Jargon lapses

In med sch, we learn a totally new language - medical jargon. from the 1st day of school at the anatomy school hall, we learnt new names for different parts of the upper limb. before that, it was arm, hand, fingers... after that, finger tip became distal phalanx and knuckles became metacarpophalangeal joint.

it works perfectly well when conversing with our fellow schoolmates. we understand what each other are saying. even our coffee jokes and daily comments became filled with medical jargon... like "hey! tt day i ran after the bus and got exertional dyspnea!"

however, many times at social events with non-medicine friends or dinner talks with my family, i inevertently lapse into these jargon and end up getting weird stares from ppl. haha!! we were watching a tv drama just now and my bro asked me what's wrong wif the girl. automatically, i just said she has renal failure. my bro was like "WHAT failure?" and i had to correct myself "ohh! kidney failure i mean..."

another incident, i was talking abt something to a fren (can't rem what) and i said the word "axilla". my fren went "what's axilla?" haha! i had to explain that axilla = armpit... come to think of it... it's quite a nice name for a not-very-nice-smelling part of our body huh?

yesterday i experienced the worst scenario of all. we had a jc class gathering. (turn-out wasn't great... but the company was still wonderful!) 6 of us were there - 5 were from med sch and 1 from chem engine. there were countless of occasions where 5 meddies got so engrossed in the medical jargon and stuff happening in the hospitals that we forgot that our poor classmate's pretty lost there. i feel so bad... we're all guilty of such stuff. after all, we spend most of our waking hours in med sch, hospitals, reading med-related stuff. as much as we dun wanna bore ppl with medical stuff and load them with jargon, we can't help it. cos if we dun, we've relatively quite lil to say.

that said, i feel quite honoured to be able to learn such a new language although it's really hard work... 5 years of pure hardwork. but it's definitely worthwhile to keep the jargon in check... and practise speaking layman as much as possible. cos ultimately, we'll need that to communicate with the patients.