Sunday, July 29, 2007

Saturate My Saturday

"Requesting help from Chinese guys and girls for four volunteers. Dr. Manjunath needs your help. He wants your presence tomorrow at Room 5 at 2.00 to 2.30 pm at the dental clinic."

Inn Shan, in a mass-sent SMS


I woke up this morning at about 10.30 am to the din of my dastardly doorbell, which had conspired with forces unbridled with a sense of propriety and the concept of privacy to ensure that my weekend sleeper-inner would not extend beyond midday. I can't remember when was the last time I truly lazed in bed beyond all natural hours - it must have been a Saturday so long ago that nothing remained of it but a pathetic whimper in the big photo album of happy memories. Two Saturdays ago, it was my birthday. Last Saturday, it was the despicable evil known as the Persistent Encyclopedia Salesman (who nearly had butt-sex with the rusty metal tip of my umbrella).

This morning, the Stone-for-Brains-of-the-Week were a couple of Indian blokes in white coats, sporting name-tags which proclaimed smugly that their bearers are students of the Kasturba College of Medicine, a sister college of my school. I was informed that they were distributing medicinal freebies; prophylactic drugs against filarial parasitic infections. 3 little pills. To be downed at one go. After meal.

As a kid, I was taught never to accept candies from strangers - and I obeyed like the model child I was. If I wouldn't take their candies, I sure as heck aren't going to start popping their pills.

But that wasn't the only reason;

pills
See anything wrong?

It struck me immediately that the centre pill is different from its other bunkmates. Upon closer scrutiny, it was obvious that the packet had been tampered with, and the two side ones have been switched. I looked up the inscription on the middle pill on the internet and found that NVBDCP stands for the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme - all apparently legal and aboveboard. Did someone stole the real stuff and replaced it with duds? Or with something more sinister?

Perhaps some people thought that they can make a bit of cash by stealing government-issued drugs intended for the protection of the rural populace from filarial worms. After all, why give a flying fuck about those poor uneducated peasants, right? Corrupted bastards.

I'm showing these pills to one of my Pharmacology lecturer on Monday to see what he or she make of it. If any of you reading this post right now received these same drugs, I advise you to refrain from eating them.

If you already did, you have my sympathy.



Moving on, regarding Inn Shan's SMS announcement;

torment
Ugh! Hwa' huh huck? Geh id owt! OHW! Tha hucking hhhurkh!

The lesson to be learnt here is: Never agree to what Inn Shan want you to do.

"This is going to be painless," MY ASS.

Torture
Leh meh goh!!!

Dr. Manjunath is a faculty member of the Forensic Medicine Department from the Kasturba College of Medicine (yeah, where those blokes who gave me the dud filarial meds came from) and he is doing some "very important" research on palate prints. Run your tongue along the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth. Can you feel the rough, ribbed surface there? That's your palate "rugae", as the good doctor call 'em. According to him, they are as individualistic as fingerprints.

He said that they would be of immense value in identifying char-grilled air-crash victims when we asked him about the practical implications of this research.

I hate to break it to the guy that dental records are already employed pretty successfully these days to the same end.

Torture Dungeon
Check out the huge hall decked with dentist chairs! I call it the Dungeon of Dental Horrors. Oh, that's Jun Man in the chair, by the way. On a good day, screams emanating from this establishment can be heard in the next town.

Anyway, my palate print was lifted by pressing a pink putty against the roof of my mouth with a steel, spade-shaped thing that the contours of my teeth and gum are suppose to fit into snugly. The orthodontist working on me must have inserted it off-centre into my mouth or something because the friggin' thing scraped my gum nastily on the right side and drew blood. Plus, she was pressing pretty hard on it, digging the metallic edge right into the cut. I thought I was going to fucking die.

Then, after a minute, she wiggled the metal watzisname, trying to loosen it before pulling it out. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. I wanted to scream my head off but I couldn't because - well - why don't you try screaming with a spade-shaped dental thingamajig full of pink stuff with the consistency of shit in your mouth?

palateplasticine
That's mine on the left.

I was test subject number 33, Chinese Male.

Lai Yin, Jun Han and Yin Yee also volunteered for this gig but the lucky trio were pronounced unsuitable in the end because they all wore braces. But they did stick around to watch Jun Man and I experience Death by Play-Doh.

Edit
Damn, I feel like I'm on fucking CSI!

The above picture is proof of the god-awful torment I experienced on the chair. See that exposed metal bit not covered with putty? That got me good. And if you look carefully enough, you can also see my blood.

Yes, blood. You heard me.

plasterdent
A plaster model crafted from the putty mold.

boxoplaster
A boxful of 'em.

yada
Dr. Manjunath giving us an impromptu lecture on palate prints. It was about as interesting as it sounded.

After I got home from the dental clinic, I immediately tossed a notebook and a tape recorder (which I borrowed from Ilyani) into my messenger bag and headed out again. This time, I got business to attend to at Sonia Clinic;

Sonia
Ooh, blue.

Remember that I mentioned in passing in my last post that I was intending to interview someone there?

Well, I finally did it! Stick around for my next update, okay? There's a lot of stuff I need to iron out before can I put it up.

Till then.



Recently rendered odontophobic,
k0k s3n w4i

14 comments:

nissy said...

Oh, I'm really and utterly sorry. It went smoothly for me. I'll buy you a candy. Haha..
Apparently, he needs more people. I'm dead. Haha..

pinksterz said...

when i first scrolled down your post, i thought you wrote on getting an orthodontia! lol.

now you know how it hurts to get a straight perfect set of teeth.

she looked happy because you took pic with her and she knew you were going to put it here.

i can't believe you managed to get shots when it comes to this kind of thing. haha.

Zzzyun said...

yaloh how u get pics wan? who so nice to take for u! hehe..

anyway, those who had braces surely went for this torture before. man, i really hated it when the dentist did that to me. that pink stuff really stinks. eww.

mg said...

yayaya!! now u know roughly how it feels like for those who went for orthodontic treatment. haha..

btw, u said ur's is on the right but it's written there '34 CM' i tot urs is '33 CM'?

niCk said...

the first thing i did after receiving the pills was to check out with my mentor if there's any prophylaxis freebies given around manipal since he is a pharmac lecturer.

he said yes. so i ate it.

don't come out from your room with a swollen scrotum due to filariasis ya!

haha!

nissy said...

i diden receive wan?
i dun wan to have swollen balls.

Anonymous said...

Perghh...no wonder people hate to pay a visit to dentist. That pink and green color thingy gives me is gross. Ewwwww!!

sXydeViL said...

all da best sinchan. he has been bugging my life since dunno god when. he found a replacement huh?

*evil cackles*

this is is gonna be endless. MORE MORE MORE! I will be greatfool, thankfool for your cooperation T.T hallelujah. hes a very nice person though. =)

and btw, i felt like vomiting when dat probational dr shoved those colgate-taste gummy thingy into my mouth. *YUCKS*

sXydeViL said...

p/s: please update lar yorrrr~!

Belle said...

regret coming here today....
uekk pain uek pain uek

Jen said...

i had to go through that shit twice when i got my braces done. i couldnt even gag!! i also started drooling a bit i think because the fella doing it decided to go take a really long coffee break while waiting for mine to set. ugh..

when they wiggled it to get the metal spade thingy out of my mouth, i thought my whole upper jaw was gonna go along for the ride.

till this day, i think it still wobbles a bit. hmm..

pinksterz said...

why make it big when it is only a bit of blood? it is only your gum la :P

Anonymous said...

i got the same pills too.

i immediately thought of bio terrorism. it went straight into the bin.

k0k s3n w4i said...

@innshan
I still haven't get my candy yet.

@pinksterz
I'm a dedicated blogger. I show my readers what happened. not like... *cough*... some bloggers.
I only just discovered that there were actual blood in the picture. and it hurt like hell, okay.

@zzzyun
The pink stuff they gave me tasted like toothpaste actually. I had Lai Yin take the pictures for me. She was there to watch the whole thing.

@michelleg
I can't tell my left from my right. gimme a break, lady. fixed it anyway. thanks
P.S. you're sharp - gonna make a great doctor someday.

@nick
I'm immune to mosquitoes, remember? plus, it'll take ages before my scrotum actually blows up. by then I'll be in Malaysia already.
and your pill packet weren't opened before. mine was.

@zen master
and I volunteered for it. Yeech.

@susu
the paste thing tasted okay what? but maybe, i just didn't realise it tasted bad because she was killing me with pain.
P.S. of all the Manipal bloggers, I'm probably the most regular updater okay. had a microb test. gimme a break.

@belle
First eggplants. Now dentists? LOL. there's more gross posts coming, y know. this is a medical student's blog after all.

@jen
The price of beauty is pain. I still have not got mine done (in spite of the fact that it's dirt cheap here in india).
think i'll steel up my balls this hols and go for it.

@kitsze
Smart girl. Let's watch Nickson closely and see if he dies in the next few days.