sarcastic^(p.625)
• The traditional barber is called a nai^(p.636)
• The arithmetic mean may look ridiculous^(p.786)
• "Noise, invisibility, congestion" are barriers to communication^(p.795)
• Newspaper readers are often seeking newspapers^(p.805)

Technical errors:

• Guinea worm disease is a public health problem in India^(p.722)
• Toxoplasmosis is classified as a virus ^(p.262)
• Earliest sensation affected in leprosy is light touch^(p.288)
• Psoriasis is a hospital-acquired infection^(p.333)

There are too many typos to list, but the book did end up calling affluent societies "effluent societies"

But then lets forget all of these minor infractions for a minute, for to err is human after all (though to err this much for 21 editions is indicative of either extreme ineptitude or an underlying organic brain lesion). 

There are bound to be several excellent uses for this book, though only a few come to mind:

• It can be used to line the bird cage and collect droppings
• You can point and laugh at any poor soul who's stuck reading it
• It is sturdy enough to be used as a murder weapon

Final exams: Because sleeping is for the weak

This picture's been passed around a lot on facebook. But from what I saw over the last week, I've realised that this is a gross misconception. The actual last five minutes (more like the last 30 minutes in my case) were spent thusly:

I even tried asking one of the invigilators what was causing my fellow classmates to make such obvious physical effort in filling out the answers while I was counting the number of fans on the ceiling. Perhaps there was some kind of secret puzzle that had to be cracked in order to reveal another essay or something. On the first day I even tried putting all the first letters of each line together, and ended up getting "Edtda Wddaldcvpcg Svatanmaitiwtttb". How intriguing. It actually didnt sound too different from some of the actual questions they had asked, like "What is GOBIFFF?"

I finally decided that the most effective way to spend all my free time would be to take a quick nap. You would understand my astonishment then, when everyone came out of the exam hall and told me that there was no time to finish writing everything that they wanted to.

The way I see it, there are two possible explanations. Either I am selectively blind to some kind of invisible ink that they used to print the back of the question paper, or I'm just plain dumb. And I have dont think they used any invisible ink.

Either way, it was all over yesterday, and then we went to watch some random movie called Marina. After a week of not sleeping, you dont usually care much for such things as quality when you select a movie. But unfortunately, this particular movie also had some strong advice for the audience, delivered in typical tamil-movie style - very indiscreetly; advice that no fresh-out-of-the-exam-hall college student wants to hear. Advice on the importance of education and studying hard.

Oh the irony.

My exams are a few days away

And with that in mind, I have decided that it is time to make a few amends.

It may have appeared from previous posts that I did not particularly like my SPM textbook. This could not be further from the truth. It is such an amazing book that mere words cannot describe it's brilliance, and students like me are privileged to have such a masterfully written text as study material.

Dear SPM book, this song is for you.

"What? You've never seen a hypocrite before?" - Leonard Hofstadter

The Art Of Killing Mosquitoes

Mosquito hunting with the electrical bat can surprisingly be quite therapeutic. Especially during study holidays when one frequently feels the need to maim or seriously injure.

And I've only broken one vase so far.

I actually think they should make it into an Olympic sport. Send in a guy with a fully charged mosquito bat, and give him +10 for every dead mosquito and -5 for every bite. And a disqualification for breaking anything, just to keep things interesting.

What I think about my Social and Preventive Medicine (aka Community medicine) textbook

After reading a bunch of nonsense about school health (which included the recommended urinal-to-student and latrine-to-student ratio that a school is supposed to have), I was on the brink of losing whatever was left of my sanity

I therefore made this comic to describe what cannot be put in words.

The laws governing study vacations are as fundamental as Newton's laws of motion

Law of diminishing returns – During the study vacation, there is, on average, a 10% decrease in the total amount of studying that is done on any given day, as compared to the preceding day.

This trend, however, is abruptly reversed and accompanied with a sudden surge in both vigour and panic, at a specific point in time (the "break point") which usually occurs no earlier than 48 hours before the start of the exam (by which time, of course, the outcome of the examination has become inevitable, and the probability of altering it tends to zero)

Law of failed adherence - No timetable, without exception, however well-planned and seemingly practicable, will ever work as planned or be successfully implemented. This holds good for timetables that extend over months, weeks, days, hours, or even intervals of 10 minutes.

Law of extraneous influences - In the process of attempting to study, all things unrelated to the study material become supremely fascinating, and the student feels an obsessive and compulsive need to stare at blank walls, update blogs and play Castleville.

Law of successful recollection (applicable primarily to community medicine) – If the student possesses the ability to recollect, with reasonable accuracy, just one paragraph from one page after intensive reading for one hour, then the period of study shall be deemed to have been sufficiently productive.

Law of wishful thinking – Every student begins to incessantly replay some impossible fantasy in his/her mind, always ending with some disastrous event (like a piece of Phobos-Grunt hitting the college) that results in the cancellation of the approaching exam.

PS. Phobos-Grunt did not, in fact, crash into my college. I checked.

I just realised something groundbreaking

What do all successful sitcoms have in common? Dumb songs about cats!

New Year's resolutions

1) Kill anyone who posts or says anything even remotely related to 'why this kolaveri'
2) Try very hard not to tear up the SPM textbook before the exam is done
3) Gain 2 kg by the end of the year