Medicine Or Something Like It Part 2

What is my motivation?

I do like being at work and interacting with patients and their families and the nurses as well, and I have had too many days at home with little to do and wishing to go back to work.

But the thing that drives me most is coming back to Malaysia, sitting with my friends who are doctors, hearing their stories of working 36 hour shifts every three days, listening to the makeshift, guns-blazing medicine they are practising right from the start, working with difficult bosses - that is what motivates me. Knowing that eight hours away in my tanahair, people I care about are working harder at their jobs than I ever will in my years here.

Was I meant to do this?

The problem with this question is that I have no doubt in my mind that although I have ended up in medicine partly due to the Asian parent's choice thing -

(Mum promised me if I did medicine, there will be a line of girls outside my door, screaming for me, and fame and glory and riches beyond my wildest imagination. I think she thought doctor was spelt r-o-c-k-s-t-a-r. Or s-o-c-c-e-r-p-l-a-y-e-r. Or m-o-d-e-l- o-n- t-h-e- f-r-o-n-t- c-o-v-e-r- o-f- a- r-o-m-a-n-c-e- n-o-v-e-l.)

- I really cannot see myself in any other profession at this point.

I would make for a bad accountant (2+3+4+6+7+8+4+3 = the phone number of the girl I met partying at the club yesterday) and a worse enginneer (The building collapsed? But that didn't happen to our Lego model!) and the worst lawyer ever (Objection, Your Honor! The witness has bad teeth!).

The problem is also all the choices we have in medicine - you can specialise in so many fields (surgery, all kinds of medicine, anaesthetics, radiology) that you always worry about making the wrong choice, which ties in with the last question -

Can I see myself doing this for a lifetime?

At this point, I am happy. But who knows what the future holds. Maybe you will see me in my new profession one day.

On the cover of a romance novel. Midnight Medicine Magic. As Dr. Fabio Lovesyringe.