Being a doctor, so far

24 May 2025

I've been thinking to myself, that maybe, I'll quit working as a doctor. Maybe not soon but I can feel that it'll happen at some point in my life, but maybe not - so who knows.

Has it ever been a 'true calling?'. Not really, I will be honest with you though medicine has always been interesting. It's a very complex science about humans' bodies and everything surrounding it. In its truest sense, medicine is not as complicated - you eat well, socialise well, get enough rest and accept the fact that we cannot deny ageing and everything will be fine. But that is not the case for most of us - the environment we live in has been intoxicated with pollutants, we've grown to be lazy as a result of the advancement of technology that equips a body of machinery with wheels sending us anywhere we wanna go,  and our genetic somehow betrays ourselves by gaslighting our cells into thinking something's wrong when there isn't. 

Most of them, unfortunately, are the consequences of our own actions or at least, collective actions of our previous ancestors.

I have always loved reading complex cases since I were young, my birthday gift when I turned 16 was an album of complex surgeries, I collected books and familiarised myself with a complex concept of addiction since my adolescence. The concept of apoptosis intrigued me in high school and my favourite book to read at home when I was 5 years old was "Dokter di rumah Anda - in English: Doctor in your house" which is basically a book that contains algorithm that tells you what to do for every symptoms you might develop. 

People would say that I'd be talented as a doctor - even the doctor i visited when I was like 6 or 7 said that I might want to be a surgeon because of how calm I was when I had to get my small tumour excised from my palm. I've always loved donning sterile gloves and be part of paramedics training in my teenage years (the fact that I'd done it three times, in three different languages should convince you enough about that). But the older I get the more I question whether being a doctor is really all about saving people and solve complex cases with everything facilitated and is everything as simple as it's always been described?

My mum dreamt of me being a doctor more than anyone else. I did not want it because I knew it'd be hard and my proclivity towards maths, especially calculus and algebra made me inclined to the more technical subject such as architecture, engineering, or a designer or some sort of.

I admit though that, indeed, there was a part of me that was very much interested in medicine. But it wasn't the 'healing' or 'helping people' that made me interested - it wasn't the money either, I've been aware from my teenage years about how doctors (especially the GPs in Indonesia) don't make as much as people think they make. It was the science, especially in the area of molecular oncology or basically finding drugs for cancer. I finally bent to the wish of my mother and worked my way to get into a medical school in my final year of high school. I somehow, to many disbeliefs, got into the 'ivy league' of Indonesia med school.

I enjoyed studying and working but the older I get, I keep losing balance to life and became less and less happy with everything. I got sick physically and mentally but I kept going anyway because I had to finish what I started. 

I graduated not too long ago, scored at the top 10 percentile. I did what I could to make my parents proud. Then comes internship, chose to be away from my family and wanted to explore the country a bit more. I spent most times working anyway.

I was ready with most things when I started out but turns out I feel like I wasn't even close to being ready.

I hate myself more doing this job more than I hate myself as anything else. I do care about my patients as the people they are and not because I am a doctor. 

I honestly don't care about people's lives being miserable from their poor decisions, I don't care about anyone getting offended, I don't care about the health department being not happy with me sending 'easy' patients for further workups. I just don't care about a lot of things outside the science of medicine itself and what I should do as per textbook doctor.

And no, I am honestly not a fan of poking needles and put them on two different antidiabetic drugs and two different antihypertensives on elderly because to be fair, when they seem fairly healthy, what i find matter would be how they're comfortable and they should spend more time with their grandchildren than waiting on corridors. I am not a fan of prescribing cough medicine on children either because most of them are self-limiting anyway. 

I know these attitudes would cost me a lot and I can already feel slight sentiments from people who are not used to it. How can I convince people who are used to give 2-3 drug injections to people with mild symptoms that the patients, though their discomfort, don't need it?

And no, I am not in this for the money but I am not in it either if I have to work voluntarily especially knowing that there is hardly any war and that the directives of national insurances can have 300 million rupiah per month for themselves. I refuse to work with everything so limited, barely sterile field, when the government can afford a fluffy chair for them to sit. 

I also refuse to humble myself to their rule because who likes a patient being terminal? If I can send a suspected tumour patient for a biopsy, even with being sure that it's 90% gonna be benign, why should I not send them? Because the national insurance decide that after the biopsy that it won't be covered once known it is benign? That's a stupid reason especially knowing that the national insurance have 8 billions of profit per year and they're still asking hospitals to return their money with the accusations of "fraud". 

I am not by any means, a supporter of fraud, but if I have to send my diarrhoea patient back home because apparently they're not diarrhoea enough (at least 10 bowel movements in a day) and their fever has not reached 40C, just for them to come back again on their motorcycle probably on the verge of dying later, I'd rather do the fraud and let them be in a safe space of a hospital. 

At this point, I feel like the national insurance directives should also take oath to not harm patients and that they should be held accountable for every patient that dies because of their stupid rules.

the crazy women

when i was younger i used to hear a lot of the narratives of a "crazy woman" from my older cousins, uncles, and in televisions. at that time, the narrative of a crazy woman, was indeed crazy. women are weird aren't they? them being crazy are laughing matters and we pity them for losing their mind. they work by any means to support the lives they have, often marrying random men for money and still, they are laughing matters. nobody could love them because they are difficult to love and they made all these poor decisions. 

but the older i get and the more i know men, the more i understand that the narratives of crazy women, oftentimes, left out a big chunk of story - her perspective. before they were crazy, they were just women. And before they were women, they were just girls. your uncle, cousins, brother, friends won't tell you that they cheated on their women before they went crazy, they won't tell you that they hit them, they won't tell you that they don't support their women financially while also expecting them to do the houseworks, they won't tell that they've became lazy, they won't tell you about their porn addiction that he himself won't count as cheating. they left those stories out and paint themselves as a saint who, somehow, just unfortunately got stuck with this crazy woman.

as a woman who has been called narcissistic, manipulative and gaslighter after telling a man how i wish i had not been hurt - i start to understand these crazy women. and i thought to myself, that i think the label "crazy women" mostly exist to cover men fallibilities. yes i know i am not perfect and maybe, out of anger, there are some things i wish i had not said or done but i was never crazy, nor being narcissistic for asking that i deserve better treatment and attention without being over-the-top. i am not manipulative for bringing out moments that hurt me to make my points across. and I am not gaslighting when i recall events based on my memories and kept on telling him why it hurt me.

I started to think about all the women i've been told as "crazy". the woman who went into a fashion store while being on a date wasn't crazy - my uncle was just poor and it's kinda his fault for picking someone that obviously looks like needing lavish lifestyle. my aunt who got suspicious over my uncle everytime he goes out wasn't crazy - because apparently my uncle did go out and cheat with multiple women even now that he's 60-something. the first wife who kept calling and spamming my (other) uncle always asking for money for their child wasn't crazy either - it's his obligation to send child support, if he can support a side woman, he definitely should support his child. my female cousin who got chained at mental hospital after birthing 8 children and still being asked for more while also being cut from her support system at the same time isn't crazy, she has every right for the crashout when she's being treated like a baby machine by her husband. my friend's mom who had married 2 or 3 times to random widowed men isn't crazy either, she needed help raising her two daughters after her husband went missing. if there's anything, it's these men who should be in mental institutes because abusing someone and expecting them to go on their day without getting reactive is completely ignorant and narcissistic. 

this doesn't surprise me at all. less and less women would want to get married and male loneliness epidemic is raising. if we keep looking at it through the lens of men saying that women become more demanding and lazy, we should never forget the abuse these men has put to women before us and still choose not to settle until they've proven themselves as worthy.

i wanna be pretty

sometimes i wonder if one of those instagram interviewers stop me and ask "how would you rate yourself?" what should i answer?

should i answer "yasss 10!" and just walk away because you gotta fake being confident until you make it right?

but if i were being honest i'd say "2/10, 3 max, on a good day, sometimes also 1/10". not because i am not confident or i hate myself, i just know that in nowadays standard of beauty, im nowhere near. im not endowed, not genetically blessed to appear as "a woman", i don't have the smile of sydney sweeney nor the gaze of adriana lima. my skin full of bug bites, razor mark and my eyes are tired from the screen hours. my hair is thinning and im not as skinny as i used to be. 

and sometimes i wonder if life would be easier if i were prettier, i always think that it would, of course. maybe theyd like me more, maybe they'd fight for my love, maybe they'd treat me better.

don't get me wrong, i do love myself and i don't think im hideous - i just know where i objectively stand amongst all these gorgeous women in the world.

if i were ever be born again, i'd beg God to make me beautiful in my next life.

the dream i've let go of

 when i was a little girl, i used to think that i'll get married and have a beautiful little family to myself. but the older i get the more i realise maybe im not meant for that - i don't feel like i'm meant for love and it's okay. i do envy those people who get to hold hands in shopping mall while pushing a baby stroller. they'd get ice cream and show the very well-dressed baby the fish pond by the shopping mall. but i am also very happy for them, and i congratulate them silently and wish them the best.

i've given up on love - i know it exists but it's not for me. everything with love feels so hollow and empty. it's only a matter of time until they realise that there is someone so much better than me whom are more worthy of loving and have more to give. it's not a bad thing - it is just what it is. im not made for love and i don't think there is love out there that is made for me. i am my own love.