five lessons you learn in hell week.

Hell hath no fury than a week’s worth of exams scorned.

Several weeks prior, the whole of Class 2011 was already kept on a tightrope. When you consider the prospect of four final exams, a grand practical exam, and an all out, year-ender comprehensive exam zeroing in on you faster than the speed of sound, it wasn’t uplifting in the remotest sense. There were bouts and relapses of insomnia, nausea, anorexia, amnesia – even mild paroxysms of seizure-like attacks. It was doubly hard for me as I would be coming from Community Medicine – a rotation notorious for late dismissals, stacks of paper requirements, and pockets reduced to bareness from paying a daily sequence of tricycle fares, jeep rides, and LRT passes. It didn’t help, too, that the weekend prior was my brother’s high school graduation, which meant having to traverse the 280 miles bridging school and home, by hook or by crook. Time ever fleeting, I soon found myself back in Manila Sunday afternoon, frantic and in panic, eager to stuff whatever I can into my stressed mentation, equally frustrated at having to miss the very successful congratulatory bash Sunday night. 

Hell week came, hell week went, and now only the calm remained. In true Mitch Albom fashion, here are the five best lessons I learned from my trip to hell and back:

1. Some things in life aren’t worth missing.

A sibling gets to graduate from high school only once in his lifetime. In contrast, you get to take piles and piles of exams as a medical student, as a resident, and even as a consultant. I was reassured time and again: “You went home for a good reason.” Even if it meant not having enough time which resulted to my first ever truly difficult Neurology exam and not knowing whether I did enough to merit a passing score (I soon found out it was a general class sentiment, but no less distressing for someone who got away with 1.0 in LU 3 and 1.25 plus topping all three exams in LU 4…and LU 5?) I guess there has to be a first time for everything. But this I can readily say: I gave my best, studied what I can, and as for going home – definitely no regrets. There will be blogging evidence for the latter.

2. Never say die.

Alternatively, the euphemism is “Faith moves mountains.” In dire times like this, there’s only forward to go and no turning back. I initially felt like one of the 300 stuck at Thermopylae with no hope of conquering the massive Persian army, but gradually gathered enough nerve to become like Caesar in one of his conquests, ill-equipped but still possessing the gall to declare that “the die is cast”. But I had the one thing they both lack: faith to keep me company. Barely flipping through Pharmacology as my brother’s batchmates received their diplomas, the light of divine providence shone through when I found myself uncannily topping the finals with a good score, and a good number of points ahead! God works wonders in His own time, indeed.  

3. Making a mistake doesn’t mean you don’t know.

If you forgot to mention the mobility of a breast mass, ergo you didn’t know whether it’s mobile or fixed? If you casually stated without so much as a second thought that “Hepatitis B is a live attenuated vaccine”, ergo you have no idea that it’s actually an inactivated vaccine? (Seems kinda obvious that I’m enumerating my own silly blunders, hehe) The crazy individuals that we are, our brains sometimes overshoot their usual workings and go haywire without any apparent reason, making it illegal for someone to label you downright ignorant with a single encounter. Through the years, I have discovered something else about the “art” of making mistakes: I learn better from them. Heck, I can even remember some of the ones I made way back in high school.

4. A little sleep lost won’t hurt.

Hell week drastically slashed my sleeping time from the usual 7-8 hours to a ghastly 4-4.5 hours. Consecutive nights of sleeping at 2-2:30 am physically pushed me to nocturnal limits with trying to combat grogginess and concentrate on the emergent task at the same time. Of course, the worst part was waking up in the mornings with über gritty eyes and an altered consciousness, floating somewhere in pseudo-reality (This made me see the potential wonders of coffee in a different light.) With my sleep record utterly shattered, perhaps I can now say I had been a “real” med student, with suitably-sized eyebags for ample proof. Now I know there’s hope in surviving clerkship without a mydriatic.

5. All storms blow over.

That’s why Hell Week is a misnomer; I actually think “Purgatory Week” is the more appropriate term. Unlike hell which dooms you to eternity, “purgatory” week somehow thrusts you into the fire with the promise of heaven after a taste of hell. The sickening hype of terror and anxiety builds up in an exaggerated manner as the apocryphal event approaches like an impending typhoon, only to have everything go back just as before in its wake. How did it go? Some classmates attested that “it wasn’t so bad.” The dreaded quadruple finals series “purged” our knowledge on their respective fields; the leviathan OSCE refreshed our PE skills; and even the ultimate comprehensive exam provided a bit of last-minute enlightenment. Yes, purgatory exists for a purpose.

On a wider scale, such a week may have only served as a timely primer to the bigger, more fearsome world of clerkship – with its own unique collection of tragic horror stories. However, it also taught us to be more confident of ourselves and to believe in our capabilities. The devil may wear Prada, but he definitely doesn’t wear a sablay.