Yes dear readers/family members/curiously fascinated medical students/general hangers on, a Mayhem pointed out, there has been a slight dearth of communication from our odd and slightly egg shaped partnership of late, however what can I say, attempting to swallow Kumar and Clarke (not some bizarre sexual act, but surely the largest, and most scary of our medical texts) with sufficient time to spare before turning up to our exams is, challenging shall we say.
With that in mind, a half digested copy of Kumar and Clarke was ruminated over for the last time this afternoon, following which we steeled ourselves, pretended we were knowledgeable and capable – and walked straight into the laughing jaws of a psych patient.
For those of your playing the home game – we, or should I say I (Mayham has his exam tomorrow) has the first part of ICE this afternoon and frankly it didn't go *quite* as well as I had hoped. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth - not coming from my steel set jaw - the only noise emanating from my direction was a gentle seething as I re-confirmed my vow to have as little to do with people who like to talk to green and pink, man sized, flower arranging parrots called Terrance as possible!
Yes my first case in the exam was Psychiatry - specifically a bi-polar patient having a manic episode, and I was completely unable to control her, she was utterly off the wall, and developed what can only be described as an unhealthy fascination with interior decoration which resulted in the selection for the colour yellow for the medical waste bin.... anyway, as a result of being completely overwhelmed by a barrage of chatter from the patient, I simply was unable to think of the correct way to phrase my questions (that said the amount of time I spent around Mayhem you’d think I would have been able to cope!). Still my mind was steamrollered sufficiently that I bungled the exam sufficiently that my hopes of being able to get by without having to take the second part of the exam have been fruitless. My second case, a patient with an atrial fibrillation was much better - a terrific history, excellent patient rapport, a couple of mind numbingly stupid mistakes on my part during the physical examination, however I’m almost certain of overall a pass for that station
The upshot of this is that I will now have to take the second part of the exam - essentially if you have a brain like a Cray super computer and you complete your first two patients perfectly, or more likely you are lucky enough to simply get cases that you just "know", then the medical school gives you a waiver for the second part of the exam, and then the rest of us, normally ~ 30-40% of the year get to have another go at Patient Lucky Dip, but this time with three patients to unwrap rather than two - I'm desperately hoping that I won’t get another prize of a psych patient - either way time will tell come Thursday, but right now you’ll have to excuse me I need to clean some bile from the cover of my copy of Kumar and Clarke!
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