I passed - Whew!

So, I passed my Step 2 CS exam. This is the exam I gave within a couple of days of landing in the US. Recap - arrive SF 25th June, move to Stern Hall 26th June, leave for LA 27th June, exam on 28th June, return to SF 28th June, set up basic necessities of life 29th June (friday), spend weekend with G,trek up Mission Point(photos for proof), 2nd August - am attending classes!

Anyway, my exam was a disaster. Its a miracle I passed. In fact I had to check my results at three times before I was absolutely sure I passed. There were lots of reasons why I did badly. I did not study enough, I was totally jetlagged and had not been able to sleep at night for the previous couple of days. The day before the exam I arrived in LA at the hotel around 3pm and promptly went off to sleep. I don't know how long I slept,missed dinner and woke up around 10pm frantic,nervous and scared. I tried to study courtesy of four cups of coffee but my heart was not in it. I just could not get myself to concentrate hard enough or motivate myself to work. So, I spent about two hours getting ready and packing my stuff up and around 6am decided to head out to get some breakfast. The closest open place other than the rather expensive hotel breakfast was McDonald's! Hmm..early morning Big Mac did not sound good preparation for an 8 hour exam, so hung around till the building coffee shop opened around 7.30.

In the meantime, I had a long conversation with the security guard. Obviously, he was used to people like me coming in every morning to write exams and asked me the usual where, why,when questions.
Recgonising that my accent was not American and was not very Indian as well, we came around to the fact that the man has spent some time working in Liverpool. He asked what I did and I replied that I worked on malaria. What ensued was truly amazing. The man was a parasitologist from Nigeria as it turned out. His mother was a physician in Nigeria and he had worked on malaria and herbal remedies for some time after his bachelor's degree in parasitology! So, we discussed plasmodium falciparum in the hour leading upto my exam. I am grateful to him for distracting me and minimising my adrenaline surge. Of course, after a 16oz cup of English Breakfast ( this takes about half hour to drink) my adrenal glands were back to full speed.

The exam itself started only about 9.30 after induction blah blah. At this point I was ready for a quick nap but my first station was a lady who had been assaulted. After taking a detailed history and making sure that I got all the places she got hurt, I panicked during my examination and forgot to examine her jaw and face where she told me she felt the most pain! I got out and while writing up my medical notes, realised I had screwed up.
Forget it, next one I told myself. The next lady was an easy case of cough or something. Now, I was told and the books had this written. Must ask sexual history - partners, active/inactive, sexuality, contraception, H/o STI. Ok, so I went ahead and ascertained that she was sexually active with a single partner. So, I now began advising this young lady (22 yo) about safe sexual practices when in a surprised voice she mentioned that her partner was a female!! I spluttered and stammered pathetically and rapidly ended the interview.
I reckoned I was 0/2 there and had only 10 left to go. The general advice is you need to pass at least on 10 of your 12 stations to pass. So, it was all or nothing now. I calmed down and obviously was fine after that.

I suppose it was my fault for being so badly prepared. I remember studying so much harder for my PLAB 2 exam, which is a similar format except you have to do CPR on a dummy and you have procedures to complete on dummies as well. I really worked hard for the PLAB exam even attending a course in London (costing me 300GBP) over Xmas. Its pretty useless now, although I never know. I might just land up in the UK again.