why do people become doctors?

 

Only unfortunate children get to say that they have lived their whole life in a hospital. Only the unfortunate and me. As I was born in a hospital

and have more memories of spending my time there than home.

My  mother had me right after graduating medicine. I was in her belly while she got her diploma and in her arms when she started residency. My first steps were in a hospital staff room and from an early age I was sitting near family members of patients with the thought ’’my mother is in that room as well’’.

I suppose sick children escape the white walls after they got better, but I never did. I walked through life believing that space to be the only one I belong in. Not even my own room at home felt as safe as the sterile environment of the cold building. Growing up in a country in which dreams of becoming a ballerina or an astronaut were found only on TV, drained me. I never feared the question ’’ what are you going to be when you grow up?’’.  No child from here feared this question. We all knew we wanted to get out of here. And for me medicine was the safest choice I had. Only around 15 when the same question flashed before me that I heard an unknown phrase slipping my lips.

“I don’t know…”

Standing in front of twenty-five classmates and a sociology teacher, I felt the ground swallowing me. These people spent the last 9 years hearing me confidently admit how I’m going to be a doctor like my mother. They knew my biology and chemistry grades were always the best in class and if there was anything about medicine, that I knew the answer. I was the medicine girl and here I was, whispering in a painful, shameful confession how I had no idea what I wanted to be in the future.

Recently another version of the same question struck me while I was shadowing an ENT-surgeon.  

“why do you want to become a doctor?”

And I answered without thinking.

“I don’t know what else to do.”

And I wasn’t lying. I had a brief idea that I could be a brilliant lawyer and a stelar scientist or engineer. Only medicine was closer than those ideas. I had developed a life plan around the idea of going into medicine. I knew when I would get married and when I should have children and where I would live.

Perhaps it was just an easy choice. A calling, some name it. My grandmother used to say that god created only three jobs for human kind. The doctor to heal, the lawyer to decide on right or wrong and the teacher, to teach the doctor and the lawyer. All three professions feel more entitled over the human kind that works in offices and in stores.

I heard stories of children who felt forced to go into medicine because their parents pressured it. I don’t absolutely refuse to believe such events; I merely don’t empathize with them. This cage in which you feel restrained, never felt like a cage for me. It felt like a big pair of shoes I have to grow into.

Now is the breaking point. I am a dying fig tree. My roots are slowly growing into sterile shoes you see in tv shows about doctors. Looking around, there are a bunch of other shoes I can chose to move my roots into. Heels, sandals, loafers, sneakers…

But what if they don’t  fit?  What if I don’t like them in the end and start missing these white, chunky sterile shoes that my rots have gotten so use to?

 People don’t become doctors because they wat to help others. That is a nasty, messy lie we say not to sound crazy. Some of us like blood and guts. Others like the prestige and would put their well-being and sanity on the line. I know someone who fulfilled her mother’s dream and found her passion. I know others who just continue a dynasty of doctors. Only we understand the stress and hardships of being a health-care worker. That’s why we are allowed to be a little crazy about guts and blood and surgery hungry creatures. We are devoting our life to help other lives, so we are just naturally entitled to be demanding and stuck-up. All because we are badass when people need help.

Only another doctor feels the rush you get from a surgery, the relief you feel when you place the last stitch and the proudness that warms your abdomen when you see a patient happy or just healthy. In the end we don’t need drugs or extreme sports. Our job is extreme thinking.

I don’t know what else to do. Because nothing in life could give me the same satisfaction that medicine gives me. I am one of those surgery hungry people. I want to see the first cut and the last stitch. I want to be the one to say that the surgery went well, or the one to offer a warm embrace when it didn’t , as I know medicine is ugly and messy.  I want it for the white coat and for the sleepless nights.

There is no plan on moving my roots now. Somehow it’s too late for that, even if the opportunity didn’t cease to be. I want to know how it works. How it feels to know. This thirst for knowledge demands me to go into medicine.

This is why people become doctors.