The Doctor of Me

I am a 1st year medical student of the year 2012. I am back here in Kuantan, Malaysia for holiday break and will return to Xi'an, China to resume my medical studies a couple of weeks from  now. Since I've enrolled into medical school, I've felt there is an added weight on my shoulders.

I was playing badminton with a few of my friends this morning and this time out of all the other times I have been playing badminton for the last few years, I approached this sport with a different attitude. I wanted to be serious. The goal for me is not to win, but to not make mistakes. It kills me every time when the ball hits the rims of my racket and the shuttle flies far out from the court, or when my smash hits the shuttle a little too early or a little too late and the shuttle gets trapped on the net. I know it sounds stupid for me to say this: I feel horribly ashamed when I made a mistake. Although my friends seems to get used to me making silly mistakes in the game, but after each and every mistake I made I screamed in my heart that "I would never make that stupid mistake again! ARGH!" - and it doesn't work. It never works.

I may get better and better as my body warms up and I become more aware and careful when I meet the same situations when the shuttle is coming fast to my left because I have a weak backhand stroke, or when the shuttle is going near the net because I'm especially weak at the net. I knew I had to be more careful. And I tried, but mistakes - as I should have known - is ubiquitous and inevitable.

I already know that as a human, you are bound to make mistakes. Even in a simple, irrelevant game in badminton, I care a lot when my team fails because of my mistake. As a doctor, a mistake could cost a life. I am afraid the day I make that mistake. I'm even more afraid because I know myself. I know late at night, I grow blurry and don't make good decisions. Even when sometimes I know I am in my top form, I still may become reckless, or forgetful and starts to mess everything up. Being a doctor, there is a culture that we cannot make mistakes and that for me is really scary.

After today's game I had a long time to think. All the more thinking I did, the more depressed I became. More and more questions I ask myself starting with "what if...", and each time I bring up a scenario where a patient, directly or indirectly dies because of my mistake - I did not know how I could ever react to that. I did not know how I could ever face the patient's family. I feel alone and sad and there's no one I could talk to. It's not even something you should talk about or could really proudly admit when you've made a mistake and someone died from it.

I must strive to be perfect.