The home stretch…
The list is out. The schedule is finalised –the date, the
time, the examiners.
I’m about 90% fear and 10% loathing.
I don’t know if exams get worse as you get older, because
you are older or because they become more significant and so weigh a little bit
heavier than they did when you were at school. Even in my last year of medical
school I don’t remember feeling the pressure quite this bad.
I do know that the first round, a little over 6 weeks ago, was
a very unpleasant experience. I also know that for all intensive purposes, the
anonymity of the written papers was probably far less nerve wrecking than the
potential train wreck that a face-to-face-up-close-and-personal clinical
afternoon poses. This is what drives the fear. The rest of this post explains the loathing.
The preceding weeks before the written papers were like sharing
my body with a mad person – a fully blown, off her rocker, bat-shit crazy
lunatic. Trapped with this person inside the four walls of my little house;
surrounded by mountains of past papers and journals and coffee cups in various
stages of decomposition; the only connection to the outside world being the
sunny, smiley, love-my-life-it’s-awesome social media selfies of people who
made better life choices.
The first thing I lost was the ability to sleep – which is
great in the one sense because you stop falling asleep on the couch after
supper as adrenaline keeps your brain in 5th gear after spending 8 –
10 hours on your feet at work. The downside is that when you’re on your feet
for 8 – 10 hours every day and then trying to understand the latest PMTCT*
guidelines or the difference between Schwachman Diamond syndrome and Diamond
Blackfan syndrome, you generally need more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep.
Mental Health red flag #1.
The second thing to go was my appetite (something that I’ve
only lost once before due to pure terror in my 6th year orthopaedics
rotation), and with that any incentive at all to produce healthy meals for
yourself. It is very much a first world problem that Woolworths ready made
meals can eventually become quite nauseating (although I suspect they are not
as healthy as their attractive packaging would lead you to believe
anyway). And so I found myself living on
a diet of Pronutro (which the box claims, contains all the nutrients and minerals
of a 3 course breakfast in 1 serving), Steristumpies and the occasional charity
meal of a friend.
Mental Health Red Flag #2.
And in between all of this I had to stop seeing people. My
only human interactions were with people at work, and the sushi delivery guy.
There were ‘strong arm’ and ‘thumbs up’ emogi sentiments.
My parents called – that’s what parents do.
But I mostly spent hours by myself, pep talking myself into
one more chapter, one more article. When
I did venture out, for walks or church or ‘Four-and-twenty’ coffee, I felt
strangely detached from everyone around me, as if the world wasn’t even really
aware that I was there. My only contribution to conversation would involve
immunization schedules and seizure syndromes in infancy – because that’s exactly
what people at church want to talk about after their awesome weekends mountain
climbing, beaching and wine farming. I was a complete hit.
Mental Health Red Flag #3.
I become a shadow of myself – a very knowledgeable shadow,
capable of naming obscure x-linked dominant genetic conditions and the
differential diagnosis of an isolated splenomegaly. But the substance of me was
replaced with some wispy, fidgety, teary, self conscious, self-doubting,
adrenaline-wired zombie.
And then, the day after – I found myself catapulted back
into the sunshine, and the universe was shouting that finally everything is
back to normal.
It wasn’t really though.
The world actually seemed strangely empty. My mind that had
been a hive of worry and acronyms was a cavern of quiet. My phone was
quiet. I had hours of nothing to fill,
lists of people I’d been neglecting. Yet as the dust settled I found life had
gone on without me. I was a wallflower watching everyone dance, not sure how to
have a conversation about something other than what had completely consumed me
for a good 3 months. I didn’t really know how to start reintegrating into this #squadgoal
society.
I almost wanted to have an exam to study for again – at
least I knew how to do that.
THAT’S CRAZY!
The whole thing is crazy!
Why did I sign up for this again?
Like I said, 90% fear and 10% loathing.
