I called the FPSC office in Karachi on the 18th and I was told that if I haven't received my medical letter, it means my medical test is still quite far away. I tried calling the FPSC head office on the 19th but no one was picking up the phone there. On the 20th, a relative visited the FPSC head office and found out that my medical letter had been dispatched a long ago and was probably misplaced by the postal services. He faxed me a duplicate of my letter that very morning.

Now the 20th was Friday (half-day) and when I went to JPMC, I realized I had a very difficult task ahead of me especially because the hepatitis test takes at least two days to be completed. Now JMPC has three sorts of junior staff members: people who don't want to work at all, people who will only work for money (bribes) and then there are the few who try to work as diligently as possible but are overwhelmed by the workload. I swear, God save us from public hospitals. There was no guidance and every second person got us running from one lab to another. I wasn't the only one though - I saw many other worried candidates frantically running around. I managed to find an honest lab assistant (Tahir, Ward 7) there and he said he'll try his best to give me my results before Monday but he wasn't prepared to give any assurances.

Finally, I reached the ophthalmology department (for the eye doctor) at 12:15 and the staff there told me that the professor (the only person with an official stamp there) had already left. I tracked him down to his private clinic in the evening and he told me he was actually in his office till one o'clock. How I got his stamped prescription in the end is another story altogether.

Somehow, I got all the required test results by 2:30 today. But this whole experience has been very disconcerting for me, particularly with my medical letter being misplaced, leaving me with barely a day to sort everything out.