Medical career

If you have gone through my previous posts where I have shared my blurred ideas and thoughts regarding medicine and health you must have gotten an impression I have regarding my medical career. It's not something specific or constant, it's a continuous evolution of the idea of health and sickness, how to help those at need. Its an exploration of all the different aspects of addressing disease in man. It's an evolution of what the role of a doctor is. The closest description that I have come across is that the The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Who said it? Don't ask please.. Wait.. Let me check, need to give credit. Voltaire it is.

So far I have felt paralyzed to take the first step. So life bit me so hard that I am forced to make the jump giving up my excuses. But yet still I hesitate, I look around at all the different options and I try to make the best choice, but beggars can't be choosers. Take the smallest step forward and make the most of it.

What am trying to remind myself is that I needn't be perfect, I needn't do now what I'll probably be able to do in a few months or years. Life isn't gonna end in the now, it's a continuity and I needn't focus on end results. Only by taking small baby steps will I be closer to where I'll be in future, not by time travel in mind. Total acceptance of the present is the first tiny step in my career journey. And I need to build up momentum once the first step is taken.

So far so little.

The above piece was written a few years ago when I was just starting my medical career from scratch after a break of 5 years post MD. The break was the most torturous and haunting. It was tortuous not because I wasn't working and was apparently wasting time. It was painful because I didn't know what to do. The confusion had become painful even at a physical level. Then I jumped back into medical career at a point when I had no other option. I had to earn my living and like my mother advised, I started with the only thing that I seemed to know a little bit of. The awareness of not knowing anything significant was still huge and painful. It made me a doctor with a dissent against everything I did.
I would love to learn and practice some form of alternative medicine. Being the person that I am I know satisfaction will be hard to achieve and Ill have to explore multiple subjects before I land on the one which feels like home. This feels scary. The long period of learning and struggling is not what I can jump into without a million thoughts.
So I am continuing to do the only thing that I know a little bit of, as a conventional dermatology practitioner. I am happy that this subject gives me the scope of counselling extensively in cases of chronic and also recurrent acute illnesses, the only thing that makes me feel satisfied and whole. Over the years of reconciliations and adjustments my medical related ideas and theories have matured a bit. Earlier when my focus was mostly on what exactly I was doing, what exactly I was prescribing to my patients there was a point when I had totally started detesting practicing medicine. Age does one thing good. It broadens the outlook and lets us see beyond too.  Now I understand that importance of "how" I am doing something over "what" I am doing. I understand the power of true intention and its effect. I understand the meaning of embracing the imperfectness of what is, while shifting focus from what should be. I also understand that the present is ever changing and that patience is a virtue.
Coming back to my blog and picking it up again after a few years is helping me recollect my lost ideas and to pick up the scattered pieces and with it to try to create a life of meaningful work.