The Doctor’s Family is the topic for the week. This from the host:

Some guide questions as follows. Remember, you are not limited to the guide questions. These are just questions for you to ponder on. But I’m sure you have your own creative way of expressing your thoughts!

What was your family’s role in your decision to become a doctor? Did they encourage you? Did they discourage you?
Was there a doctor in your family that influenced you to take the same path?
How did your family show their support during the time that you are still pursuing your training? Did that support continue after the training and when you started your practice (knowing how little a starting doctor earns)?

For those who have shifted gears and turned to another profession, how large was the family’s influence on that decision?
If you are single, do you think that this is because of your pursuing medical studies and training?

If you are married, at what age did you get married? Did you marry a fellow doctor? Or somebody in another profession? At what stage of medicine — in school, clerkship/internship, residency/fellowship or when you were already practicing? Did medicine enhance or hinder your relationship with your spouse and children?

What family decisions have been altered because of your obligations to Medicine?

What career decisions have been altered because of your family’s needs?

What is your current priority?

.....................................................

All my close friends know that the very first time I saw this classmate in Medical School who would turn out to become my best friend and wife, I went to her and told her that I was going to marry her someday. I don’t want anyone to think that I was some kind of Lothario, we went out a total of three times that first year of school. Lunch at the now defunct Cosa Nostra, supper with a group of friends before the Christmas break and one real date before we adjourned for the summer.

It was always clear to both of us that we needed to focus on our studies if we wanted a ticket to the real learning ahead. We never bothered to apply to any of the local residencies because we wanted to begin living on our own resources as soon as we could. We knew we could never be truly autonomous in the Philippines and fortunately, we matched to the same hospital in Brooklyn, NY. As soon as we had an employment contract, we got married. 18 years ago, May 26.

Many say, training in the Philippine General Hospital is toxic, with all the poverty and disease and frustration in treating patients amid rudimentary facilities. Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn was the second largest county hospital in the US with a 90% AIDS rate in the medical wards in 1990. My wife and I look back often and remember that we were very happy during all this training. All those years were very happy ones.

We decided to stay on in a sparsely populated town in the Oklahoma panhandle because we felt it was the best place to raise our children. Safe and quiet, where most everyone knows you. Our daughters would be out there playing until 9 in the evening.

It was difficult bringing our kids back to the congestion, heat, violence, corruption and mosquitoes but we felt a more important lesson was to be learned. We saw older, successful physicians and it no longer became sufficient to raise Harvard graduates, live in a gated community nestled in an exclusive golf enclave, own a Bugatti.

Family teaches you what matters. The brevity of our lives makes it vital that we begin as soon as we can to find meaning through serving the never-ending line of people in dire need.