Survivors

To those who don't know me, by profession I am a medical doctor. It has been my childhood dream (any of my family members can confirm this). So since primary level I've always strive to get good results to go to medical school. My path was smooth. Thanks to everybody's prayers.

At medical school we worked like crazy. Our schedule was not like other university's students, where the classes are spaced out through out the week according to their credit hours. Other students have many free hours between lectures, but our classes were packed 8-5. There were lectures, histology labs, physiology labs, anatomy dissections, microbiology labs etc etc..Then when we go into clinical years (year 3-5) our free time (after lectures) were spent in the wards, following rounds, clerking patients, doing procedures, observing surgeries. At night we had to study big textbooks, prepare for bedside case presentations, prepare case write-ups. Sometimes we had to follow the on call rounds at night. If we were unlucky and were assigned with crazy workaholic consultants who came for rounds at 7am, then we had to be in the ward at 6.30am.

Then came our final exams and somehow we managed to graduate from medical school barely breathing but still surviving. Little that we know what awaited us. The life of an intern was like no life at all; missing meals, lack of sleep, and constantly being under the critical eyes of your superior (so much so that I despised the hospital where I served my internship, because of the association with some bad experiences). And the shock that what you learned in medical school just prepare you for half of your duties!

So what become of us the doctors are that we worked like robots. We work just to survive the day and a lot of things that we do is actually what we call a spinal cord reflex. This means that our actions did not derive from our cerebral cortex, it is a reflex; like what happen if you touch a hot kettle, you automatically withdraw your hand. We did not have the time to stop and think, we did not have the time to try and feel, or understand the sick person in front of us. We just want everything to be done, so that we will have time for ourselves. So that we can go home and feel alive again.

We treat all patients the same. Someone with lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, blood and bones. We forgot that they have different souls. All are just the same demanding patients, with demanding, fussy relatives. We forgot that they are somebody's wife, husband, father, mother. We forgot that they also have history, life experiences probably richer than us. We forgot they have hopes, that they will survive the ordeal (like we hope we will survive the day) and as much as we don't want to see them again, surely they too don't want to see us again.

We never have the time to get to know the patients, personally, i mean. Not that it is advisable, as we do not want to become too attached to them, as this will impair our judgment. But we need to remember that they are not just subjects of our everyday lives, they are not just patient A that occupies Bed 1 or patient B in that Isolation Room 2.

So now I have put a special section in this blog, Life Stories of Cancer Survivors (see right hand side). These are the blogs of cancer patients, who write to share their experiences. Probably we can learn more from them than what we can learn in the books. Some of them are very young, they are my age, with kids the same age of mine. You will never know when you will receive your death sentence. Reading their blogs you will know that they are thankful for each day that were given to them, unlike us that usually hope the day will come to the end fast.

In the Friends and Inspirations section there is a link to a blog called Fajar Seluas Angkasa. This is a bit different because it is the blog of the father of Arwah Amir Yusuf, who spent his entire 8 months of life in the hospital. When the patient is a baby it usually never occur to us how much hope the parents have for the little soul. They all cry the same. They all look the same. We are happy when they feed well, when they sleep well. But we forgot that every minute the mother is praying her heart out for the safety of her son.

In the Links section there is a blog called Echoes of My Heart, the blog of Adik Fikri who received a new heart in Dec 2005. But he has not updated his blog since Dec 2008, so don't know how he is now.

So to all my colleagues, whom a lot now are beginning to pursue their specialties, do spend a little bit of your limited free time to read the blogs, to remind ourselves that the patients are not just people with fancy Latin-named diseases, but they are one of us.

p/s if anybody knows of another blog (of people with terminal or debilitating illness) to share feel free to tell me.