Mulling Things Over

I think that my life ever since I went home for the summer has been one long therapy session with my experiences being the shrink and myself as the befuddled patient who hasn't yet resolved his many internal conflicts. I remember one particular incident when I accompanied my 'aunt', a family friend who's an ophthalmologist, while she went through her rounds before ending her work day. She had three patients confined in the hospital that day. The first we visited was a little girl, about the same age as my sister Maxine, who just had her eyes operated on to correct a congenital deformity. Since my aunt is an expert in reconstructive eye surgery, I don't think the case presented much of a problem. The little girl seemed to be doing well, and though she looked scared and uneasy (she had gauze patches over both eyes and couldn't take them off until the next day), she had her parents around to comfort her. Next was a boy around my age who sustained a major eye operation to clear the mucus that was clogging one of the sinuses close to his right eye. I thought this was pretty silly at first, but I was told that this was his second operation, and that the first one had to be done because the accumulated mucus caused his eye to bulge out. Strange, but true. The last patient we visited was the one that left the most impact on me. He was confined in the Neuro Ward, but there was a curtain separating his bed from the others. This meant I had my first sight of him from quite close by, and I was relieved that my face didn't register my astonishment at what I saw. He was a small, thin boy, maybe seven or eight years old, and his large round head was lined with staples where his hairline would be. I learned that he was run over by a truck on a highway, and though he didn't have any injuries in the lower parts of his body, his skull was fractured in front and his eyes were damaged as well, but I didn't pay much attention to what I was told about what happened the boy's eyes because I couldn't stop staring at his head. It looked so fragile, as if a single touch would cause it to break apart again. And then my aunt mentioned that there was no bone left in front of his forehead and she told me to feel it. I did, and it was so soft that I was afraid I'd press too hard and maybe injure his brain so I quickly pulled away. Throughout all this the boy was awake, and he was murmuring things I couldn't understand. He must have said something funny though, because his mother, who was lying beside him on the bed, laughed a little and asked him about it. While my aunt and the boy's mother were conversing about his treatment and how well he was doing, I thought about how much bravery that mother was showing, that she could bear to laugh and appear to take things lightly for the sake of her child.

Afterwards, I asked my aunt about the details of the accident, and learned that it was a hit-and-run case - the truck driver had sped away right after hitting the boy. The remarkable thing about it was that a witness had managed to recall the truck's plate number, and because of that, the truck's owner, a Chinese businessman, had been identified and besides paying damages was charged to shoulder all the expenses related to the boy's treatment.

The whole story made me think a lot, especially of my decision to become a physician in the future. The truth is, when I was little, I wasn't exactly sure of the one thing I wanted to be when I grew up, but I made up my mind that I very certainly wasn't going to be a doctor. I don't really know why, but that's pretty much how I felt until high school, and by then, I had decided that I was going to become a lawyer. My parents hinted now and then that being a doctor would be an ideal profession for me, but I always dismissed the idea, and being the open-minded people that they are (God bless them), they left me to whatever I wanted for myself, believing firmly that I would put my heart to whatever it was I had chosen.

Things changed, though, when I was informed that I had the opportunity to enter a course that would reduce my pre-Med time to two years and guarantee me a slot in the College of Medicine, which is of course what INTARMED is. It was then that my father had a serious talk with me about what being a doctor is really like, and why he chose it as his profession. You see, my father, like me, had also wanted to become a lawyer. But he didn't do that, and now I can't imagine what life would be if he was one. Anyway, after that, I gradually came to realize that being a doctor was what I wanted to become, and was in fact the best thing I could become. It's like this: As a lawyer, I'd be spending my time studying things created by man, things that are arbitrary, temporary, and subject to interpretation. The law I'd be studying in the Philippines would probably be completely worthless in, say, Pakistan. On the contrary, as a doctor I'd be studying the inner workings of man, a creature created by God by his design, and even if you don't believe that, the point is that the biology of man is constant, in the sense that the same basic principles govern the body of every human, whether he lives in Pakistan or anywhere else. Furthermore, what makes medicine the noblest of all professions is that it very directly upholds the dignity of man, and an understanding of it is ultimately an understanding of the self.

I admit that I have many times been reluctant to face the fact that I am now stuck in Manila and this routine I loathe. This is why I wrote this piece partly as a reminder to my self that I do, in fact, desire to become a doctor. And I do believe in the end result of what I'm undertaking, even if I complain a lot about what happens along the way. The memory of the day I spent with my aunt at the hospital will stay with me as a reminder of why I'm here in the first place - because I want to make a difference, and because I want to do something meaningful with my life. That is all I really need to know.