OgoOluwa Ajiboso
400-level Medicine & Surgery
Olabisi Onabanjo University
The first time I read about bunions was when I was memorizing (a word I constantly use as a substitute for the less-pleasant ‘cramming’) all the clinical correlates of the lower limbs from the almighty Clinically-Oriented Anatomy by Kieth Moore (pronounced Kieth and not Kate. Hehe, I just had to😂😂😜).
I had gotten a few marks below 60 in my Upper Limb exams and I really wanted to hit that 80 so bad this time that I spent hours in the library, learning how the femur was like the humerus, except longer, larger and closer to the ground.
That afternoon in the histology lab, I revelled in my ability to recall every lower limb defect thrown at me—Bunions, Coxa Vara, Coxa Valga, you just name it. Opportunities to shine as a medical student were rare and sometimes only came in imaginations or even dreams. No, these efforts didn’t take me to 80 and I forgot all that knowledge two weeks after seeing my result. I was just two marks closer to my 80 than I was the previous time.
Was I heartbroken? Sort of. Maybe. I should have been. Being stuck between the moping faces of ‘You should even be happy you got above 50’ and ‘These people cannot even add one mark to take me to distinction’ didn’t leave me with so many choices of an emotion. But all that didn’t matter the day I saw my Abdomen, Pelvic and Perineum (We call it Abdomen P and P) result.
Back story: I had been aiming higher yet again—I’m not sure how high—and fell in love with the viscera. The stomach with its acid, the liver and all its attachments including the gall bladder and its bile, the pancreas looking like a gun and the entire idea of the spleen were all fascinating. I thought we had been told about all the organs in Biology, and S-P-L-EEEEE-N? Who names such a cute organ ‘Spleen’, and why was it so close to the ribs? So, yeah, I love me my organs. But I had 48 in the exam.
After checking the image that filled the flat screen of my phone more than five times, to be sure my corrective lens (for myopia) hadn’t ruined my eyesight, I froze. I could hear what Tobi was saying but my brain was not processing it. I could see the stationery table outside Glasshouse but my brain was not having that either. I had failed an exam I was soo sure I would score above 60 in. My temperature rose to feverish levels and tears flowed freely down my cheeks. Unlike before, where I would do all this in a toilet or wait to get home, I didn’t give a hoot who was watching. I wanted to punish the earth with my tears for letting this happen to me, to scream all the curse words I was trying not to say.
I wanted to time travel to 2015 and tell myself that my first university choice had been trying to save my life by offering me zoology instead. Or to 2009 when it was obvious I was in love with literature, and drag myself to art class while convincing myself that I could stomach the disgust that came with government and CRS; to tell myself that the pleasure I was getting from Physics and Chemistry would ultimately lead to my death. But it was too late. I was stuck with a course (and a life) that wanted to rob me of every joy I had managed to gather beforehand, from Dr. Otulana’s endless class given from a textbook with no name to choir rehearsals that were beginning to choke me.
Today, I lie in my bed, one month of being at home after a virus paused the world. I’m away from the depressing lectures and the constant struggle to make it early enough to class, temporarily free from the shackles of anatomy, and I still haven’t completed those first lecture notes on parasitology.
Maybe I am my own problem.
Click here to watch our YouTube video on why you shouldn’t study Medicine at the University.
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A blessed writer. I love the piece
Awesome piece Ogooluwa. Very skilled wordsmith 👍