The Year Level 5: ICC Year blog posts - stories and
anecdotes, patient encounters and hospital drama, and the many colors of
UP med school from the perspective of a third year. Here's the twelfth
entry, under our four-week rotation in the Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology.
1. Waking up at 5:30AM every weekday morning, except for that Monday when I woke up an hour late and arrived in school unbathed and hungry. (One tardy arrival meant an instant ticket to the final exams.)
2. The stench of disease-ridden vagina. Have you ever been to the market? It's like all the animal and raw food smells in the world combined. Plus, damp stone floor, mildewed shower curtain, half-dried clothing.
3. The grandma with cancer who didn't want to undergo treatment. "Fine with me if the Lord wants to take me now!" she vehemently declared before us and her daughter.
4. The speculum exam. The vagina is a monster, especially the looser, more experienced ones. It's like inserting an instrument inside a collapsible fleshy tunnel; the thing will attempt to swallow the metal up.
5. Delivering my first baby. Or rather, how my fingers slipped and slipped trying to forcibly extract the thing out of the vagina. A word of advice for future generations: Do the maneuvers on the child like manipulating a hammer.
6. The 24-hour duty. It was a tiring marathon, but the learning was endless. Over time, one learned to identify the mothers based on individual bad behavior more than their names.
7. Hazel (not her real name), our most entertaining patient during the 24-hour duty. It was a delivery worthy of the stage. "Makinig ka: Hindi ka na dalaga. Nanay ka na." "Sige po!"
8. The two worst SGDs of my med-student life. The first one featured a faculty preceptor that tried to assume the role of moderator, then would ask me (the student moderator), "Moderator, why aren't you moderating?" The second one was a disaster that shall no longer be discussed.
9. My patient with polycystic ovarian syndrome and a BMI of 42. But only because she was so amazed at the fact that I'm only 21. I hope life will be kinder to her.
10. The tiredness at the end of each day. It's enough to ravage an otherwise fecund person.
And then, when all of it was done, thinking, "It's done. It's finally done." I gave it my third 4/4 in the end-of-rotation student evaluations. I loved this rotation, I really did, but it's not something I'd look for in my spare time.
1. Waking up at 5:30AM every weekday morning, except for that Monday when I woke up an hour late and arrived in school unbathed and hungry. (One tardy arrival meant an instant ticket to the final exams.)
2. The stench of disease-ridden vagina. Have you ever been to the market? It's like all the animal and raw food smells in the world combined. Plus, damp stone floor, mildewed shower curtain, half-dried clothing.
3. The grandma with cancer who didn't want to undergo treatment. "Fine with me if the Lord wants to take me now!" she vehemently declared before us and her daughter.
4. The speculum exam. The vagina is a monster, especially the looser, more experienced ones. It's like inserting an instrument inside a collapsible fleshy tunnel; the thing will attempt to swallow the metal up.
5. Delivering my first baby. Or rather, how my fingers slipped and slipped trying to forcibly extract the thing out of the vagina. A word of advice for future generations: Do the maneuvers on the child like manipulating a hammer.
6. The 24-hour duty. It was a tiring marathon, but the learning was endless. Over time, one learned to identify the mothers based on individual bad behavior more than their names.
7. Hazel (not her real name), our most entertaining patient during the 24-hour duty. It was a delivery worthy of the stage. "Makinig ka: Hindi ka na dalaga. Nanay ka na." "Sige po!"
8. The two worst SGDs of my med-student life. The first one featured a faculty preceptor that tried to assume the role of moderator, then would ask me (the student moderator), "Moderator, why aren't you moderating?" The second one was a disaster that shall no longer be discussed.
9. My patient with polycystic ovarian syndrome and a BMI of 42. But only because she was so amazed at the fact that I'm only 21. I hope life will be kinder to her.
10. The tiredness at the end of each day. It's enough to ravage an otherwise fecund person.
And then, when all of it was done, thinking, "It's done. It's finally done." I gave it my third 4/4 in the end-of-rotation student evaluations. I loved this rotation, I really did, but it's not something I'd look for in my spare time.
1 comment:
Amen! long live Jarby. Terence the traveler is dead
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