SELFLESS PURSUITS 🧑‍⚕️🩺👩‍⚕️🥼👨‍⚕️🩻

This blog is about the profession which I admire and respect a lot. I got a chance to co-author with Dr Landon Eggleston to present a nice thoughtful post too.

Posted Originally on V S Uma’s page.

Added to the collection on my website so you can find everything in one place—but you can read, comment and like the original post here:

SELFLESS PURSUITS 🧑‍⚕️🩺👩‍⚕️🥼👨‍⚕️🩻

From V S Uma:

Daily writing prompt

What profession do you admire the most ??

I came across this prompt in Wordpress. It was interesting to write my thoughts on the same.

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I respect all the professions in this world. Can we name a profession where it is easy to work with ? None of the profession is easy to work. Each and every profession has its own advantages and disadvantages too.

As a student, to be sure about deciding the profession we want to choose to pursue further to pave an accomplished career is in itself a task.

I have respect for all working professionals in this world. Here,I choose to write a few lines about a profession which I feel is truly selfless.

According to me the profession which I admire the most is that of a “DOCTOR”. There are many reasons to say why I hold this profession on high regard.

This journey begins the moment a student decides to pursue medicine. Becoming a doctor requires immense perseverance, grit ,patience and high levels of tolerance among many other qualities. These traits are not to be adopted, for a short period of time, but, has to be deeply adhered to through out their life. There is no definite end point to doctor’s journey, learning never ceases and neither their commitment to providing care to the patients of all ages.

I always had an immense respect for doctors, but there was a particular experience which deepened my admiration to even further.

A close friend of mine had a fall which resulted in ligament tear in her knees. I accompanied her during her consultations with the doctor which gave an opportunity to see a doctor’s routine from close quarters.

What began as initial consultations soon led to series of tests, including a MRI eventually surgery . During this journey, I realised that it is not only one doctor but an entire whole team work tirelessly behind the scenes. Doctors , nurses , lab technicians, Physiotherapists, and ward cleaning staff contribute with dedication and lots of patience at various stages of treatment

It is true that it is a doctor who is highly skilled in their department earns a recognition and builds a strong reputation. However, what truly defines a doctor is his humility and empathy. They cannot afford to be arrogant or dismissive, instead they must listen to their patients with genuine care and understanding .

Every branch of the medicine holds its own significance, as each and every part of Human body is important. Whether it is a gynaecologist, Paediatrician, Neurologist, Endocrinologist, Dermatologist, Dentists, Cardiologist, General Physician, Orthopaedics. Oncologist each plays a vital role in maintaining and restoring health. Surgeons, in particular, perform complex procedures with remarkable precision, confidence, and calmness, ensuring successful outcomes.

We also cannot forget and ignore the COVID era, when the world was gripped by an unprecedented situation. During that time, doctors and health workers, stood at forefront working relentlessly 24X7 despite the risk and uncertainties.

I could go on sharing many more instances that make this profession my most admired one. However, I hope I have been able to convey my thoughts clearly and help readers understand the deep sense of respect I hold for doctors and the entire medical fraternity.

The popular saying, ‘A doctor is a messenger of God, have faith in them, and the rest will be taken care of,’ truly holds meaning, doesn’t it? I hope many would agree with this sentiment.”

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First, V S Uma—thank you for inviting me into your space. It’s an honor to contribute to a platform that reflects so much thoughtfulness and care.

When I chose to co-author this piece it was because, I think we arrive at meaning from different directions, but we’re ultimately exploring the same thing: what it means to really be present in your life. There’s something powerful about placing those perspectives side by side. That being said, I wasn’t expecting such a kind and uplifting opening to the piece.

You described medicine as selfless, and I understand why it looks that way from the outside. But the truth is, it’s not as selfless as it seems. There is meaning in this work—deep, grounding meaning—and I think many of us are drawn to it because of what it gives back to us, too. Not in recognition or praise, but in purpose.

You asked me to write about how being a doctor has contributed to a patient’s life. I’ll be honest—I don’t always get to see the fruits of my labor, so to speak. In the same way cleaning out a closet gets worse before it gets better, many of my sickest patients look worse before they improve. I’m placing breathing tubes, chest tubes, and other various tubes, hoping it all does its job so someone else can remove them later.

Most of my sickest patients won’t remember me specifically. They might remember the ICU doctor who removed the breathing tube, or feel grateful to the person who took out the Foley (and honestly, I’d probably feel the same way). But the patients who are truly the sickest—the ones where I’m using everything I’ve trained for to bring them back from the brink of death—I very often don’t see them again. They don’t remember me. They don’t come back with some grand gesture of thanks. And the truth is, I don’t think I need that.

I have plenty of patients each day who aren’t critically ill—patients who are kind, who say thank you, who sometimes even send food (always a staff favorite). But the sickest ones, the ones who take the most out of you, I don’t hear from. Instead, I find myself chart-checking them—opening their charts days or weeks later just to see what happened. Sometimes they’ve been transferred, and their outcomes are lost to me. Sometimes the documentation is there, but it’s hard to fully understand who they were by the time they left.

Recently, I had a 50-year-old man brought in by EMS, unresponsive, with his wife and daughter at home. He was incredibly sick. As we were getting him on the monitor and starting an IV, he coded (as in his heart stopped beating). We started CPR and brought him back to life. We stabilized him enough to get a CT scan, but while in the scanner, he coded again. We brought him back again. The scan showed a massive pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lung blocking air from getting in and out the way it should when we breath). Back in the room, as we pushed a life-saving medication, he coded for a third time.

Three times his heart stopped in the ER, and three times we brought him back.

The medication broke up the clot and saved his life. He spent time in the ICU but was eventually discharged with a full recovery—back to his life, his family, everything as it was (maybe just a little more aware of how fragile it all is).

I never heard from him. But one of the ICU nurses told an ER nurse, who told me.

And that’s usually how it goes.

So yes, I do contribute to my patients’ lives—but often in ways that are invisible, fleeting, and unrecognised . I am a small part of a much larger story, stepping in at a moment of crisis and then stepping out just as quickly.

And maybe that’s the part that feels selfless from the outside.

But from where I stand, it feels more like being allowed into the most critical chapters of someone’s life—trusted, for a moment, with something that matters deeply—and then letting it go.

And there is something profoundly meaningful in that.

Not because I am remembered.

But because, somewhere out there, someone is still living their life—and I got to be a small part of why. It is a privilege and it gives my life great purpose. And in that way it is, perhaps, not as selfless as it seems.

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