Fun-filled February

The most obvious highlight of this month, revision and exam aside, was the two weeks of hypnosis I had the pleasure doing. It was literally awesome and mindblowing. Compared to other people's module choices where they were dissecting up bits of arm or writing essays on blood vessels and diabetes, we on the other hand were hypnotising each other and being hypnotised by the teacher. We also learnt some wicked stuff on how to tell what people are thinking based on eye movements, and other cool human behaviour stuff. Successful hypnosis depends on the 'pre-induction' questions the practitioner asks the patient, and when enough is known about their personality and methods they use to relax, then a suitable technique is used to hypnotise them (the coolest one being where you can make their hand unconsciously levitate). So we learnt one or two of these techniques every day before them being used on us as a group, after which we were told to partner up and practice.

The scripts for hypnosis are quite long (they usually take around half an hour), and located on multiple random pages of our sheets, so we had to seemlessly and silently flow through the procedure without having to fumble through the bundle and find page 33 so we could wake them up. There was a funny moment when my partner turned to the wrong page, which had to conveniently be the 'amnesia script', which is used if you want to the patient to forget something suggested to them earlier in the session. The idea of the script is to convey long-winded, confusing sentences (which do make sense), but keep the mind occupied trying to untangle the meaning and hence allow them to forget. While my partner was reading, she herself got confused and couldn't hold in her laughs, and it didn't help my state of trance either.

Our exam was to basically hypnotise someone, but without scripts, and the lady who wrote the hypnosis textbook was there to examine people (but sadly not the pair I was in). I had to go through the whole procedure of asking my partner questions about what their problem was and explain the process of hypnosis to them before anything began, as well as asking them not to chew any gum, switch off phones and go to the toilet (which we obviously rehearsed beforehand). And then we followed the template of certain scripts (based on how they best relaxed- again pre-rehearsed), but had the opportunity to add our own little bits in or adapt them if we wished, so I added a little submarine for them to climb in and go 'deeper and deeper' into the sea, allowing them to go deeper and deeper into trance. Our examiner told us we both did astoundingly well, especially with our imaginations and my ability to cause my partner to smile during trance, so I take it we passed!

The last day of the month, I received my result for the triple-module exam, and alhamdulillah, despite some harsh marking, I got 70% (which yes, is good in my eyes, and the eyes of the guy who worked out the class average). This result can kind of let me rest a little, as I now don't feel the need to justify myself being at medical school in a sense; I am supposed to belong here and the exam results prove it. Although, the next challenge is trying to maintain (or better) my rhythm, as you could probably say that every exam you take in Medicine is progressively more important than the last.

My month in status updates:

Lesson of the day: when going to head the ball, avoid your opponent's teeth. You are likely to bleed.

In all my 21 years, never have I been in a reversing bus. That all just changed.

will be stretching his short-term memory to slightly more than 30 seconds tonight

Ah, exam over. I wonder how long I should give it before I revise for the next one :P

Getting hypnotised twice in one day is my idea of a module well chosen! :D

Hand levitation hypnosis is like, the coolest thing I've ever experienced!

needs a flapjack to celebrate the submission of his writeup on cholera, but maybe should take some tetracyclin first just in case :P

really needs to get down to inventing a station waker upper!

 

Video of the month:

And finally,an interesting quote used by our hypnosis teacher, from Henry Ford:

If you believe you can, or if you believe you can't, you're right.