Sometimes it unbelievable when I think about just how long ago was it that I was filling in that JPA application form and ticked the 'Perubatan' box.

Medicine has taught me so so so many things.

People misunderstand what the commitment really means. The box doesn't tell you of the nights you have to go without sleep, or the days you have to with coffee to stay awake in class. They don't tell you of the number of patients you have to clerk and remember how to present to your superiors. They don't tell you either about how you have to work for 24+12 hours straight if you actually want to get work done and not just pass it on to the next colleague. Nobody tells you how after a whole day of learning you come home and the first thing you need to do is study again, because tomorrow is a brand new day and brand new questions awaits you. If you don't keep up, so would mistakes. Nobody tells you how many systems you have to read and remember in order to be holistic, and no one would surely tell you the number sacrifices or how far you need to plan ahead to beat your own due dates.

Nobody tells you how horrible you feel when you cannot answer a question, and you think about what would have happened to the patient if you had been this careless when treating them next time. Nothing compares to the tears of a mother of an inevitable miscarriage and definitely not one of an oncologist who lost her husband to cancer. Nobody tells of the politics that goes on behind the scenes in the places you work, you study and the people who suffer because of that. None can describe the frustration felt when you stop and question, why in the world are these people here if they when it seems like that's the last thing they want.

No one tells about how much the specialists slog and the housemen scrape to get through each day with limited resources and energy. Nobody tells you how little hours a MO on call spends with her infant daughter at home and they definitely keep the angst of reading yet another wrongly prescribed medicine in the books from you. No one tells you how many relationships are broken up due to scarcity of contact. No one tells you how limited your options are after you graduate. Ironically the security that all parents thought medicine could provide for their children would present itself from the opposite direction. No one told you that the way the country is going now by 2020 you may be jobless as a houseman. No one told you that by the end of 5 years you'd most likely have to leave the country to specialize elsewhere. No one told you that not everyone is as lucky as that, to be given a chance to leave.

But let me tell you about the most important people in a medical field. The Patients. They don't tell you how painful it is when you poke and prod in a case of perforated acute appendicitis. They tell you it's okay when you fail your fourth attempted cannulation on their arms. They laugh as they thank you and try to match make you with their nephew before they leave the a&e. A mother cries as she tells you that there is really nothing wrong with her son.. he's only autistic. They share how it's always been difficult to open up to people around them, how much they've wanted to die, and some even how they've even planned and attempted suicide; but here they are talking to you. They don't say how it feels to live everyday at the mercy of strangers, strangers who look tireder than themselves and snap at any persons nearby. The mother of 2 doesn't tell you how embarrassing it is to give birth to her set of twins in a room filled with people lining up to the doors. A father carries his daughter with hydrocephalus out the door amidst the stares of people around him. The lives of PPKP's who work over time and risk their health fogging in an outbreak area without proper equipment and supervision. The uncle with bladder CA who longs to go home but cannot as his relatives refuse to accept the responsibility to look after him. A hospital security guard who so obviously have the facies of a trisomy 21 and yet there you see her, everyday on the ground floor in the hospital. The fruit uncle who stays and sells his jambu come rain or shine. Uncle RawT who's fed generations after generations of surgeons. It never fails to amaze me how despite all the pitfalls that becomes of their lives, there they are, day by day, incessantly.just. there.. And nothing so wrong with us could warrant enough to turn them away.

Medicine.

You have stolen my heart.

So don't give it back to me, not yet.