Bad Doc, Good Doc

[3min Read]

I won't lie.

I used to have a preconceived notion of how doctors should be. Thought they should always be serious, organized, super early, always focused; like a high precision laser, I expected them to be prim and proper at every waking moment. I looked up to that image.

Maybe it had to do something with the medical school I trained in. Most of the consultants were always professional, formal and dressed up. We didn't often see them outside the hospital, or in their comfort zones being "human".

So you can imagine my shock when I started working, and I was seeing people coming to work after 8am, not giving drugs strictly on the dot(time), sitting in the call room gisting at times, taking breaks to make long phone calls during call duty at night, talking about parties and all. It's not like I was a boring ass medical student, but I had very high (and unrealistic) expectations.

There was this incident when I was in Paediatrics, and a child wss convulsing, so we called the senior doctor to come over, and when she got there she started making jokes about being angry that we pulled her out of a meeting where they always served delicious fried rice and chicken. I was appalled.

But as I have worked more and more, I've come to realize that all these things are coping mechanisms. If you're not careful in this profession you'll be dragged into depression very easily. Convulsions will always appear, sicknesses will not end, patients will always arrive, sometimes people will die even if you put your heart, spirit, soul and ancestors into your work.

It is physically impossible to give all the drugs on the dot. If it's not that you're struggling to set an IV line for 2 hours just to help the patient, it's something else. 8am's will never end. Somedays you will just be late. Sometimes you just need to sit down and get yourself together.

There have been times I'll come to work with a cheerful heart, and you'll find out that one of your patients didn't make it over the night. Nobody likes to hear that kind of news. Especially when you'll do everything you can, even pray and fast for the patient. And after all that, you still have 7 or 10 patients to still see, and attend to with a "cheerful face" and ask them questions of how they're doing.

Sometimes people ask me how I have time to take pictures, or chat, or make naughty jokes, or cook, or other random things if I'm "really a doctor".

So I understand. I do. I might not be the exact image you have in your head of a doctor at every moment. Unlike other doctors you see on TV, or the few seconds you see in the hospital - you see my posts and statuses and pics, unlike them. But the truth is, we're all just humans. We're not machines, or gods, or whatever weird labels you often attach to us. We're just people trying to live, the same way you're trying to live.

And it's not a crime to live it up small.

Thanks for reading
Love, Stars, and Health

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