Two hearts, One soul......

Now im back home from Manipal, "totally lost dunno what to do" kinda situation... parents r dozing, da cable isn't working, im too lazy to do any outdoor activity at the moment n nobodys online.... At times like these i relive good ol' days... okay so im still mentally in Manipal, i tried not to believe it but i ws just caught sleep talkin.. STOP THINKIN :P, i was only taking patient history in my sleep.. was dreaming about some housewife with heel pain... now it makes sense to me, cos everytime i asked her a question i wudn get a reply :S... i figured she was Mallu... oh damn! i hope i wasn acting it all out in my dream like i usually do with Mallu cases..parents will think im possessed :O

Okay okay deviating from the topic, come back now.. i jus realised im never gonna get patients who're cranky housewives with 15 family members or farmers hit by their ox/fallen off their tractors... all ill have to deal with will probably be software engineers who need posture correction, overworked working women who'l have no time to bitch abt their daughter-in-laws to me (those cranky housewives.. awesome fun!)..

Anyway im here to tell you about one of my coolest patients during my surgery posting... that ajja was hilarious.. he used to make my day :)....so the situation was i had jus returned from home after a long vacation and a crazy bus journey, reached back just in time to grab my lab coat n rush to work.. i was so hungry, sleepy n tired n had all new patients cos i was gone on a long leave... i was thankful cos wasn really feeling too chatty that day.

So i enter the L3 ward, walk up to the skinny old man who was a post-op case of stomach carcinoma. I start giving him the usual "deergha shwasa tokolli ajja.. mooginda tokoli baayinda bidi" (take a deep breath.. inhale from ur nose, exhale from ur mouth) command... Little did i know this ajja was the talkative sorts.. he started telling me about his cancer and how the doctors removed a part of his stomach n how his "tube" hole (oesophageal opening) has become small so he cant eat anything big n solid..... i "hmmm"ed him n continued... finally he was so frustrated he stopped me n said "Why r u makin me do these exercises??!!".. i said "see u're taking really small breaths, u need to take in more air so u can get well soon"... he looked at me like i'm some idiot n said "but i told u!!! my hole is small!! i cant take big things inside!"........ we looked at each other for about 10 seconds.. me trying to figure out what was his problem..... him, i dunno probably wondering which planet i was from.... I finally realized may be i knew what the whole misunderstanding was all about.

i sat down next to him n said "ajja there r 2 bags in your body.. one for ur food, one for ur air... 2 tubes carry those 2 things separately... ur food hole is small.. ur air hole is still big.. so breathe".... he looks at me like i told him Man was a Monkey (shudve tried that) or that the Earth wasn the centre of the universe... he looks at his chest which is pretty much only ribs n says "LOOK AT ME! im so small.. I HAVE 2 BAGS.. AND 2 TUBES!! where is there place for it to fit in here??" (i was so tempted to tell him he had 2 bags for air alone, but nah!) Anyway he believed me cos well i had the white coat on... so that was Biology class 1.

Next day i go meet him-treat him, we're best buddies by now... we go through the whole routine of exercises n chit-chat about which patient/nurse/doctor did what to which patient/nurse/doctor and when i was auscultating him post treatment he asks me "what do u hear through the stethoscope??"... i was flabbergasted hearing him use the word "stethoscope" and not "steth" as most doctors around say it... I tell him doctors use it to listen to the air you breathe in and ur heart beat..... he then asks me "why do u hold my wrist then??"... im tellin ya that ajja was so curious n smart if he had the opportunity he'd be a famous doctor today.... I say "to feel for ur heart beat (im not so good at the medical kannada terminology so i figured heart beat, pulse beat... whats the big difference)"....
His eyes got bigger than his face when he said the next few words...... "NOW U TELL ME I HAVE 2 HEARTS!! :O :O" :D :D :D well took me a while to explain the anatomy n physiology but he finally got it... :D

:( shucks.. i miss the hospital!

And then one day...

I could tell you i dreamt of a vulture eating a rat and interpreted it as my doom, or got a warning from Santa Claus that i was in his 'naughty' list too early in the year... But nope, none of it happened... I jus woke up one day n thought "hmm i feel lousy.. i need to save the planet or something"... Explains why when the college wanted help this Sunday (today) for a disability survey in this village called Udyavar , I volunteered.
Only after mine n a few other names were carved in stone did they tell us they needed us at the college by 7:30 AM on a SUNDAY in formals looking like its-not-a-sunday....."We're doing a good job, counting the number of disabled people in a village is much more productive than staying buried under your comfy quilt till after 10 dreaming n re-dreaming a dream just to avoid reality after a ridiculously hectic week.... WE ARE DOING GOOD" is what we told ourselves....
My conscience (the bitch is too loud! so much for 'tiny voice in your head') dragged me outta bed..Next thing i remember is me in the stationary bus, half my brain suffering a splitting headache while the other half was planning how best to kill the squeaky girl behind me who was conversing with an idiot who made her talk...
The bus started to move at 9 am, an hour later than scheduled... we reach the place, there was a small ceremony of lighting the lamp n a couple of people gave us speeches in Kannada nobody really understood followed by breakfast. We were split up n each one got an Anganwadi woman (local community workers) sent with them to make sure we dint get lost in the district.
Ours was one popular lady who wanted to get things done well and ASAP...So she'd take us to everybody, have a quick chit chat n get them to answer our questionnaire.. n if thr wasn anybody home she knew everything abt them so it dint matter :)...
Something we all noticed was, every house had a dog..EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM no matter how tiny or big the house was... n not those cute coochy moochy poochy pomeranians or somethin, the proper hatta-khatta desi kuttas whose bark will connect ones ear to their urinary bladder... Lucky for my mates, im one helluva charmer so i was cooooooooooooooool with them around 8) :P. Everytime we got lost in the jungle we'd follow the sound of a bark somewhr far far away to get us back to civilisation.
By noon we had knocked on doors of about 100 homes n were so exhausted, i was gonna have a heat stroke i think. Anyway the next house we went to this old lady invited us in n we politely refused as we had many more places to go to n couldn afford spending time in peoples homes. She offered to get us something to drink n i was imagining a big glass of iced tea with a slice of lemon dangling frm the brim, shining like amber as sun rays passed through it (hey i was dehydrated so excuse the hallucinations will ya :P )... or even a simple glass of cold water...THEN the nice lady came out with a big glass of hot milk fresh from the udders of their cow... she actually said that with a glow on her face that would make my "sun-rays-thru-amber-like iced tea glass look like a chunk of coal"... now how could one refuse something like that even though one has never ever had hot milk without sugar (or boost..secret of my energy), and one couldn stop thinking abt the 'fresh from the cows udders' fact that made ones intestinal bacteria ill.. ALAS what one mother whos known her daughter for 21 years couldn accomplish, a simple village lady did in a matter of 15 minutes! :O..
Moving on...We were energised by the wholesome milk we said our goodbyes n continued our journey across Udyavar... now i know Kannada and so does the Community worker but somehow while conversing with me she'd forget that fact every 15 mins (i've recently been Ghajini'fied, if it were Goa i'd have advised her tatooing...) n start conversing with me in broken english, hindi or very slowly yet loudly spoken Kannada...
We were walking throught fields n this woman kept telling us to watch out for the "kaantes" ('thorns' in hindi) so we were keeping our eyes on the ground... After a while she started gettin really panicky about the whole thorns thing, i wanted to tell her to relax n that we were brave babes who can kick the thorns' ass MATRIX style.. so i look up to tell her that n there i see her resting her right elbow on her left palm, forearms pointing to the sky n cupped palm waving at me while she continued her "kaante" chant n then, like a tequila shot it hit my brain.... IT WASN THE THORNS SHE WAS WORRIED ABOUT... THE FIELD HAD SNAKES THAT WOULD "KAANTE" (also 'bite' in hindi) US IF WE DINT GET OURSELVES OUTTA THERE! Boy Oh Boy! that was such a filmy scene i assure you.. the rush of information, the camera closes in on my face emphasizing my pupil dialation, sudden pull back of the camera and there we were standing right in the middle of the 4 fields surrounded by god alone knows how many snakes...
If it were an animated movie somewhere there would be a handsome topless man, strangely hairless, with perfect abs, toned pects swinging on coconut tree leaves (we're in south india so lets not get ahead of ourselves) yelling from the bottom of his throat that would make the birds fly away, and he'd be coming for us damsels in distress (okay i think im dehydrated right now hehe)... But none of it was gonna happen so we took the longest strides n got to safety.

Finally at about 1:30 pm we were done with 170 homes we were allotted n finally got on to local buses that took us back to Manipal, and in the next hour we were in an air conditioned cafe waiting for our fish n chips to arrive.

Even though we had to go through it all on a Sunday instead of lazing at home or hitting the beach... this was one Sunday that will stay in my memory like a laminated picture and always make me smile and my intestinal bacteria squirm...

woof..... poof!

After a month of studying English and Math for my gre (which i couldn't give thanks to the passport office jerks) and the long awaited marriage marathon in Mumbai (which by the way absolutely rocked)... i'm back in the tiny town of Manipal, only this time my 3 crazy ass roomys are back home celebrating Christmas n all set to enter the New Year while I'm hanging onto my seat in the bus (read roller-coaster) to Karkala (a village in the Udupi district) which welcomes me with the cacophony of new borns n their clueless mothers who are almost always younger than me (scary)...

Now something about me one must know, I'm one of those people who hates not having someone to talk to... and since right now, at this very moment, my buddy from Bangalore who kept me company almost the whole day is and NEEDS TO study & AXN is taking too many breaks between Fast n the Furious, I've decided to talk to ya'll........... so listen up people....Today i'm gonna tell you the story about how I lived my life back when I'd just moved to Bangalore......

YEAR: 1990-something.......

STORY SO FAR: We had just moved to Bangalore from Mumbai n i had this funky picture in my head of the new city.... But in a couple of days i realised I hated Bangalore.... the city shut down at 8 (not anymore though).... it did not have beaches....i had no friends to keep me company at home, the youngest resident in our apartment was diagnosed of osteoporosis... i had no idea why my school teacher kept yelling at me for not understanding Kannada in Kannada...... i din't give a shit about Vin Diesel, Paul Walker or fast cars.............. so basically i was 8 and i was in hell.

thats when came Maximus and Grace when i needed them the most, they were my imaginary friends (yeah i knew they were imaginary all along) and i still truthfully do not remember how they entered my life, one fine day they were there and i was glad they were :)

They were dogs.. Golden retrievers... they had the silkiest fur n loudest bark n were the coolest dogs on the face of this earth, i assure u.. :)

Now i know most of you may think i'm a cuckoo-case but i wasn't.. i was just plain lonely and desperate... and as a nine year old (i think its around that time they came) this was what kept me from completely losing my sanity... Nobody knew they existed... In fact this is the first time i'm actually telling somebody about them... not because they embarrassed me but because i didn't want people n kids laugh at me... My brother had an imaginary friend too n i've seen adults joke about it, and i know they didn't mean any harm but i didn't want them doing it to mine... simple.

Anyway Max came first (only i was allowed to call him Max... cos he was MY dog 8) ) and then came Grace because Max would get lonely when i was at school... They were trained, never needed a leash n followed me around almost everywhere i went... they grew with me i think because no matter how tall i grew i could always feel their furry head n wet noses at my fingertips :)

i remember once my mum asked me why i was walking around the house aimlessly and i didn't know what to tell her (she'd freak if i said 'relax just taking the dogs for a walk :D'), i ended up saying "i'm thinking".... she rolled her eyes n claimed i came up with the weirdest excuses for not wanting to sit quietly and she got back to cooking :)

For all those wondering if they're still around.. no they aren't... Max got hit by a car and bled to death... me and Grace buried him in a park... it broke our hearts...... Grace, well, she died as well in a few weeks, i don't really remember how that happened, one morning she was gone... i grew up and my brain killed her...

At times like this when i'm all alone, i remember the 3 of us together...
i miss them... so much.

"Walk away...if you want to...
Its okay... if you need to...
You can run, but you can never hide...
From the shadow thats creeping up beside you...

And theres a magic running through your soul...
But you can't have it all...

Whatever you do... I'll be two steps behind you...
Wherever you go... I'll be there to remind you...
That it only takes a minute of your precious time,
to turn around... I'll be two steps behind..."

- Def Leppard

...yeah sometimes my life does have a theme song...

My Very Enthusiastic Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets!

-------- MAGNIFICENT SEQUEL TO "priyankaissoawesomeeverybodyworshipsher is a word"--------

This was the very first mnemonic i learnt, to those of you who haven't heard of it, this ones to remember the arrangement of the Nine planets in our Solar system (closest to the sun n outwards).
Now that i am in the era of big scary words n information i need to remember or else somebody dies (everytime a prof said it in class, i'd hear one of the Disney's wicked witches laugh....brrrr) Anyway since im in the medical field ill let u in on how we remember our stuff.... Mind you most of them are textbook, Some may seem highly perverted but well 'happy realisation people' that apparently whats been working over the years! :)

P.S: For the weak hearted, can-be-scandalized lot, Don't judge the medical guys alright, we need to make up stuff like this for the amount n the precision with which we need to remember it all :)


My first few classes of Anatomy were dreadful.. one PG would walk in holding a tiny bone and he'd point out to tiny lines n ridges n holes on the bone which some evil genius actually named.... i still remember the 3rd class on 'Humerus' was anything but HUMOUROUS, cos we'd reached our frustration thresholds by then n were almost on the verge of pulling our hair out.....
Thats when we decided to make up stuff (if there wasn already one) that helped us remember those irregularities and the other big words that'd come our way then on...

Suprascapular notch............Superman's Torch

Subscapular Ridge......... Subrahmaniam's Fridge

Anastomosis........... An ass and two more tits (used to be dicks.. but then tits sounded better)

Triamcinolone....... Try Amy, sin alone

Amantidine...... A man to dine

Tranylcypromine...... try Neil see Praveen (kinda disgusting cos we had a neil and a praveen in class.. both of which we dint 'try'...... by WE i mean my immediate circle of friends)

Floxacycline..... Fucks her cycling. (obv the guys in class came up with it...humph men!)

Axillary artery branches (Sup thoracic, Thoraco-acr, Lat th, sub scap, Ant circumflex hum, Post C H)................ Screw The Lawyer Save A Patient.

Throacic duct btw Azygous n esophagous.......... A duck btw 2 gooses.

Teres Major, Latissimus Dorsi, Pectoralis Major (thats how they're attached the arm bone)........ Lady btw Two Majors.

Gracilis between Semitendinosus and Semimembranosus........... Girl btw two Surgeons

Brachial Plexus branches (lat to med) "Musculocutaneous, Axillary, Radial, Median, Ulnar nerves"........... My Aunt Raped My Uncle.

Penis Autonomic innervation action............. Parasympathetic points it up, Sympathetic spurts it out.

Spermatic Cord contents (Pampiniform plexus, ductus deferens, cremasteric artery....ok do u really wanna knw it all?)............ Piles Don't Contribute To A Good Sex Life.

Kreb's cycle components (Citrate, Isocitrate, alphaKetoglutarate, Succinate co-a, Succinate, Fumarate, Malate, Oxaloacetate)............ Can I Keep Selling Sex For Money, Officer? (saved me in first yr... i hated biochemistry)

Impalpable Apex Beat (differential diagnosis).......... DOPE (dextrocardia, obesity, pericarditis/pneumothorax, emphysema, scoliosis/ sinus inversus)

Heart Attack therapy............. "O BATMAN!!!" (oxygen, beta blocker, ASA, thrombolitics, morphine, ACE inhib, Nitrocycline)

Venturi Mask colours n their corresponding Oxygen delivery capacity:
blue (24%), white(28%), orange(31%), yellow(35%), red(40%), green(60%)
.................Boys Want Only Young Rowdy Girls (was my final university Viva question... :D)

Placenta crossing diseases (TOxoplasma, Rubella, CMV, Herpes simple/zoster/HepB,C,E; Syphillis)............TORCHeS...

Cerebellar deep nuclei (dentate, emboliform, globose, fastigial)............ Do Eat Good Food.

the 12 cranial nerves (olfactory, optic, occulomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, Vestibulo-cochlear, glossoph, vagus, sp.Accessory, hypoglossal)............... "Oooh OOooh ooh To Touch And Feel Virgin Girl's Vagina and Hymen" ..................[personally i think this is disgusting but we all needed this to remember the blasted nerves :(]

Crutch Training (walking on stairs, which leg to put first)........... Good to heaven (ascending) and Bad to Hell (descending).

Carpal bones (lat to med...Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetrum, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Capitate, Hammate).......... She Looks Too Pretty Try To Catch Her.... ofcourse some of us prefer "Scared Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle" :D

Ok now these two very important:
What to do when one faints............. "If face is red lift the head, if face is pale lift the tail"


Stroke symptom recognition (self check...very imp...remember).... FAST

F -> Face (uneven smile, droop, vision)
A-> Arms n legs (heaviness***, numbness...esp if its on one side of the body only)
S-> Speech (slurred, inability to talk.. tongue feels heavy)
T-> Time (RUSH TO THE HOSPITAL!)


Ok alright..Phew! that was like 4 years of my life in one post..... ofcourse there r many more, most i can only recollect the mnemonics now not the stuff inside :P (Hey anybody know what JHANDU BAM stands for??? its gotten something to do with Failure of wound healing i think..)

'priyankaissoawesomeeverybodyworshipsher' IS a word!

I semi-hated being a kid.... and i'm talking about the parts where i felt the rest of the world was so much cooler than me......
Like when me n my brother would study together i'd listen to him use words like "catalyst" and "molecule" (i knew it meant something small cos when we'd fight about me being small and id tell him he was smaller cos i dint have a comeback he'd say 'you're molecule small' followed by 'you're atom small') while all i got was sad words like "hand" and "soil" and when i was lucky "independance"....
i tried being as "smart" as he was by evesdropping, like at the age of 4 i knew some guy,Alexander, invented the telephone, i also thought (and was so damn sure) that they called him 'Alexander the Great' cos he not only conquered the world but also had time to invent telephones (at the age of 7 i learnt they were 2 very different people... i felt like my whole life was a big lie :P)

Anyway one day during a particular science class on plants and the environment i felt like i was finally there..... the word 'OXYGEN' came into my world, i was thinkin (woooooooooooooooow :O... this one not only has a Y but also an X!!! sounds funky too), i had barely finished enjoying that thought 'CARBON-DI-OXIDE' clawed its way in ("Hyphens........a word so big it needs HYPHENS!!!! i think i jus got shot n went straight to heaven").... then came "PHOTOSYNTHESIS"...

By the time we reached "CARBON-MONO-OXIDE" I was high....

Ofcourse then on the hits kept coming n i began to wish my "hand"-and-"soil"-days would return :(

Now i live with words like "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis ".

THE PULLEY

When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse:
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

----- George Herbert.

I've always loved this poem, ever since my English teacher spent one afternoon telling us about it (even though it wasn in our textbooks... State board you see, lame English books... it shows)

Why am i even talking about this work of art now??

Im not a strong believer in God as a super-natural being who'l smite us if we don't kiss his perfect ass, neither am i an Atheist who doesn give a damn about my actions n conscience... I have a whole different perspective when it comes to Religion n God which i'll tell you about in another post probably...

But right now, at this very moment, ten days before my GRE... i do feel That Restlessness... N i knw the Big guy is one Sadist who'l never pour the 'Rest' on me so im jus gonna whine about it to you...
(see that Mr.God? yeah thats what i called ya.. a SADIST :P :)..............., before u put on your boxing gloves consider the fact that i also gave you a "perfect ass"... For the record: im only sucking up to you cos i have an exam coming up... nothing more nothing less)

following material is whole-ly Non vegetarian... Reader discretion is advised.

This post is dedicated to all my vegetarian buddies who cringe at my meal (which is very rude btw). Sorry to disappoint ya'll :P but thats what this post is all about.. me being a non vegetarian (the picture will make sense in time.. you'l see)... cos thats how i was born n brought up... and thats how i live with myself... 8)

Ok relax im not some carnivore who kills every object with a heartbeat or needs meat on the table every meal of the day... But I'm never (as of today atleast) turning vegetarian for i know for a fact eventually after about a couple of months (im optimistic) i will crave for a juicy KFC burger or sizzling fried fish and since i'm a foodie i assure you i WILL get my hands on it by hook or by cook :P ... so why bother converting? :)

Besides whoever says Vegetarianism is what Mr.God wanted us all to practice, huh?? Moses did not say "LET MY CHICKENS GO!!" now did he?
You know what i think (you've read this far so obviously u do wanna know)... i think God said "Alrighty then Mankind... heres what u fellas gotta do.. see those hairy things running around all over the place (pointing at the lions)... u gotta find a way to chase them n feed yourselves".... (what? its a food chain maaaaaan: grass -> deer -> lion -> man -> grass... The Circle of Life... see i'm fair, i blame us non-veggies too for choosing cluck-cluck over ROAR)

Now Man-not-so-kind tried it... theres proof, all those cavemen drawings...finally man gave up, cos well he had technical difficulties, n fed on the colourful fruits dangling on the branches.... now thats exactly how it happened...


Adam pissed Mr.God off by munching on the Apple, had he jus eaten the Snake you think Mr.God would've bothered??!?! (ever wondered why Adam eating the apple is called the 'Original Sin' :P)..... i rest my case.

Moral Of the story: Relax its not "Hard work good..lazy bad".. I'm not THAT person.

ok lets go again, Moral of the story: next time u're dining with a non-vegetarian, don't make him feel like a sinner cos u never know whos in the wrong lane... :P