Savyasaachi

It’s the stuff for punch lines and Adele songs: When the bully becomes the laughing stock. When the fingers are pointing the opposite way; when the tables are turned.

Introducing you to its small-scale medical version, the Third Year Syndrome (also known as ‘Second year syndrome’, ‘Intern’s syndrome’ and even ‘Medical Students’ Disease’, because different people open their textbooks at different points in their lives, apparently) which is when the incubating physicians and surgeons grow paranoid about their health and of those around them, thanks to their unripe, scattered knowledge of ailments and cures.

On a serious note, it is interesting to see the phenomenon unravel in front of, and inside, you. Perhaps, it is a keenness to apply what little you know without risking getting sued for it. Your roommate no longer has a simple bout of cough - she's a suspect for Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Every member of your family gets a free diagnosis for their minor-but-could-be-deadly symptoms. Even an excuse of a headache can raise alarm about anything from migraine to brain tumors.

Hence, I used to think the most irritating thing would be for your classmates to doctor you around.

Was I wrong.

It's worse when you're suffering from the third year syndrome and everybody else seems to know it. My experience with it started at the beginning of 6th term. With third year, we got a bonus of one more hour of postings. While I was just as obsessed as the next medical student about getting my hands on patients, those were the days when my Kannada would confuse either me or the patient to an extent where I could get slapped. So after a year of staring at my watch to show 11:00, I half-heartedly slouched into the new schedule.

A week into it, I had a fainting spell in the Outpatient Department. Attributing it to my habit of skipping breakfast, I didn't think much of it - till I had a rerun less than a week later. And the subsequent week. And months since.

I was regular with my meals by then, so I knew it couldn't be hypoglycemia. Considering the possibility of heat exhaustion in a ward where students were in numbers thrice that of the beds there, I even kept gulping water throughout the morning session, but to no avail.

Recalling the concept of peripheral pooling of blood, I thought I should just keep contracting my calf muscles to reroute blood back to my brain. Shortly, I was the restless kid in the unit, shifting from one leg to another in the desperate hope of keeping myself vertical. But nothing seemed to be working.

Soon, a half hour into the posting, I'd just stop listening to the class and be on the lookout for cramps, glare, palpitations or any other warning signal that I'd be flat in minutes. That only made things worse.

It was extremely mortifying to be giddy when juniors fresh into the calendar would stay back to learn more, all caution thrown to the wind. Everybody else seemed to be fine. After initially trying to talk me out of it ("Why don't you just get used to standing?", "Be strong!") my unit-mates started making way for me to lean, sit or lie down, even if I'd raised my hand just to rub my eye.

By then my humiliation and frustration transformed into genuine concern. What was wrong with me? Was I anemic? Was I doing it for attention? Perhaps I was suffering from orthostatic hypotension?

Of course I had no such problems. I consulted two wonderful doctors in our hospital and even got my blood tested, and they all had the same thing to say - I was perfectly healthy. They also suggested eating well, keeping hydrated and contracting my Soleus muscles to restore circulation to my head!

After drawing a complete blank, I decided there was a long way to go. It wasn't my body that needed strengthening, but the insides of my head. I kept doing the same old rituals in our wards, to ward off all thoughts of dizziness. I got off my seat to get some real exercise and build some much-needed stamina. I started eating better. But the trick truly was just a tranquil mind, be it through slow music, deep breathing or meditation. Because it does take a sound mind to sculpt out a healthy body.

I was no longer going to be the girl in the white coat asking a patient to make way for her to rest and so far so good – most of the time, anyway.

Prevention being better than cure, you would think being sensitive to the slightest changes in your physiology could screen out more complicated prospects. On the contrary, looks like we shouldn't sweat the small stuff and just let nature handle the rest.

The message from all that was not just to stop freaking out about your own health but, as a medical student, not to belittle anybody's problems either - what may be trivial medically could be giving someone sleepless nights, or in my case, too much of 'sleep', each with their trail of problems. And that's something you'll miss out in most textbooks.