Lovingly Yours

Tedtalk

Asmara siddique

Had anyone warned me about how medschool will literally suck the soul out of me, chew me up and spit me out (metaphorically) then I would have hammered some sense into my naive 18 year old self to not choose to be a doctor.

But truth be told, being a doctor is the best Job in the world, despite everything, because of everything. (If you know, you know. Let's hope someone knows this iconic line.)

I've never had thoughts like these after joining medschool till my internship started, it was an eye opening, gobsmacking, puke inducing, insomnia generating, caffeine addicting reality check which should come with a statutory warning to thousands of aspirants willingly wanting to fall into its web.

Having to attend hundreds of hours of lectures which are sometimes brain numbingly boring or sometimes straight up anxiety inducing, cutting open cadavers in dissection hall just an hour prior to lunch which killed any and all appetite, writing examinations which reduce my life span and being stuck in the library while my family members enjoy family functions, get togethers because I have an exam I need to prepare for.

And no matter how much I studied, I never felt prepared and satisfied.

But all these hardships and difficulties could never compare to what I faced in my internship.

They never prepare you for the hell that it is.

Anxiety of being left in charge of patients, being answerable to immediate seniors and sometimes the heads of the departments, being scrutinized for your skills or lack thereof, being subject to continuous monitoring and questioning by seniors who treat you like slaves, working night shifts on four hours of sleep just to get scolded the next day for a very small mistake, going without food and water for hours together, resuscitation of cardiac arrest patients, watching a patient pass away and delivering the heartbreaking news to thier loved one, watching the loved one cry and feeling absolutely devastated because nothing in the world can prepare you for that level of helplessness.

Medschool just taught us the protocol of breaking the news of a patient's passing to thier attendees and never trained us how to do it without losing a piece of ourselves everytime that happens.

Facing all these and pretending like everything is OK at the end of the day, just to do it all over again everyday for the rest of our lives.

That is the life of a health care professional.

These few days have been most difficult days so far as me and my friends were posted in general surgery department. The patients were too many, the expectations with us inexperienced doctors a lot, because no matter what we did, it was just not enough.

"I cannot feel my feet anymore Asmara, I'm literally dying and that's not me even exaggerating." Sara my friend groans laying her head on my shoulder.

"Been there, done that," Talat replies unfazed by Sara's melodrama, causing Faria, the third member of our group to snicker loudly as we all gather for lunch.

These three girls, Sara, Talat and Faira have been my friends since the start of medschool. I met Faria, a lean, pretty hijabi girl near the college entrance on orientation day when she was standing under a tree talking to her best friend since school, Faizan.

I asked them a question about the forms the teaching staff had given us and the next day Faria approached me in class, sat beside me and the rest is history. We became close friends and bonded over our mutual love of cats after she showed me pictures of her pet cat Romeo.

We used to attend classes, dissection hall and lab periods together, it was great to have her as a friend because she always had something to talk about. Be it stories of her siblings pranking each other or her cats becoming parents or just some random topics, it was never boring when I was with her.