The Chronicles of Hernia, Week 2

After enduring an entire first week of pep talks by clinical school bigwigs who spend more time posing for newspaper pictures than actually spending time with students and whom we'll probably never see again until Graduation Day, I stepped into Stalingrad General Hospital on my first day full of admonitions to "make it a positive experience" and "clinical school is what you make it" and "think positive!" (and also "for God's sake, don't accept a verbal caution from the police when you get caught piss drunk at the local pub", but that's slightly beside the point. -Ed.) So like a good little boy who's read The Secret twice cover to cover without falling asleep/clawing my eyes out/having to buy the movie instead, I gird my loins, tell myself it's gonna be an abso-friggin-lutely amazing day, and step into the hospital.

My ward is on the 9th floor. I have 15 minutes to make it upstairs. Plenty of time, right? Right. Until I see that the one lift that isn't hovering resolutely near the top floor is out of service. And just to rub it into our faces, it's even got a special icon to tell us poor sods that it's on a coffee break:


Har har. We have a comic genius on the maintenance staff! I scoot over to the stairs and leg it up 9 flights of stairs, stopping only twice to have a minor heart attack. When I finally arrive half-dead on the 9th floor but fearful of Komrade Professor's wrath, I meekly enter the teaching room but lo and behold! Komrade Professor isn't there. He's been called away on urgent business, probably to give the Queen her annual physical or check out this new wart on President Obama's finger or whatever. So us peons do some practice physical examinations, then I go out to get a drink. Returning to the room, sure to find my fellow students eager to proceed in productive horizon-widening learning, I see instead scrawled on my notes:

I'm sure they had something urgent to attend to. How nice of them to leave me a note! Ah well, I can get on with things myself. It's not like they were being mean and scribbling all over my notes or anything! Walking to the ward, I turn over to my patient list and see:

Yes, that DOES say what you think it says.
("I want Angry to come and examine me...mmmm...")

Oh, I am feeling SO positive right now.