Unwanted Glories !

Back from another Graveyard shift,,Sitting down to write this to the back-ground score of the market update on CNN-IBN (?), and I see that none of the blogs I follow have been updated,,Hey Guys, wake up,,I am feeling extremely lonely here.

There was a comment on one of my recent posts asking why I hated my job, We doctors save lives, said she,,

What can I say? Some how going through her comment, I felt as if the world, or some part of it at least, sees Doctors as some sort of Super heroes,,We are not, super-heroish, I mean,,Being a doctor may be a matter of choice for some, or just a matter of fulfilling long cherished, unfulfilled dreams of their parents for some others..those they could not attain, themselves,,The day we join this supposedly hallowed vocation, we are somehow meant to leave back all traces of human desires and feeling behind us, akin to an Exile. We are meant to be kind, compassionate and gentle, while dealing with patients and their relatives,,but meant to overlook the facts that we have families too, those that look up to us, whose needs are supposed to be met by us, jobs we almost always fail miserably at because of financial restraints,,Finances play a very important part in every Doctors life, contrary to all the nobility associated with us, and the seemingly invaluable services we provide, to humanity, (not my words, I assure you) We are almost at the bottom-most rung of the pay-pyramid amongst all professionals. A graduation takes us six years, six back-breaking, gruelling years of mugging, swotting, toil and tolerating back-stabbing inter-class and inter-institute politics, and at the end of which we are paid far less than say what an Engineer is, or a Management grad is,,Fair? And we are supposed to love what we do?

All my social interactions are limited to people with various ailments and their families,,they are the only people I meet every day.. At the end of the week, you are longing for a conversation that does not deal with the mind-numbing details of these poor people and their ills,,At the end of a "normal" shift, you are so drained, exhausted, mentally and physically, that the only thing you want, desperately, is to crawl into bed and go to sleep, and the dreams that follow, on the days we have them, are filled with weird, scary images,,,,It is no wonder then that so many of us take to drinking as a matter of routine,,nothing else manages to take the edge off.

On the odd lucky day we do manage to get ourselves involved in some sort of a Social-do, there seem to be a horde of people who make a bee-line for you with all the collective ailments of an entire generation,,and you are reduced to a Virtual dust-bin...of sighs, aches and pains.

Bottom line, in-spite of all this we toil on, because we have to, no other choices,,,we are thwarted at every single step by that Power that decides what goes on in this world, that Power who plays us like pawns and we bend to His desires because we are meant to,,, no other choices,,,

Great life, that of a Doctor..I just wish I wasn't one, my parents have so many dreams and desires that need fulfilment, I so want the Tissot watch I saw the other day,,I so need some time-off (a comment which gets a look from my Boss, we do not ask for leaves,,but accept gratefully what is thrown to us,,), I so want to fall in love, get married to some one who isn't a part of this world of Microbes, test-tubes, beeps and monitors,,and I want to stop being seen as a Super-hero,..

PS. The high suicide rates among us Doctors seem to be saying something,,right?