Books.

Did you know that MedKids have to have a certain fitness level as well as mental level to be able to graduate MedSchool? I mean, if you had a weak heart or something HOW THE HELL are you supposed to carry all your text books around! Seriously, they should have an upper body strength test as part of the interview process to weed out all the weedy kids - some of them only Arnold Schwarzenegger would be able to carry.

Take the Cecil Textbook of Internal Medicine by Goldman & Ausiello (which will be fondly referred to as Cecil's from here on in) for example. It is one mean 3000+ page mother goose with over 200 chapters, at least 7kg. Just taking Cecil would mean I had to pay extra for frigging Tiger tickets. Seriously, its so big, it could kill you. Not from the severe internal bleeding you'll get when somebody throws it at you because they think you're an arrogant prick for lugging such a big book (read subtext). No instead, you'll die from the psychological trauma of holding so much knowledge in your hands - if you hold onto it for too long, your head will explode. 

Another noteworthy text book/reference is Rohen's Colour Atlas of Anatomy, by Yokochi & Lutjen-Drecoll, not because it's insanely expensive (which it is, but more on that later) or because it is insanely huge (is an elephants backside huge?) but because of its awesome description in our textbook guide - "Say hello to the cadaver on your bookshelf!" I ABSOLUTELY LOVE dead bodies! Apparently this book "allows you to revise what you have seen in resource sessions (i.e. happy-cutting-up-people time) ... without the smell of formaldehyde!" 

Ok I couldn't help myself, sorry. I also can't help but verbally emesisise how expensive Med texts are. For example, Cecil costs $275. And that's just ONE text. In total, I'm looking at around $1000 just for books. This doesn't include essential equipment such as a stethoscope or lab coat or sphygmomanometer (roll THAT around your mouth a couple of times and tell me you're not getting hypertension!). All that will cost another $10 at least - that is if you're buying the plastic dress-up-as-Barbie's-Gynaecologist set (which isn't necessarily a bad thing...). But seriously, a decdent Litmann steth can cost as much as $200 with many digital steth's fetching well over one grand. Moral of the story: why can't the Government fork out a little extra to subsidise (partially?) our text books and equipment when in the long run, we'll be paying the community back many many times over. 

It'll also give me an earlier opportunity to gawk at the genitals of END POST.