why i wanted to be a doctor

after surviving 4.5 years of medical school, i realized that i've been caught up in the world of books and knowledge. the more i study, the more i forget why i wanted to be a doctor. i realized that the empathy and compassion that i feel for the patient decreases as there is an increase in the knowledge i acquire. why then do we want to know every little bit of detail? Is it really important that we know about the million causes of a rash? Or is it more important to remember about the psychosocial needs of a patient? how many times have we felt better just by stepping into the doctor's office even before the doctor prescribed any medication?

i had a very inspiring tutorial this week. a classmate asked the doctor how is it that he can continue treating HIV patients even though it is a disease largely caused by the patient's sins. the doctor asked him instead, how do you know that the patient with HIV is a bad person? we all know that HIV is spread via unprotected sexual contact with a person with HIV and we are quick to label these people as sinners because they must have visited sex workers or are just plain loose. even then, is a person bad just because he has done wrong in one aspect of his life? is a person good if he's a virgin?

i guess the stigma of HIV started when the infection started appearing in our midst. the earliest group of patients were the homosexual males. HIV is then associated with promiscuity. I am guilty of it myself. I've often thought to myself, the patient got this disease because he visited sex workers even though he has a wife and children, he must be a bad person. I am wrong.

villagers in rural China contracted it because they donated blood.

young girls forced into prostitution because of poverty. their customers refused to use condoms.

22 year old girl got it from her boyfriend.

wife contracted it from her husband and spread it to her newborn.

a chronically ill patient who requires numerous blood transfusions got it from a tainted packet of blood.

a man who tried to stop a girl from committing suicide was bitten by her. She is a known case of it. will the man get infected? what will happen to his wife and kids?