Done in A Heartbeat

It’s always been like this in every module. Each module is always preceded by the pre-module excitement, which is actually a cry of freedom carried on from the previous module. Into the module itself, the first weeks are filled with lectures on basic sciences; thus, there are tons of new things to discover. This phase is quite engaging, if not challenging. On the the following weeks, lectures come from the more clinical departments. Lecturers from this department do bring interesting topics to the table, yet they are very unpredictable in making questions for the exam. Out of this dilemma was born a love-hate relationship with the departments.

During the last weeks of a module, life seems to painfully decelerate to make sure that each module can torture students more thoroughly. In cardio parlance, the Earth experienced severe bradycardia and students are congested with clots of exam materials. Finally, the ‘longed-for’ exams come and, poof, buh-bye module!

For now, I am happy to announce that cardiovascular module is DONE, DONE, and DONE. Well, I don’t know if I passed all my tests, but after weeks of systole, there’s no reason to not enjoy this rare period of diastole. (Sorry if my allegories burn your brains). To review, the two multiple-choice summative exams were relatively easy; the anatomy lab exam was hellish; and the path and histology lab exam was somewhere in between.

This weekend is all the time I have to stop and smell the flowers before I choke myself on the respiratory module.

Anatomy Frenzy!

Because of unknown reasons, most people associate med school with caressing countless cadavers in creepy labs. It might as well be the first, and sometimes the only, question people throw to a med student to find out his/her progress. They don’t care if you performed the coolest, most complicated physiology experiment; they just need to know if you had poked your way into some (dead) stranger’s stomach.

From a med student’s view, it is indeed a challenging topic, especially in the musculoskeletal, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. The former two I had passed in the 2nd and 3rd semester, respectively. This module will be the last of the deadly trio, and exam is coming this Wednesday.

What I need to identify in the exam includes the following:

• External structures of the heart
• The four heart chambers and their internal structures
• The big arteries and veins that go to/from the heart
• Arteries and veins in the upper and lower extremities (!)

And to give you the right impression of this exam’s urgency, I’ll end this post abruptly to study, hopefully.

This Week in Med School

To my delight, the first exam in the cardiovascular module was not that horrible. Most of the questions are straightforward and there was no need to overanalyze stuffs. Even better, the bane of preclinical students, anatomical pathology, did not trample us with fancy-schmancy morphology; in fact, there were specific hints in all of the questions. Identifying the diseases was more like identifying Paris by looking at the Eiffel Tower. There were a few hurdles, especially in cardiac physiology, but overall, the exam was manageable. Now I can get back to life – for a while before anatomy ‘fever’ sets in.

 

Last Saturday, I attended a minor surgery and circumcision training. This is my first time going to such event and as expected, I was very excited. Well, my mom was enthusiastic too; somehow, the thought of me tinkering with some kid's penis is entertaining to her.

 

In the minor surgery session, I was taught to do 3 types of basic sutures. I won’t get technical in this post, but you can look them up here, here, and here. We trained to suture sponges, but we used real surgical tools. And that’s when I realized that suturing involves pushing a needle through a person’s skin over and over again. If it wasn’t so cool and necessary, it would have simply been barbaric. Looking at my stitched sponge, the trainers said I did quite a good job, but maybe that’s a code for “thank you for not slicing us”.

 

The circumcision session was eye opening. Who knew you can learn to do circumcision by doing it to a candle penis wrapped in two layers of elastic gloves? In the beginning, it was somewhat awkward for me. The trainer, who happened to be a girl, explained the basic anatomy of a penis to a group of penis-owners. To my relief, there was no new information on penis anatomy. Then we proceeded to the circumcision itself. It was a little hard (no pun intended), but the trainer assured us that real genitals are not that stiff (except during certain times, of course). In the end of the training, I got my first minor surgery certificate. I won’t be cutting anyone open anytime soon, but there was that unmistakable sense of achievement.

 

Today, the president of RI visited my campus as a part of Alumni Awakening Day. The background story would be very long so here’s the summary: FKUI was founded by the Dutch and its students was instrumental in the national awakening movement which ultimately led to Indonesia’s independence. My favourite part of the story is how Abdulrachman Saleh spread the news of RI’s independence using a simple radio in my school’s physiology lab. In the nascent republic, doctors from FKUI served various position within and outside of the government. It is of utmost importance that the current FKUI embrace its noble past and emulate that fighting spirit to build an even better FKUI and Indonesia.

Just One Day

The physiology lab time for EKG went smoothly, producing 2 normal 12-lead recordings. Now that I have actually done it myself and analyzed the result to find out if it is normal or not, EKG is not so scary. Surely the spikes are still daunting - and I haven’t even dipped my toes into pathologic EKGs.

 

There is something far more important than EKG: a one-day holiday is just around the corner. Ascension of Jesus Christ is a national holiday in Indonesia, and this year it falls on May 13. I am really fond of these mid-module holidays since they put a stop on the overflow of information from lectures, lab times, and group discussions.

 

On ordinary days I have to cope with ridiculous amount of materials. Due to time constraints, virtually no one can absorb that kind of load each day so we med students have to prioritize. Anatomy: urgent; radiology: clueless. Coloquially, we say “X out of Y slides” with X the number of lecture slides digested and Y the number of all slides for the next exam. The ‘out of Y’ part is frequently omitted because we don’t even have the energy to care.

 

That’s were holidays come in. On holidays we obviously get no new materials; thus the brain-demand is not increased. Additionally, we also have more time to study, which increases the brain-supply. If a module is a race between a hare (lecturers) and a turtle (us), holiday is the part where the hare sleeps and the turtle continues fighting forward. The expected postholiday result is, of course, a better-prepared student.

 

But that only happens in the world where Indonesia have competent leaders and my mom is the Queen of Narnia. Holiday is a day to oversleep, overeat, and overstupidify. This is the time to be human again and live life like we are meant to. Well, if it’s any consolation, the academic pace also picks up a bit; but you can already guess the overall result. Hey, it’s not my fault Pondok Indah Mall is ultra-tempting.

That Spiky Thing

EKG. The sheer awesomeness of the word blows me away.

 

In the cardiovascular module (that’s the module I’m studying right now), students are taught all about EKG: the underlying physiology, the correct technique to record EKG, and the interpretation of an EKG recording. However, what looks so cool and easy on TV can be somewhat frustrating in real life.

 

Tomorrow, I am scheduled for a physiology lab time. EKG party time! It would be great if we could just walk in, plop some electrodes, fire away the 12 leads, and go home. But no, life is beautiful and sadistic like a dominatrix; there is a pretest for few fortunate students and also a compulsory group discussion after the lab time.

 

If you are sad, depressed, or anxious about anything…you should feel better already. You don’t have to care, let alone learn, about some cryptic grass-like code.