My Medicine..

Medicine; the one word that I’ve been trying so hard to assimilate and make a part of me since 7 years of age. I remember fumbling with needle-less syringes and empty infusion bottles and lines and being baffled by how most dignified doctors save lives each day. Back then I never gave even 1.5^th of a thought of whether I’d be emotionally, physically and mentally fit to be one of those distinguished lot of people whom I continued to admire day in day out. At 15 I gave thought about it and decided that this was my God-sent purpose and what I’m destined to do. I’ve so far proven that I’m not actually ignorant or stupid and that my left hemisphere does function to help me choose the right one of the three choices in the MCQ paper. So here I am, officially a medical student trying to ‘caffeine’ my way through the 5 years in medical school and loving every moment of it.

 

Why did I choose to go through this ordeal? Good question. Truth is, I didn’t choose to go through this tremendous journey full of epithelial cells and hypertension and long bones. It was already written down for me that this is my ultimate haven. I never had a doubt and neither did I have a loss of confidence over achieving what I am meant to achieve. There are nurses, lecturers, the fishermen who supply me with fish for my lunch and the chefs at the ‘restoran’’s who make me my Roti Canai for dinner who all do what they are meant to do. Atleast most of them do. So basically, I cannot be an engineer or a teacher or a full time vocalist for a band because I am meant to do what I have chosen to do.

 

Saving lives is not the purpose why people go into medicine although unarguably it has be overrated to be the ultimate purpose in soap operas so that it appears to be the glorified profession that it not actually is. At least my purpose is to understand my race more intently, to ease people’s pain and to help them to help themselves to recover from whatever their ordeal maybe and to let myself be consumed by the emotions of people’s pain and grievances so that their grievances maybe diminished even for a little bit. I don’t want to be emotionally detached from the emotions of a 7 year old boy suffering from leukemia but I want to make him make those days less painful than they already are to him. I think if I were to assume that my purpose is to save lives then I’d go home after leaving the body on the operation table, thinking that I’ve failed my purpose. So my purpose is to help but not to save, emotionally, physically and in any other way possible for people to live the rest of their days the way they were meant to.

So till then, I’m going to ‘caffeine’ my way through medical school to try as hard as I can to get to the point where I can full fill my purpose.