A calling

When I was in sixth grade, I decided to be a brain surgeon. There were several different reasons for my decision. 1) Even before sixth grade, I had considered the idea of being a doctor, but my dream of becoming a concert pianist was stronger. But that year, when I competed in a couple international competitions, I realized that the solitary lifestyle (i.e. spending 8 hours a day alone in the practice room) of a concert pianist was not what I wanted. 2) My favorite uncle’s mental state had begun to degenerate. He started having Parkinson’s-like symptoms, but the doctors were not sure what exactly was wrong with him. (He has since undergone three brain surgeries.) I knew that by the time I become a surgeon, it might be too late to help my uncle, but I wanted to some day help other people’s uncles. 3) I’ve always loved a challenge, and brain surgery was, in my mind, one of the most challenging and exciting things I could think of. There is so little we know about the brain – how wonderful to imagine all that we have yet to discover!

Over the years, I have discovered many other interests and possible career paths, but my heart has never drifted far from my desire to be a doctor. Experiences I have had always seem to affirm my decision. Dare I say medicine is my “calling”? Of course I have to get into medical school first, then get through medical school, get into residency, and pass my boards, but I have faith that if this is truly my calling, everything will work out. I’ve also realized over the past few years that I can combine some of my other interests and passions with medicine. Someone recently told me that God never wastes our talents and skills. Even if we learned something in the past that seems irrelevant now, there will come a time when we will make use of it. I believe this. I believe all the different parts of my life that sometimes seem unrelated will eventually come together, and magic will happen!

Last week, I spent some time with a medical team that came down from the U.S. to provide medical services here in Tegucigalpa and about 4 hours away in Catacamas, Olancho. Whenever I work beside doctors with their patients, I feel so at home… I feel so happy! My heart feels light, my mind is completely focused, and I know there is nothing else I would rather be doing. I also get deeply affected by the patients (which can be a good and a bad thing). We had one eleven year-old patient come in with some type of muscular dystrophy. The neurologist I was translating for explained the different test results for me, speculating exactly which type of disease (i.e. duchenne, becker) the child was suffering from. When he started explaining the CK (creatine kinase, an enzyme that leaks out of damaged muscles) results to me, I was filled with hope for the child because his CK level was not threateningly high – meaning he either had a milder type of muscular dystrophy (good) or his muscles had already degenerated so much that there weren’t more muscles to degenerate, hence the CK levels had come back down after spiking up at an earlier time (very bad). We had hope it was the former situation. But then when the doctor examined the boy’s body and noticed just how weak he was (he couldn’t walk at all, nor could he raise his arms because most of the muscle had atrophied), he began to wonder if the CK level was reflective of the latter situation … and because he had lost so much muscle already, death was fast approaching. The doctor explained all this to me, but wanted to first run some gene tests to substantiate his speculations before giving the mother a definite answer. As I explained to the mother about the tests the doctor wanted to perform, I struggled to fight back tears. As a translator, I was just supposed to repeat in Spanish what the doctor said in English. I wasn’t supposed to get emotionally involved. And I knew that if my voice broke or if tears escaped my eyes, the mother and child would lose hope even before the tests were run and a definite answer could be given. So I fought back the tears and did my best to keep strong for the mother and the child. I gave a smile of encouragement. But my heart was so heavy. It was especially painful because the child was so beautiful and he was so mentally alert. His brain hadn’t been affected by the disease. He was able to comprehend the situation. He smiled shyly and giggled when the doctor examined his limbs and tested his reflexes. And his mother… I could tell she loved him so much. She wasn’t the sort of mother I have been seeing a lot of here over the past few months. She wasn’t going to abandon her son, even though it was difficult to take care of him.

I know that when I am a doctor, there will be many days when I come home and cry. People say it is unhealthy to let your job affect you so much. But how can it not? I don’t ever want to be the sort of doctor who can remove him/herself from the patients, who can leave his/her work at the hospital and not bring it home. If I ever become that sort of doctor, I will have forgotten why I really feel that this is my calling. The reasons I had in sixth grade when I first knew for certain that I wanted to be a doctor may still exist in part, but they are not really the determining factors anymore. I now truly see medicine as an act of service and more importantly, as an act of love. As a doctor, I hope to be able to take some of the burden off of my patient’s shoulders, whether it’s through healing, through answers, through hope, or through consolation. I won’t be able to make everyone better, but I will be able to listen, give a smile, and say a prayer for each and every one.