17: Close Curtain

 This essay will be in two parts, here is the first one.

There is this common question that is supposed to be introspective. 

“What would you do differently if you could go back in time knowing what you know now?” 

My answer is very simple: “I will not be applying to study medicine and surgery.”

I got the inspiration to write this on the day of my class's official picture day. 

The pictures are supposed to be in our class yearbook, which is supposed to serve as a reminder of the time we spent at UNN College of Medicine. I don't want a reminder of my time here, and I don't want anyone to remember I was here.

This is not borne out of the fact that I refused to allow people in or that I had no friends or people that I am not grateful for. This was not borne out of the fact that I do not have happy memories from my time here. It is just that when it all comes down to it, I ask myself, at what cost? Remember that scene in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, where Wanda tells Thanos that he took everything from her? That is the verdict of my time in medical school; it took everything from me. Not just being a medical student, but all the experiences, people, and outcomes of my time here.

Why Medicine?

It was one of those days during our community medicine senior block lectures when my classmate arrived at the meeting point late, as always. One can say that the 022 class signature move is tardiness. Ifem was the first person there, and soon enough we started a conversation, which led to him asking why I decided to study medicine.

I was always going to be a doctor, and for a long time, it was borne out of the need for vengeance. I had a lot of hospital visits as a child, and in one of them, I was so angry at the number of injections I had to take that I told the doctor that whenever I grow up, I will look for his child to give them an injection. Soon enough, it caught up at home. 

I started writing in secondary school, though, and after I was done with A Levels, I started having second thoughts about being a doctor. My father told me that the most practical course for me to study with my results and educational background was medicine, and I decided to go for it. So it became our dream, my father and I, and he has been very supportive of that dream. 

I don’t hate this course. Medicine is a practical choice, and that’s why I am doing it. And bonus point: my father is going to be so proud to have Dr. Adelaja finally. I am going to be the first doctor in my family, both maternal and paternal, and all I can say is no pressure.

Breaking the news to my cousin.
She graduated earlier this year.

Now Medicine...

Maybe fate wanted me to truly decide if this was what I wanted to do because it took me two years after secondary school to get admission into the university. I came in through direct entry and started at 200L.

I still remember my first day at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC). I came in with my father the night before, and we stayed at the university guest house. The school had resumed before my arrival, and it was nearly impossible for me to get a hostel before leaving my parents' house in Ogun State. We were advised to go to the Dean of Student Affairs to see if we could get her to let me stay in the hostel temporarily. And the first student I met was Ursula. I remember asking her if she was named after the witch in The Little Mermaid. 

Lucky for me, the dean took me to the Presidential hostel and gave me a room there in the meantime, where I would later stay for the whole of 200L. I believe I spent time at a family friend’s place.

My first day of medical school was just as eventful.

I got the class rep number from another of my classmates whom I had met during my A levels, and I sent him a message so that I could catch up with the class schedules; he told me where the class was supposed to be. It was a struggle to figure out where my class was supposed to be that Monday morning because, for some reason, no one I asked knew where the anatomy building was located. 

I found someone heading that way, and he offered to take me there but also pointed out that I wasn't compliant with the dress code. I entered the class and sat at the back, clearly out of my depth, when the nicest lady who would end up being my friend came up to me. Somto introduced herself and introduced me to a bunch of my classmates, including the class rep, and till the end of our 2nd MBBS journey, we sat next to each other most of the time. 

My course load wasn’t the toughest, but I found myself struggling with a lot of courses due to how far back I was in the class. I also had GS courses to do that were separate from the ones my classmates who started from 100L were offering. I flunked my first test. But along the way, things got better for me. By the time we started practicals, my anatomy dissection group was the most fun because we spent a chunk of our time discussing topics that were in no way related to anatomy. Physiology practicals were sometimes exciting and sometimes annoying; biochemistry would have been the most fun, but I am not sure what happened. 

At the end of my second MBBS examination, I had a resit in anatomy, and it was there that I ended up making another group of friends. Otonye and I started talking during the time we were preparing for the 2nd MBBS exams; a friend had introduced us to each other. I met Zita on the first day of clinical lectures. She sat beside me in class and spoke Yoruba to me after a call with my mother. Arnold became my friend because we were writing the resit together and he lived in the same building with our doors opposite each other.

The third MBBS class was filled with fear of failing and nurturing friendships that I hoped would last forever. We offered two courses: pharmacology and pathology. Pathology was broken down into morbid anatomy, chemical pathology, microbiology, and haematology/immunology. I loved the microbiology practical sessions, but the pharmacology practicals weren't as fun as I loved them to be. Chemical pathology was good, but we didn’t have enough haematology practicals. We were less than two or three months from writing the third MBBS examination, and the world shut down because of the global pandemic.

When we came back, I had a lot of group discussions with my clique then (Arnold, Otonye, and Zita), and I can say that really helped me push through that season and complete that exam without any hitch. Also, I found out I passed my pharmacology exams before the results came out because one of the non-academic staff saw that I was so nervous during my viva that she looked for me after the exam to tell me my result. 

At the end of the third MBBS examination, I suffered a major burnout. I couldn't celebrate the success of the examinations I had just written and passed; I couldn't do anything else with my life. The exhaustion was at its peak, and I questioned continuing with medicine. I had proven to myself and others that I could find my place here, but I needed to figure out how else to continue. It was also at this point that I started becoming claustrophobic and battling how bleak my future seemed. 

For the junior block, we took three courses: Obstetrics and Gynaecology (OBGYN), Paediatrics, and Community Medicine. I am pretty sure I blanked out during the lectures, but the postings weren’t that bad. Community Medicine was the most interesting posting because of the excursions we were on, and I believe I wrote about that. 

Junior blocking postings ended in 2021, and by the time we resumed in 2022, we started with our short/elective postings. The elective postings are clinical rotations in eight specialities under medicine and surgery. The specialities include anesthesiology, dermatology, emergency medicine, ENT, family medicine, ophthalmology, psychiatry, and radiation medicine. I had my favourite sha. I gave a summary of my short posting experience on my podcast. 

While I have gone ahead to list the postings in alphabetical order, it was during my radiation medicine posting (second posting) that I had the scariest panic attack that caused me to present at the hospital for evaluation, and I got diagnosed with anxiety disorder or depression with agoraphobia. I ended up seeing a psychiatrist, off record and was placed on medication because of how bad it was. I was underweight and lacked the will to continue medical school. At some point, I told my mother I wasn’t interested in continuing medical school, and my father was willing to allow me to take a year off to recover and figure out what to do with my life.

For our senior block, we offered OBGYN and paediatrics. And I wasn’t feeling it at all. I was always exhausted. I couldn’t fix my closest friendship, and I was too tired to wing life. I sat for the fourth MBBS examination, and I passed it in one sitting. I remember being so anxious waiting for the results to be released that I told two friends I was going to hang myself because of the tension that was weighing me down. One of those friends was my pseudo-roommate and was with me the day the result came out.

The final year started in December 2022 with our M3S3 lectures and senior block community medicine. M1S1 lectures and postings were before Pathology and Pharmacology; M2S2 lectures and postings were before the junior block; and M3S3 was after the senior block lectures. 

Senior Block Community Medicine involved rural postings, urban postings, and our final year project. My group’s project topic is “The Perception, Attitude, and Practice of Type 2 Diabetic Patients Towards Management Strategies”. Our rural posting was at Obukpa in Nsukka, Enugu State. And it wasn’t the best experience for me. The only upside to it was spending a bit more time with some of my classmates outside of our classroom and spending time with Jeremiah, whom I hadn’t seen since the end of the second MBBS class.

For medicine and surgery, on the other hand, it was not all that amazing. I find medicine incredibly boring most of the time, but surgery seems to be a lot more exciting, especially when we are in the theatre. I always try to apply myself to the practice; draw medications, cut plaster, take histories, examine patients, take blood samples, pass catheters, set IV lines, and all that stuff, but more often than not, I am already too exhausted to try to do anything.  

M4S4 came shortly after M3S3CM2 postings, and with the end of those postings, we had a flurry of tests and continuous assessments to write, and boom, our mock examination date was announced. The mock examination started on August 15, 2023, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was clearly out of my depth. 

The 5th/final MBBS started on September 1, 2023. And it is a miracle I didn’t drop out at any point.

Telling Aunty Blessing.
She was with me through most of my hospital appointments

Because of medicine...

I lived in the Presidential (New Hostel) all through 200L.

It was a fairly good time in that hostel. My room was originally meant for seven people, but we ended up being nine because we had people squatting with us. Life in New Hostel was different from the rest of the school’s hostel, with stricter curfews and each room having its own toilet and bathroom. Also, it was impossible to get into that hostel without knowing someone in the school system. It was in this room I met Dami, Adaobi, and Jane, who ended up being my roommate in 300L when I moved off campus. I met Ifunaya, the hall governor, Nnenna, Chisom, and Chiamaka.

I have positive memories from my time in New Hostel, and 200L was the best time I had in university. I was happy most of the time; I got to explore Enugu Town, and things weren’t expensive. I met a lot of people outside my course and had a few friends from law, architecture, urban and regional planning, and accountancy as friends. The point here was that my life wasn’t streamlined, and I was able to be in the moment. So if the College of Medicine wasn’t working out for me, I could look elsewhere and still find meaning in my life. 

By the start of 300L, I couldn’t get a hostel space, even though I wrote a letter to retain my accommodation at New Hostel. So I started looking for a place to stay. My first stop was a room in the Lady Ibiam hostel. Chiamaka stayed there during the holiday, and she asked me to come stay till I was able to sort out my accommodation. I would end up staying in Lady Ibiam for three months. 

When the legal occupants of the room started resuming, I decided to move to either a staff quarter or off campus. Jane decided to join me to search for a place. We looked for accommodation separately and went to check the places out together. At the end of the day, while on a walk with some of my former hostel mates, I mentioned I was looking for a place, and she gave me the contact information of someone who found somewhere but couldn’t afford it. 

I went to check the place with Munachi; she was a fresher in the room I was squatting in and ended up liking it. I paid for the room because I learned Jane had found somewhere else and paid without consulting me. She would later reach out to me to ask if she could be my roommate and also ask if she could contribute the part of the rent she could afford since she couldn’t afford her share of the rent if we split the rent in half. 

When she moved in, we had a couple of good days before I learnt that she wasn’t who I thought her to be. Things between us got progressively worse, and at the end of the day, I asked her to move out. I would later learn that she made me out to be the bad person with other people in the lodge, and I wasn’t surprised by that. And that experience scarred me because living with someone else became a really big issue for me. 

It was also in my search for a living space that I met the man who would be my first love and the worst heartbreak. I have written about how things went between us, which you can find on the blog, so I won’t be talking about that. There are two major events with him that I will never forget. The first was when I wanted to step down for a year because I wasn’t sure how to handle the workload, and he was supportive enough to walk me through it and convince me to give it a try instead of stepping down. The second time was when I finished my anatomy exam and knew I had failed. I called him, wailing, and wasn’t sure how to tackle the remaining Vivas I had. He was very supportive and full of encouragement. And we were just friends at this point. We ended up getting together when I started clinical class.

I decided to move elsewhere when my rent expired because I didn't want to share a space with Jane, and I didn’t want her to have to search for a new place. Also, I wanted somewhere that was going to be closer to the old site, where I was going to spend most of my time now that I was out of Unec. I found a place at Ogui Rd and moved in. The selling point for me was the promise of constant light and running water in the apartment. I was also going to be living alone most of the time. I moved to this new apartment with a classmate of mine, Chinazom, and she ended up paying for an apartment in the same building.  

When I started living there, the man I mentioned earlier used to come around to visit once in a while and spend the weekend at my place. He ended that “relationship” sometime in 2020, just before the whole world went into lockdown, with the line, “I think I am leading you on,” and I was totally devastated. In fact, that “relationship” breakup spurred me into a lot of things, one of which was starting my blog. 

At the Ogui Rd apartment, I met Esther and her twin sister Bethel. They started out as pretty nice young girls and turned out to be very nasty. I have never had anyone threaten to beat me up, but these girls did. Esther called me names; she was inappropriate with one of my friends, and she was always out to cuss me.

There was Amira and her baby daddy. Amira has made my hair a couple of times, and she is just the sweetest soul most of the time. We still keep in contact once in a while. There was the stalker who lived across the road. I moved out of that apartment in November 2021 to my current apartment at Jamboree, Coal Camp.

The former apartments I lived in were one-room apartments because it made sense for a student. But the apartment in Jamboree is a room and parlour apartment. I moved into a bigger space for two reasons; one, I was becoming claustrophobic and I needed somewhere with a lot of space, and two, Zita was supposed to move in with me. Aside from the space, this apartment had running water, and the landlord promised to get each apartment a prepaid meter. 

I didn’t have a permanent roommate in this apartment, though. Zita never moved in. Gift stayed with me for three months in 2022 after I got diagnosed while she was on her law school externship. We had our struggles living together, but it wasn’t awful now that I am looking back at the time she spent there. After she left, I had a pseudo-roommate for the rest of the year. By pseudo, I mean he was shuttling between his apartment and mine to spend as much time with me as possible. We also had a bit of a struggle at some point living together, but we were always able to find a way around it. We had a falling out this year, though, and I have spent most of the days in 2023 alone in my apartment.

Aside from living conditions, I think friendship is a huge part of the medical experience, and I am not sure I had the best of luck in that aspect because I ended up losing friendships I thought were going to be forever or having to stop giving too much to the other friendships because of self-preservation. 

Remember Arnold that I mentioned? We had a terrible falling out between December 2021 and 2022, and after my birthday in August, I decided that friendship needed to die. Before falling out, he was my closest friend. I cut off all forms of communication between us in November/December 2022. In 2023, I told myself I was going to be what I considered a bad friend and the intensity of most of my friendships mellowed out. 

But some people have been nothing short of awesome, and I can’t name them all. But I need to mention Aunty Blessing, Iyanu, Naza, and Jeremiah. There is a consistency in these friendships that I can’t point out how it came about, and I know, for a fact, it is because of them, not me. One common thing with these people is that they are not in UNTH with me. Infer whatever you want from that.

One thing that I didn’t do throughout my stay in medical school was be a part of any organisation or fellowship. I was forced into UNMSA (University of Nigeria Medical Student Association) by being a medical student. I wanted to stay away from as many people as possible. 

 

I spent the rest of my time on my blog and podcast, writing, sewing, cooking, sleeping, and exploring when I could. I even have a story published in a digital magazine, which is awesome. There are a lot more people that I have had the opportunity of meeting and spending time with because of the College of Medicine that won’t come up in this summary, but recently I have learned to be grateful for those people regardless, especially the good experiences. 

I am done with College of Medicine and I feel a certain weight lifted off my shoulders. But with every MBBS result, I am left with a mix of emotions because some of my friends didn't pass and I am not sure how to be there for them.

So let me reintroduce myself,

Dr. Oluwaseyi Esther Adelaja, MBBS(Nig).

First of her name.