the future beckons.

Question #1: What is an antioxidant?

Question #2: How could excessive intake of aspartame a.k.a. Nutrasweet® be harmful?

Question #3: Upon entering a ward, which of the following should you do first: check for breathing, temperature or pulse?

We had a late Moon Festival celebration/dice game cum extended family gathering last Monday evening, and all I expected to do was to have some jolly good old clean fun. Never did I imagine that in the short run of two hours or so I would find myself pelted with all sorts of medical questions ranging from the simple to the bizarre.

I guess things like these always come with the fact that everyone looks up to a medical student – never mind that he is only in his first year – as some sort of budding yet know-it-all doctor-to-be. It’s definitely something to be proud of; yet one cannot also help but feel the pressure mount year after year, as the time left before acquiring the prized M.D. title diminishes faster than you can say “schizophrenia.”

Nothing really beats the exaggerated anticipation you get from people around, prodding you on to study fast and graduate even faster so that they could rush in line to be your first patients (never mind the lack of experience). This is perfectly fine with me; though whenever I’m faced with this kind of situation I’d simply smile and coolly remark, “There’s still a long way to go”. Almost immediately, they’d give a cheerful reply: “But oh no – there’s only four years left to go, see?”

Indeed, their light-hearted optimism may be right. When you’re studying medicine preparing for exams week after week, burning midnight candles and consuming books with indescribable voracity, you just don’t notice the time passing that easily. All you see before you is the insistent need to at least obtain satisfactory grades and get a backstage pass to the next year level. Somehow, it is only during breaks that you are able to get a real foothold of time’s fleeting existence. Half a year from now and I would have to change ‘four remaining years’ to three-and-a-half, then to three, and so on. Each time, I’d wonder in amazement how I managed to survive what others termed as the most drastic of pressures, replete with emotional potholes, mental roadblocks, physical exhaustion – the list just goes longer as one climbs the rungs of the caducean ladder.

It doesn’t end there. In fact, many doctors would tell you that after graduation, you are merely getting yourself started – the beginning of a lifetime of healing and more learning. During a recent get-together with high school classmates I casually joked that should we meet again after a few more years, some would’ve already brought along spouses and babies, swapping stories of the workplace, and I’d still be studying. You don’t master the whole anatomy thing overnight; it takes years of repetitive study to make sure you have firmly grasped the concepts and their practical applications.

Yet if there’s a side to the profession that some people might not readily understand, it’s that you don’t only deal with drugs and diseases, though these of course constitute your primary concentration. You also try establishing rapport with your patients, connecting with them, nurturing their humanness – while at the same time meticulously planning your every move lest one minor error earns you an unwanted malpractice suit. You grapple with finding the best vernacular term that comes closest to “cerebellar ataxia” at the same time running a differential diagnosis inside your head.

So goes the truism that doctors are amazing multi-taskers, and that’s what cuts them off from the rest. You attempt several things at once, and you have to make sure you’re fast. I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed a CPR being performed on a critical patient inside a PGH ward. The moment the red signal went off, doctors and residents in the vicinity dropped whatever they were doing, rushed towards the bed and began performing the necessary lifesaving measures. I was only a spectator, but needless to say I felt an unexplained sense of urgency, and I don’t think there ever was better evidence to the fragility of human life.

I know I won’t be able to carry out everything impeccably on the first try. It’d take years of experience to do that, without getting reasonably demented. For the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with answering simple “aspartame” and “antioxidant” questions, without being too technical. And of course, all the while keeping a healthy love for what I’m doing.

The passion stays.

It’s just a matter of time.