El futuro doctor

A Second Generation Physician

I am a first year medical student and I am fulfilling my childhood’s dream of becoming a doctor. It was my father, a physician, who instilled in me this dream of dedicating my life to what I consider the most noble of the professions. No matter the man, if he is a doctor, he not only has the ability, but he is there to help his fellow man.

My life’s long journey started around twelve, Sundays while watching cartoons, my father would ask me to go on rounds with him. He would say “I don’t want to go alone,” but in a hospital he was never alone. He walked the halls of the hospital with ease. This medical thing seemed to lack any difficulty. In the eyes of a child, the doctors merely walked from room to room talking to the patients for a few minutes, sharing a few jokes, asking about children, and occasionally I had the chance to listen to the patients telling me how my father saved their legs, or even their lives. This would then be followed by sitting down for five minutes, writing what seemed to me at that time hieroglyphics in a chart.

As time passed, I soon realized that the road to medicine is much more difficult than it once seemed. To become an indispensable resource, doctors spend almost a third of their live, if not more, learning enough information so that when presented with a series of symptoms, they can reply with a diagnosis. Patients believe they can now do that by typing the symptoms into the internet…

The most important reason, however, for becoming a doctor in my mind has yet to lose its worth: that is, the primary responsibility of a doctor is simply to care for people. Just recently my father passed away; I admired his altruism. At his funeral I found myself talking to people of all walks of life, telling me how my father changed their life for the better because he not only cared for them doing whatever it took to heal them, but more importantly gave them hope and comfort in the face of their illness. Thus, I only wish my life has such worth.