Savyasaachi

‘Suture it up!’ and I could see those gloved hands effortlessly move over the incision. It all started with our first clinical posting. Surgery, which fascinated most of us and had us anticipate a pictogram of the entire posting. But it was all topsy-turvy once we actually entered the wards. Our PGs considered us mere kids and our Professors never knew we existed, so we thought it would not matter. With this began our daily expedition within the Surgery block. My unitmates and I went around each ward, knew all the cases in every unit and even knew which professor would take class that day. Often, we knew better about other units than its own students. So that is how my journey in surgery began.

Some 15 days later, our Professor finally recognized our faces and reprimanded us for not attending postings for the first two weeks! We stood there as though under the spell “Confundo”. Later we impressed him with all the knowledge we had gained during our visits to different wards of various units.

As surgery postings came to an end, along came the plight of every 3rd term student – end-posting internals. Knowing well that our exam would be a group discussion, that too in the OPD, we geniuses took one single case to present together. Each of us had a copy of the case for backup! It was on the day of the exam that we got the biggest surprise of the posting. Our professor was clearly amused by our amateur approach. After mocking our smart move, he agreed on the condition that each of us submitted written documents of different cases within 3 days. One of us started presenting the case, but just as she was about to complete the history of presenting illness, a woman with thyroid enlargement entered the chamber and, to our horror, turned out to be our spot case. Then started all sorts of questions related to the thyroid! Not to forget the famous line, “you all are fresh from Anatomy, you should be answering them in seconds”. We came in ready for an ulcer case and had to answer on thyroid, which we had never studied in 3rd term. The main hitch was when we were asked the normal levels of TSH hormone, which none of us knew. Be it a coincidence or a blessing in disguise, Sir got a call right then and had to step out to receive it. What next? In no time, we were scanning the patient’s report for normal values. Just to be safe, we confirmed it online as well. When sir returned, to our dismay, he had forgotten about the question. Grabbing on to and guessing from whatever we remembered from first year, we finally managed to do well in the internal. Two years from then, this posting still makes me think of what I had learnt in all that hustle, and how I realize I got a step closer to the subject that I idolise.