From the Diary of a Doctor’s Child
From the Diary of a Doctor’s Child: a daughter’s story of growing up with a father who was always on call, and of learning what it truly means to be a healer.
I am a doctor’s child, and where other children my age had fathers who worked precisely from 9 to 5, I grew up watching a man who was always busy. And by always, I mean he worked at least twelve hours at the hospital and then twelve more from home answering calls, ordering tests, and checking on patients. Sometimes, he didn’t return home for a day or two.
And then the canon event for every doctor’s child: I had decided that I would never go into the field.
Not because it was hard, but because when we sat at the dinner table to spend a treasured 30 minutes of family time, eating what was the only meal we could have together, we would wait in anticipation for the dreaded ringtone, signalling another call needing my father’s attention.
Because I had accepted that there was no way doctors could simply… live.
I clung to this notion until I started noticing the nuances of my father’s life.
Our movie outings were somehow never compromised. I always got all the love and attention one could ask for. And despite working hours that stretched to infinity, he always did everything with a smile on his face.
I finally asked him,
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Well, your job is incredibly tiring; you work all week, but you are always the life of the party without fail. How?”
“Because, beta, my work is my passion. Medicine and diagnosis, to me, is art, as if solving cases just like Holmes, mulling over them until the puzzle pieces fall into place and in the end, it is always fulfilling to see a patient be healed, you know?”
His words clicked in my mind, a certain memory making its way to the very front: a patient who was near succumbing to his condition, whom my father was able to treat after days upon days of work. An ornate frame was sent to our home with the following line inscribed on it:
“You are not a doctor, you are a healer”
On that day, I realized that my father was my own, but he also meant something to the numerous grateful hearts who held him in the highest regard.
Will I ever become a doctor? … Probably not.
But I am endlessly proud to be the daughter of one.
