Commed Dreams
4/10/10
Written after a serendipitous conversation with Joti regarding my Community Medicine Fears and Dreams. My internal conflict with glamorous and beautiful medicine and amy love for community organizing. Thank you Joti, for reminding me:
Sometimes the road gets cloudy. So you just have to grasp onto your vision.
You and you alone know what will make you happy.
You and you alone.
And you will never know that maybe
you will inspire someone
just by being you
who you are.
as you are.
That's all we're really here for.
To be as we are
As we are created to be.
Let me say, I fall in love easily. I am quick to appreciate what a rotation can offer me, yes, even OB, and even surgery (which I reject with the core of my being). I suppose rotating in internal medicine was the most confusing of all. In IM you see the beauty and wonder of medicine, you see what it feels like to be an attending physician, to address the needs of your individual patients, to have them put their trust in you. To learn the wonder of the human body. In IM, I continously fulfilled my favorite thing: learning. I used my only natural talent: learning. And it was beautiful and wonderful and it was a journey of joy and selfdiscovery, and FUN for that matter.
There lay the rub. I read an old journal entry wherein I pondered on my Commed Dreams and conflicts. My secret longing to be a 'glamorous' doctor, to be appreciated, adored and adulated. To be able to answer questions no one else could, to be seen by people as "magaling na doctora." versus my long love: community medicine and the desire to build communities. The drive inside me, telling me that I was not to be an ordinary doctor, telling me that the road less traveled was one I should take NOT because it is less traveled but because that really was the desire of my heart. And when commed rotation came around, I thought I had decided. It came around quietly with no massive revelations, just a sense of peace knowing where you could belong in this great wide world. They say love comes softly, and that's how community medicine felt.
I used to think that a medical or pediatric residency would just be a means to an end, but I realized that I love the medical specialties for themselves, especially after rotating in IM. IM came roaring in, like an aggressive suitor showing me gifts and wonders. So I doublted. And i wondered: in this world of ever changing needs and circumstance, , does this world need me in this way? Can't I become an internist? Can't I just limit myself to marveling at the wonder of the human body, the process of disease, the art of medicine. Can't I? Can't I?
I suppose in my heart, I know the answer. And I couldn't live with myself otherwise.
As in all things, God will make a way. He will allay all my fears. I just have to have faith I suppose. And I have placed my trust in no better place then in Him. He of course has delivered on many occassions. He has shown me that the world is greater than I could ever expected. I know. I believe that if I follow where He leads, just as I have in the past, He will lead me to my greatest joy. He has already.
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It deserves merit to think:
Not everybody thinks the way you do.
Not every doctor would be just as excited talking about imagined communities and regional health systems as she would SLE and hepatic encephalopathy.
Sometimes, you just need someone to remind you who and what you really are. And who and what you really want to be.