Doctor with a soul
Finally, I end my 3 weeks attachment. Friends and I was really damn slack today, partly because we only have 3 patients in the male cubicle as well.
Seriously speaking, I dislike this profession at times but I do have times that I enjoy it too. It disgusts me whenever I see pool of feces, saliva and discharge from the patient’s body and mouth. But come to think of it, do they want to be like this? They don’t.
This is the fourth attachment I have for this one whole year. Three of it are at NUH itself and 1 of it was at nursing home and polyclinic. No doubt that I got touched by the patients and their relatives for every single attachment I went to.
Today, I work for 15min extra after I end my work at 8.30pm just to clean up a pool of wet, soiled feces from a patient that was send up by the A&E department. The smell is really “gush through your nose”, I nearly vomited and I couldn’t find any face mask around.
But just before I left the ward, those relatives around that saw me a few times for this few days, they came to me and say “all the best for your future and I want to thank you for taking care of my dad.” And together with a firm hand shake.
Just these words, I suddenly forget about those negative thoughts I have about the profession in nursing.
Oh, nurse’s profession is not about cleaning up shit.
But down there I want everyone to know, INCLUDING MYSELF. People who are in health care profession have all kind of different attitude in their own health care career, for me? What kind of attitude I have?
I want to be rich but I also want to heal and cure people. If you ask me to have the heart to heal and cure people but won’t be that rich which I want to be, I don’t think I can carry on.
If I want to be, I really want to be a doctor but a doctor with soul.
Today I get to talk with a patient’s relative; she told me that the patient that lies on the bed is her father. He was once a Chinese physician and now he is being diagnose with functional decline. She asks me about my interest in health care and I told her (mention above) and she said “Not everyone can get what they dream of, sometimes it above give and take. If you got what you want, you may lose what you have.”
I knew this all along but I don’t take it to heart because I don’t want to believe that this will happen to me. Why can’t I be the lucky one that got what I want and lose nothing?
I have been in nursing profession for 1 year so far, I believe in having gratitude, it takes you further in life and I have been practicing it. At times, I do think about the important of being rich and why I think about being a doctor? Do I really want to heal and cure people or because I want the fame and money?
Haha, sorry. I can’t stand my greediness, I want it all. If you don’t have the money, don’t tell me about giving to the poor. You don’t even have the ability to buy medical equipment to save the needs when you can’t even provide yourself, tell me how are you going to provide for others? So, I need to be able to provide myself and my family then I will be able to provide others. That life reality, I can say.
I remember my mum told me this, she knows a doctor who doesn’t really care about having the fame and the amount of money she earns but her skills in healing is damn good. She’s is not famous and doesn't earn much because a lot of patients doesn’t like the style of curing because she is very strict and want the patient to follow her instruction which irritate most of the patients.
If one day, I really have the chance to be a doctor, I’m sorry to say that I want to be a doctor with soul. I will really have the heart to cure my patient but at the same time I want to be rich and I want to be famous. I want it all.
You can’t expect me to step into a poverty country to save people when I’m a poverty myself. It makes sense. LOL!
