It sounds silly, but it's true.
So many times over the last two months I've wanted to throw it all in and go home... and yet I couldn't. There is nothing else that I'd rather do.
Being an occupational therapist I would say this is because people in life are the most fulfilled when their lives centre around activities (occupations) that are suited to their abilities and are profoundly meaningful to that person.
The whole selection process to get into med hopefully means that we all possess the ability to be good doctors!
However what makes medicine so meaningful that people stick at it- even when it seems to take all they have and more?
My peers have given a variety of responses from: it's a challenge, my parents want me to, it was the next logical step etc. Most though, would say that apart from wanting to help people- they find medicine the most fascinating thing they've come across. It's a passion that bubbles up from deep within us.
Personally I have two reasons for studying medicine. Firstly I have loved 'blood and guts' for as long as I can remember. For example as a little girl I came home to find my cat had cut open her abdomen while jumping over a fence. Carefully I laid her down and gently probed her stomach fully absorbed in viewing the exposed muscle. This is not a normal response. Later I did cry and dream about her for months when she died a day later. Everything we have studied so far in medicine absorbs me in this way. It's as though every week I fall move deeply in love with medicine.
My second reason is what gives me the motivation to study when my eyelids are twitching with tiredness and the sun is calling me out to play. It's the deep set feeling that this is what I was created to do. I remember looking down at my hands in grade four thinking that they were made to heal. In year eight I would sit next to one of my oldest friends and we would joke that there are some very vulnerable people out there that needed our help- without us they would surely die. We would imagine these people as ducklings with a crocodile following them eating them up one by one. I have no idea what made me think that I too wouldn't be eaten (maybe I was in a boat)!
Over the years this metaphor grew to illustrate people in developing countries who were living restricted lives or simply dying prematurely because they didn't have access to world class health care. Desperately I wanted to go there and provide them with that care. Sometimes I would catch glimpses of myself in the future doing this. I saw a clinic, made out of dried mud, with kids running in and out laughing and one of them held flowers for me. I stood in the door, full of joy, with a stethoscope around my neck. Glimpses such as these would be painful when I thought that I'd never get into medicine. Now however they are a source of inspiration. I am not studying simply for myself. The more I learn, the more I will be able to help my future patients. It is an act of love for those I do not yet know. What a romantic notion! Who does not want to be a hero, who overcomes many obstacles to rescue people?! I wonder if others have their own 'ducklings'?
The friend who used to sit next to me in year eight gave me a plastic duckling that sits next to my laptop. I've included a photo just for fun.
Usually I finish each post with my favourite medical fact for the week. I'll be brief this time. T cells (are good at killing germs) are white blood cells that are made in the bone marrow and then are sent off to T cell school in the thymus. Here they go through rigorous training and testing- for 2 to 3 weeks. Of these cells only 3% pass their exams and are allowed to leave the thymus and go to live in the lymph system (eg lymph nodes and the spleen). The rest are cruelly forced to kill themselves. We are all (hopefully) born with a thymus which continues to grow until we reach puberty. After this it slowly shrivels and changes into a heap of useless fat, going from 40g to 12g by the age of 50. Why? Well, hopefully by this stage our bodies have been exposed to most germs and therefore have enough memory T cells specific to these germs. As we get older and the thymus starts falling apart, some T cells manage to escape some of the tests in the thymus, which would normally have resulted in their demise. Occasionally these T cells are unfortunately untrained and dangerous- they don't recognise some of the body's own cells and start killing them- hence causing an autoimmune disease. Please med students (if you read this) say if this is incorrect!
So please honour and help us med students who are giving up so much to study such a great discipline, and delight with us that we have the reciporacle honour of studying something so absolutely wonderful.
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