Autonomic dysfunction!

14/01/2012, Manipal.

Yesterday’s night was one of the most dreadful nightmares of my life. 3 weeks ago when the grand finale was finally about to commence I wished for just a few things. One, I should not fall sick or meet with accidents, both in and out of hell. Two; Nobody I know (or don’t know too, if possible) should fall sick (and need me). Three; Let me be a machine and just pass this phase.

2 days ago as I was walking up and down the corridor trying to master the science of Carpentry in the given day, I suddenly felt a strong surge from the inside. This surge was no enthusiasm or the spirits or the usual episodes of exacerbated palpitations that have been in last 3 months and in not less than 2 minutes, I was staring into the washbasin, vomiting out everything I ate since morning. I never vomited even the times I got drunk and wondered if it was food poisoning or the force-fed excessive knowledge to the brain in the last few months.

I continued to roam around the house to keep myself just enough distracted with a book in my hand but ran to the basin every 20 minutes. I ate nothing so I guess I had to vomit ‘just water’. The nightmare of unknown origin [MUO] healed magically by that mid-night. Love from the housemate and the neighbors fastened the cure. The next day, after a satisfying theory exam I came home and convinced myself to take a short nap to freshen up and start preparation for the 5 specialty Surgery paper-2 subjects for the next day morning. The aim of revision was to basically turn the pages without reading much but the latest I got a look at those pages was 2 weeks before, since I began with Surgery paper 1 and Medicine followed since. As great God would have it, my landlord aunty happened to take her first dose of Tramadol for her usual backache and suddenly felt dizzy and I had to respond. They were very sorry for the disturbance but I wouldn’t pass it either, at least not after they fed me with easy digestible Idlis before I left for exam today as I was on an empty stomach since yesterday morning.  It was not only a social responsibility but also the word that 2 to-be-docs live upstairs and none of them around when the need arose; at the least to call it an emergency and to respond to the moment. I thought of it more of a moral responsibility that presents itself with greater complications than answering on the blank papers and scoring marks. That night, running through the incessant names of surgeons and their surgeries and distances from the anal verge, I found myself at the verge. I was lost and then like always began to worry about nothing. I finished, closed and then the next day filled the 16page booklet served to me. The paper was easy, so simple that our immediate seniors who had to face the brunt of the previous year paper and sat to write the exam again with us were seen literally jumping with joy and hitting their chests and fists against each other as the bell rang and I only thought to myself that I survived this- a nightmare.

I have always believed that the body finds wonderful means to cope up with anything presented to it. During our classes and clinics, I was amazed to see how an infant adopts a squat to tolerate a cyanotic spell, how a man with a varicocele walked into the OPD wearing 2 undergarments to alleviate the dragging pain (though the increased temperature due to the double wear might exacerbate a lil’ bit). Stress too precipitates something of a similar response making our body go nuts and finding ways to ‘let go’, both through voluntary (movies and addictions) means and involuntary (autonomic dysfunction) means.

A friend of mine said over stress manifests in him as allergy/ hypersensitivity reaction. Another friend said he and his roommate had to be on Proton pump inhibitors for their gastritis. Mine usually being insomnia and a lil’ worry, this time was accompanied by a few episodes of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, not to forget palpitations, pale stools (steatorrhoea) and high colored urine that resolved spontaneously with the last exam giving me no chance to see which one of my differentials were correct! 

WHAT’S YOURS?