Carry On Doctors!!! – some true stories.
October 1, 2011Once upon a time…
it was generally believed that doctors or medicos belonged to that class of human beings which has an extreme intolerance to humor and the only time they smiled were when a difficult patient of them recovered, or as someone had put in scathingly , when it was fees time. They were often termed as dry, boring , antiseptic with huge lack of imagination. Here’s a surprise for you. Today we bring before you a few recollections from Dr Jayati Nath’s (who is a gynaecologist) memories of her student days in Silchar Medical College situated in Silchar, Assam. Though the medium of teaching was English, the language of interaction was majorly Bengali followed by hindi among the patients, students and the Professors. Some of the dialogues will be in Bengali and hindi with the translation provided , but the essence maybe slightly diminished. Names will be altered for obvious reasons. Most of the fun occurred during the dreaded act of being tested , be it exams or just like that.
Once during an ENT viva voce examination, towards the end of the examination the teachers became quite relaxed due to maybe exhaustion.
Other than asking questions, there is also a segment in the viva, where we are asked questions from specimens which are usually spread out before the examiners. It can be an anatomical part, or an instrument, or others.
That day a senior of mine was the last of the lot . It so happened that The teachers were just served tea then , but they didn’t halt the proceeding. Instead as a bonus to him they gave him the choice to pick up his specimen , “go on, pick one of them up” they said indicating the tray of instruments. The student smiled shyly and hesitated, but the examiner insisted. The student then shyly picked up a samosa from the plate that was lying along with the tea near the instrument tray, much to the amusement and hilarity among the examiners. Obviously the poor thing had misunderstood.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
It was in one of the MEDICINE CLINICS (clinics are practical classes where in the students have to deal with the patient, as in taking their ailment history, examine them,and form a diagnosis from the findings. It is the first step towards patient dealing) one of our dreaded Medicine Professor asked a student calmly, after she failed to answer his questions regarding the text they were covering that day,
…”HUTCHISON(Hutchison was the Medicine text book) aache ????? (do you have Hutchison?)
She eagerly replied….”.aache sir !!!”(Yes Sir) Wasn’t she relieved? Finally she had an answer!
But the irritated Professor boomed menacingly…………”.BECHE DAAO…!!!!!” (SELL IT THEN !)
————————————————————————————————————————
My friend who was dating a junior girl was spotted with her during an evening walk ,by the Biochemistry Head of the Department who used to drip in sarcasm and romance was the last thing he endorsed. In the next class he asked my friend a particularly difficult question and when he failed to answer, exclaimed..”ki bolchen sir!aapni to jonaker aalote tuition poratey jaan….!” (what are you saying Sir? How can you not know, when you go to hand out moonlit tuitions to your student?) much to my friend’s embarrassment.
————————————————————————————————————————————–
This used to be a common scene outside our very first biochemistry viva voce examination.. There used to be tensed faces, nail biting nervous whispers and as soon as someone came out of the examiners room we used to surround him and ask…”kya puchha ?? kya puchha ??” (what did they ask you ?) followed by “tune kya bola? “ (what did you reply) This exercise used to give us a fair idea of the probable questions and also a hint of the respective performances of our competitors. But once a student replied to our rushed inquiry as
“.mera naam.” (my name)
And involuntarily all of us chorused…”tune kya answer diya ? tune kya bola ??”
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Once during the PSYCHIATRY HOD’s round, one patient was found missing much to our chagrin. We were all looking for him frantically when suddenly he appeared from behind a door , pushed our HOD and shouted gleefully – Booooo! I scared you.
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
There is a thin strip like muscle called the cremaster muscle in the scrotum of a male and our anatomy classes entitled us to dissect a specimen and identify the tissues. Once when we were dissecting the cremaster muscle, one female student exclaimed….”it’s so tiny !, are you sure this is the one” to the dissecting student (who unfortunately for her was a smart alec) and he retorted back..”ETA KI HAATHIR SCROTUM …? MANUSHER JONYO OTO TUKUI THIK AACHE !!” as we broke into peals of laughter. He meant (Is this an Elephant’s scrotum, that you will find a big one? For a man, this size is just right.)
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Glomerular Filtrate rate or the GFR is roughly the rate at which urine is produced. And it doesn’t need rocket science to figure out that it cannot go into litres per minute , right ? Yes the GFR is 90 to 120 ml per minute but unfortunately a junior of us got nervous and instead of saying that, blurted out 90 to 120 litre per min. Can you imagine?!!! But the joke doesn’t end there. It is the reaction of the professor who asked it, which clinches the top spot in classic reaction.
He literally jumped in his seat and exclaimed- “ If that is your GFR Then, I think you should join the Fire Brigade my dear!!!”
Well that brings us to the end of todays diary entries. If you liked them and would love to have more of such as series , then please let us know. We would love to bring some more for you in our subsequent issues.
At the end we would just like to ask you, And so you thought Doctors were boring?!!!
We welcome your comments at letters@friedeye.com
