Stilts.

*Disclaimer: This post may be sightly offensive to some.

It was only recently that I noticed, that he always wears a cap. A worn-out, shoddy-looking cap, so that as people above walk by him, his eyes may avert their haughty gaze. It was only lately that I noticed, that sometimes when I spoke to him while I stood up, he would never look up at me, only to the dirty ground, as if he was not used to eye contact.

So today, I decided, to always be at eye level with Grandpa Zhou.

As some of you know, Grandpa Zhou is the 80-year old busker who sits at the dirty steps of the train station near my house and plays the harmonica for a bit of money. It’s been three years since we’ve known each other, and each of our lives have been drastically transformed through each other.

Today, as I squatted by him in my PrettyFit flats, PepperPlus office skirt and white collared, ESPIRIT office blouse, people, as usual, stopped and stared.

Once upon a time, when I used to buy dinner and sit by him in my running shirt and shorts and slippers, I never felt awkward sitting by him. But as I progressed in my medical training and started to come home in collared shirts, high-waisted skirts, and sometimes, heels, with my handbag strategically hung over my arm for style, and my stethoscope tucked neatly into it, one day I realised, to my horror, that I felt awkward sitting by this old man who wears the same shirt for 4 days and smells odd because of it.

It’s much easier talking to him while standing up. Surely fewer people would stop and stare. But was this what we were called to? Years ago, when I was younger, when I sat at the interview room with grand ideas of saving lives and nursing the sick, did I not say Medicine was my dream because I wanted to heal the sick, be close to the people? Did we not promise we would keep our feet and heads on the ground, where the poor and needy needed us?

Did we not promise that lives, not money, mattered; Ideals, not comfort, drove us.

I now see the challenge, and feel it too. Up and up we go, building stilts for ouselves, leaving the rest of the world down below. We grow to think, it’s too dirty down there below. Perhaps, it takes a maverick to chop his stilts for something better on the ground.

A year ago, our education system changed. With the new residency programme that seems to favour those who apply for specialties early to climb up the corporate ladder fast and furiously, the entire medical faculty has been thrown into a mad flux of competition and anxiety.

APPLY NOW.
DO ALL IT TAKES.
IF YOU DON’T, YOU’LL BE LEFT BEHIND

are only some of the insidious messages broadcasted into our subsciousness. Now, all of a sudden, everybody wants to be a surgeon or an opthalmologist. ASAP. Everyone wants a bite of the cake which promises fast rewards and a fast-tracked career to success, prestige and honour. We have taken axes to make stilts for ourselves, no matter if this process destroys the forest. My stilts matter most.

I have nothing against this new system, mind you. Only something against the spirit of self-striving, insecurity and backbiting in one’s effort to get up there, somewhere at the expense of someone else. Or so I’ve heard.

I’m not sure how realistic it is to apply for a specialty so early in life. Many senior doctors have cautioned, are still cautioning us against it, for it could produce a breed of doctors too specialised and narrow at too young an age, when experience has yet to fulfill its responsibility to our hungry minds. After all, junior doctors often specialised only after working and gaining experience in many fields after a few years.

I’ve nothing against this new system. I suppose, if God has called one to apply for a specialty, by all means, one should go for it. Nonetheless, axes have been drawn out of insecurity, stilts have been built out of fear of being left behind, and the ground has become a faraway place for some, a place we once thought we would be close to, close to the people we once said we would genuinely serve, not for money, not for pride, not for prestige, but out of love, genuity and compassion.

So everyone has been asking me what I’ve applied for. Is it Obstetrics and Gynaecology which was my first love? Is it General Surgery because of my fascination with the operating theatre? is it Ophthalmology because of what God spoke to me? Is it Paediatrics because of my love for children? Or is it Internal Medicine so I can pursue Infectious disease or Geriatrics in the future? Or maybe, Public Health?

It took me a long while to decide,

that I don’t want stilts.

I don’t want an axe to make my own, nor an axe to chop off the stilts of someone else.

I emphasize, there’s nothing wrong with applying for a specialty early,

as long as one’s feet are on the ground. As long as one knows it is what God has called one to do, and not because one is afraid, or insecure, or anxious.

I do not claim the higher moral ground for not applying for a specialty so soon. Each has its own benefits, depending on what God has called one to do.

Nonetheless, squatting next to Grandpa Zhou today reminded me, that once upon a time, when we learnt about bedside manners, we had learnt about the importance of sitting at the patient’s eye level.

It made me wonder: how many of us do that now? As we move from third-year to fifth-year of medical school, our eye levels shift upwards too. We amass more knowledge, we begin to feel more important, and talk down to our patients who lie down, who crane their necks like flamingoes just to hear us spout long phrases and words like colonoscopy and aspiration pneumonia.

Yes, you need a colonscopy, sir. Please sign on the dotted line.

A man in a black shirt stood on the train platform above Grandpa Zhou and I. I saw him from the corner of my eye. Way above us, he peered down, and it reminded me of the many times I had stood and “talked down” to my patients, the many times I had stood to chat with Grandpa Zhou instead of sitting at his level while he huddled by the train steps. The man above was a spectator, uninvolved.

It made me wonder, would I become the kind of high-powered, money-churning doctor who sits high above, peering down at the lives of my patients? My patients, who live in one-room flats and sleep at the void decks and who come into my clinic complaining of gastritis because they ran out of food to eat? Yes, this happens in sunny Singapore.

Would I become a hands-off spectator peering down at my patients, uninvolved in their lives, prescribing medicines too expensive for them to buy, speaking in English with an accent I acquired from a post-graduate degree overseas?

I will never forget, that before we were friends, I hated Grandpa Zhou because I thought he was another lazy old man trying to earn easy money. It was only when I sat down by him one day, at his level, that I saw that he had deformities in his feet and right arm. Work is difficult with a handicap.

So in my PrettyFit shoes, PepperPlus office skirt and ESPIRIT white collared shirt, I forced myself to squat, and told Grandpa Zhou while looking into his eyes, “I have a special task for you. You’ve got to think about what your favorite food is and let me know the next time we meet, okay? We’ll go to a nice place to eat when I have my break in 2 weeks time-a friend of mine is very eager to meet you.”

So I write this down, in the hope that I may always remember, even years after I graduate, never to chop a tree down for my own stilts.

Meeting Grandpa Zhou, has been one of the greatest blessings in my life.