Why we choose to be doctors…
Every medical school has that one professor that will teach you the true basics of medicine. For me, Dr. Sri taught it to us in our first semester in anatomy lecture.
1. Air goes in and out.
2. Blood goes round and round.
3. Oxygen is good.
So many people ask me how I can stand looking at dead bodies (much less rifling thru them to study), seeing needles penetrate skin, talking about how cool that pancreatic tumor surgery was (as I eat dinner), or even just say the word BLOOD. For me, none of these things phase me at all; they’re actually pretty cool and definitely dinner table conversation!
I have the cliche story where I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was little because I want to help people. However, it stems beyond just that. I had my first eye surgery when I was 9 years old and my second when I was 10 years old. My second was on Halloween of 1994. As a kid, it was the worst thing to not be able to go trick-or-treating. However, if your surgeon was Dr. Boutrous (of The Eye Center), his solution was to get some rest after surgery, and then, since my eyes were going to be draining blood anyways, dress up as a witch and go out for my candy as usual! I turned out to be the coolest witch in the neighborhood. That was when I decided that I wanted to be a doctor, specifically a surgeon.
For those of you that know me, you know that I’ve had many surgeries since then, and for those of you that don’t, I’ve had 7. 
Each has been it’s own experience in the hospital, some good, some bad, but in the end, I always knew I would be in and out. I would go back daily for therapy, but even still, I got to leave the hospital the same day. However, you meet people that won’t. The hospital is like one of those Extended Stay Americas for some people. Others, they come in thinking that they too will be in and out, but things can change in an instant, whether it’s a cancer, a heart attack, or an allergic reaction because the Resident didn’t quite read that far down on the chart.
As doctors, we believe it’s our job to fix you. However, it’s more than just that. Doctors end up with the rolls of physician, psychiatrist, counselor, best friend, you name it, a good doctor will do it. Sure the money is great, the hours suck, but the people you meet will never be alike. If you define them purely by their case history and then match it up to that one you read in your textbook, they lose the ability to be a person. In the end, a doctor needs to remember that each sickness or ailment that walks thru his or her door is still a person, with a family, no matter if they are conscious or not.
Our professors teach us that you will always kill atleast one patient. Not that a sick patient will come in and die due to whatever illness they had, but that I will kill a patient due to some mistake of my own accord. They never teach you how to deal with that death or really how to tell the family or even how to deal with the dozens of deaths that will happen in your hospital everyday. Hey, we’re smart enough to be doctors, the death part should be simple, right? In the end, that death will teach you more than you could ever learn from a textbook.
“…we give death power — power not to kill us but to rivet us, to silence us, to drive us from our humanity while we still live…”
I still remember what the doctor working the night shift told me when my grandmother, who always became best friends with all the nurses without speaking a lick of English, went into seizures and a coma after having had a severely allergic reaction to an anti-vomitting medication they gave her. He said that “We need to just let her go because she’s going to die anyways and he couldn’t do anything about it. She’s old anyways, so it’s not such a terrible loss and we need to understand that.” Maybe he was having a bad night, or maybe he just hating being around old people, but she woke up 2 days later and that might have been the longest complaint letter I have written in my entire life. Needless to say, I’m pretty sure he moved to a different state and is looking for a new job. Physicians like him make future doctors like myself proud of the path we’ve chosen.
Back to my cliche, I choose to do this because I want to help people, but not even just help them get better, but help them understand and cope and live and be happy and enjoy life. My grandmother was the epitome of a woman content with life. She had seen it all, done it all, and thought it’d be pretty cool to see if her name made it into God’s book and wondered if they had soda and Taco Bell’s mexican pizzas in heaven. That’s what I’m wondering too…
Medicine | Comment (0)Punjabi Word of the Day: Pataka
Pronounciation: pa-ta-KA
Plural: pa-ta-KAY
Function: noun
1. firecracker
Usage: See Below
1. : I waited until last minute, so I only got 1 pataka for July 4th!
2. : Hey, where did you get those patakay from?
3. : Did you see that girl? She is one serious pataka!
Punjabi Word of the Day | Comment (0)Welcome back!
Well, after NUMEROUS resets, we may finally be back. Thank you to all the faithful viewers that hounded me whenever the website was down! Hopefully we’re now back for good and still broadcasting from the island of Antigua!
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