Heart Beat: Ave atque Vale, Prof Halligan. I do not know why you changed your mind, and it remains your business. Your reputation, however, suggested that you might help greatly. Now alas, we will never know.
Retracing my own steps through medical life, I had reached my final year and was heading into final exams. Armageddon was at hand, judgment day had nothing on this. After all, what's a little fire and brimstone compared to telling your parents that you had failed? Or facing the world as a self-designated pariah, knowing that everybody was pointing at you and whispering behind your back?
Meanwhile, I will spare you clichés and quotations about time, save to say that it just disappeared. All of us cowards died a thousand times, contemplating the inevitable. I am sure we had at least one brave soul prepared to die but once, but if so I never met him.
The trials grew closer, but there were purification rituals to be undertaken. Foremost among these was the acquisition of the examination suit. I don't think the problem was as acute for the girls, as they seemed used to such rituals and may even have enjoyed them.
The essence of this, of course, for parents and guardians was to make sure that their prospective doctor did not appear before his peers lightly disguised as a tramp. Very commendable and, of course, sound common sense, but the recipients of such altruism behaved as if we were being tortured to death. "What do you mean, have a fitting? Don't you realise the exam is only three weeks away? Yes, I fully understand that I can't appear in my pelt." It was a losing battle as us little dears were unwillingly spruced up.
Our hospital tutors in medicine and surgery, kind of demi-gods, midway between celestial consultants and earth-bound NCHDs, tried their utmost to whip us into acceptable shape. We were not to let them or the hospital down. If we let ourselves down, that was our problem. The tutors were like ring masters trying to threaten or cajole their unruly charges into something approaching respectability on the big day.
Great thanks were due to them, they were not too far removed from the ordeal themselves, to be unable to understand how we felt. Their own professional development required intensive study for higher degrees. I have always found that such people make the best teachers.
Another thing that struck us forcibly was that there were "no atheists in foxholes". This phrase, apparently attributed to Lt-Col William J Clear in the last weeks of Bataan, summed up the burst of religious fervour that struck us in the last few weeks.
The way of righteousness was to be ours forever, if only the Lord could see his way to doing us a small favour over the next few weeks. For all I know there may even have been some Faustian bargains also - I seem to remember a distinct whiff of sulphur from one individual.
In the real world, the Lord helps those who help themselves. The freemasonry of Irish medical students and NCHDs sprang into life. No matter the university or medical school, we were all brothers.
Information began to trickle in about 'interesting' patients in various hospitals. One even heard of patients being kept in hospital for the exams. Could it happen today? We kept lists of what might be encountered and where. We did not know of course where we would be examined, but the word would be passed that a certain hospital was on for the exams on the following day. Various clandestine meetings, usually in pubs, took place nightly and the information was passed on. It must have been our only experience of being teetotal in pubs throughout our student days. On receipt of the lists we went back to our caverns.
Were there any conditions there that you might not know about? Were there any traps, e.g. heart on the wrong side? Were there any difficult or unco-operative patients?
Usually there were no surprises, just the conditions, ailments and diseases that we had been learning about. Had we learned enough?
With the nucleus of our own class we now noted grizzled elders who had appeared before and had failed to satisfy the examiners. Their war stories were unsettling, painting a gloomy scenario of an arbitrary process, in which the good were often wronged. Coleridge came to mind, they were best avoided, "by thy long grey beard and glittering eye now wherefore thou stopp'st me?" We had troubles of our own.
Lastly, to say a word about the patients. Generations of Irish doctors owe an enormous debt to the patients who stoically endured us as students. I often felt that to be a patient with an interesting condition or physical sign in hospital, particularly at exam times, required patience and understanding of heroic proportions.
Doubtless some refused but most participated willingly, appreciating that their help was essential to our training. I hope that we also learned not only the medicine, but the need to repay their trust with humility and understanding. From us students, to you all - thank you.
Finally on a beautiful June day the waiting was over and on our D-Day we headed for the beaches. "Distilled almost to jelly, by the act of fear" - (Hamlet).
Dr Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon.