mbbs

The Final Countdown

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It’s raining today, a very grey world. And damp. Even though it’s bleak, shy patches of colour peek out. Purple flowers in my front yard. Pink and yellow flowers in the yard around the corner that I picked by L’s request yesterday. She’s been pressing them for two days under all four phone books in the house in preparation for a Fancy Manicure. Against my will, I will also be getting a Fancy Manicure.

There’s so much anxiety in the air, I can hardly make words. It’s like reaching the bottom of the slide at Margaritaville where you’re going so fast you can’t even take the deep breath you need for the plunge into salt water.

Breathe.

I don’t know what to tell you. My thoughts are scattered and dwindling, like the days until MBBS, like potholes on Kingston roads, like Riverton smoke some weeks ago.

There is news: local news, national news, international news. Heads of State visiting, vendor shacks being demolished, students massacred in Kenya. And there is life. Trips to Sovereign, fancy dress parties, clerkship exams and MBBS. I’m always struggling with how to reconcile external events with my internal life. How to hold on to emotional impact and evoke social and political feeling while still trying to find the perfect shoes. I digress, but I really wish I could find the perfect shoes.

It seems life is all about balancing nuances. I love nuances, but I’m terrible at eliciting them or acknowledging them or even realizing them most of the time. And even though the world is a million shades of grey today, and I like that, I spend most of my time imagining things as black or white, this or that, me or you.

Maybe because my life has boiled down to right and wrong answers. Even the calendar has been corrupted. For me May means sink or swim, June means pass or fail and July? July means life or death. Mine, and the patients’.

Back to the House of God: some short reflections

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1.

Final exams loom, a distressingly diminishing number of days away. Calendars are the enemy now and every sunset inspires a mixture of awe and resentment. Days and weeks and months are finite, fickle creatures.

2.

I reread Samuel Shem’s cynical exposé on medical training in North America because I needed to remind myself what I was working toward in the weeks after exams. House of God isn’t a particularly encouraging novel, but throughout the story hope rises like the Wing of Zock: unstoppable and overpowering.

3.

In this season of fasting (not Lent) I will have to give up so many of my vices: novels, writing, the internet, sleep. Oh, sleep, I will miss you. A fourth year student asked me what I would do come June 3 when the last of my exams are over.

“I’d run naked,” she suggested. Oblivious to our incredulity, she continued. “As I walk out of the exam, I’d be unhooking my bra, pulling down the straps.” She trailed off in slow-motion speech, lost in a fantastical daydream.

I intend to sleep the sleep of the guilt-free. It’s been so long since I had guilt-free sleep, I’m probably going to get an ulcer. Just one time I would like to put my head on a pillow and not have the voice in my head (which sounds uncannily like one of my friends) demand that I cease this nonsense and get on with studying.

4.

This morning while waiting on the bus that shuttles us to the hospital, I stared across the expanse of sea and horizon, thinking.

I feel like I’m being wound-up, I wrote in my journal, like an old-fashioned wrist watch. Will I fall apart when the time comes, or spring smoothly into action like some well-oiled gears?

Do any of us know how we will perform when we need to? I think everyone feels some tension at this point, regardless of ambition. Even those of us who are certain of passing (there are always some) are still anxious about graduating with honours or distinctions.

There’s so much at stake, so much at risk. I calm myself by remembering that this too shall pass.

*

P. S.

Thursdays have sort of turned into book sharing time, so I’m sorry if this wasn’t what you expected. But! If you read this far, know that I have been reading way more fiction than I should, and if you want a recommendation Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning is absolute soul-disturbing perfection and you should go read it now (Also, he and Amanda are pregnant so yay).

It’s so rare that I recommend a newly published book – am I doing it right?

{21} Doctors sing and dance, too.

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The medical class at the University of the West Indies puts on an annual fundraisng theatrical production called Smoker. I’ve never been to one, but from what I hear the response is par for the course with theatre: kind of a big deal for some, negligible for others. As for me, it’s theatre: there’s no way this production could pass me by.

Of course, that’s not so easy with me stuck all the way on the second campus while all of the action is going on on the main. Despite the distance, I managed to get elected on the Smoker Committee – as Script Editorial Chair! Communicating/coordinating with the main campus is a pain at best, but now that they’ve gone and split my post between myself and the runner up, I’m given to wonder if they won’t start to bypass my input altogether. Which would suck. A lot. Especially as I’m determined to contribute in some (major) way to this thing.

So for the time being I’m just waiting. Our production won’t happen for another year or so, since the class ahead of us has just had their weekend. I’m all geared up for it, and so impatient to start planning, but everyone around me is kind of lukewarm about the whole thing. I’m being generous. The atmosphere is more like that chilly feeling you get when you dip your toe into an unheated pool. My campus has been really supportive of me, so I won’t complain. And I’m not sure the main campus is any more. . . enthused than we are. I guess it’s up to the committee to inspire the fervour. I just hope they don’t look at me; I’ve got about as much fervour as one of the cadavers downstairs. And about as much chance of sharing it.

I’ll just sit tight with my red pen and wait to do what I do best. Hopefully the ink won’t dry out before I’m called to duty.

Pax.