A day at a time.

I remember it was one of those days when I was feeling down and just needed to get away from everything. Even though I knew the beach would be littered with playing children and a boisterous crowd, I took my bike out for a spin.

That week in the Emergency department, I had had the misfortune of treading in the path of the most notorious senior doctor there. Having incurred his wrath through no intentional fault, he vilified me and stripped my dignity down with his barking voice filled with wrath and ridicule. He called me names, threatened to take away my license, and suggested I was incompetent. It was utterly unjustified. I tried to defend myself but things only went downhill. I took it, and held it all in till I got home.

It was one of those days.

In my one year of housemanship serving as a junior doctor, that was just one of the many humiliating incidents that have happened to me. It was not unique. I remembered my first month in Orthopaedics where I cried every single day, having my self-esteem flogged dead by harsh words, unpredictable scoldings and vulgarities in spite of working unending hours and doing my best. By the end of the month, I was broken. I doubted myself. I was close to believing the lie that I was not worthy of my position as a doctor. It took the next three months of being valued and graded positively by seniors consistently to heal the wounds, mauled onto me. But the scars, till today, remain.

Housemen, they call us. In other words, junior doctors. We are all soldiers from the same army, having gone through the same 36-hour sleepless shifts, eating more meals at the hospital than we do at home, forgoing more sick leave than we should have, missing more social events than we wished we did. We’ve been called names by senior doctors in their fits of rage, bearing their unpredictable temperaments, told that we are stupid, incompetent, irresponsible, uncaring… we’ve had patients scratch, hit, curse and spit into our faces. But we press on, we press on because we have to. We press on because there is a cause out there greater than ourselves, and for the doctors out there who do believe in nurturing the next generation, who see us as human beings, too.

We press on because somewhere deep within lies a glass jar full of that warm radiant sunshine we kept when we were medical students, when we were young and naïve and full of golden hope that we would save the world by drinking air and love. We swore we could.

Ten months into my housemanship, having completed 4 overwhelming months of General medicine, 4 depressing months of Orthopaedic surgery and 2 adrenalin-packed months of Emergency medicine, I’m just about to call it a day. But no, I’ve been told I’ve been placed into the fiercest, meanest and busiest surgical trauma team there is in the hospital in my last two months as a junior doctor. So far, no one has left that place unscathed. To tell you I am not filled with dread about my new posting filled with 36-hour shifts and hundred-hour work weeks again which starts in 2 days time would be a lie. To tell you that I’m not afraid after hearing the horror stories colleagues have told me about junior doctors breaking down or being scathingly stoned with vulgarities for inconsequential errors in public would be a lie. Having gone through just a short month of being placed under seniors who have the power to make life hell, I finally understand how one can be driven to desperation and despair. Medicine, hasn’t always been pleasant for the most of us.

But healing, yes. Healing, because it has scarred and caned us in places we never knew we could be hurt. We are looked up to outside the hospital, we are the centre of conversations at family gatherings, the envy of friends in social events, but within the white walls of this sanitized place, we hang our heads low quietly, holding back the tears of walking home at yet another day close to midnight with no taxi in sight, or in the early afternoon after having been awake and running around since 6am the day before witnessing death, illness, loss and tears. We hold the scars in our palms which clench our tattered patient lists filled with life-changing diagnoses, and notes scribbled in various colors the orders of our seniors- heart scans, CT scans, blood tests, operating times… having fought the battles of demanding patients, inexperienced nurses or hostile seniors the night before, having been told to our faces that we are nobody, that the work we do is not half as significant or worthy enough, that we fall short.

Medicine is yes, healing, precisely in that way, because through that we come face to face with our frailties, inadequacies and hurt. We learn forgiveness, grace and mercy towards those who show injustice toward us. We learn joy, joy in the face of all circumstances. We learn humility and gentleness in the face of unfair scoldings and being downtrodden. In the darkness, we have a tiny taste of the rejection, anguish and despair that the poor feel, the marginalized face, and a fragment of God’s suffering when He sacrificed Himself for our sakes.

That day, I went for a ride alone.

And during the ride, because it was so incredibly crowded on a Saturday afternoon at the beach, I was very careful to stick to the rules, rules which I thought were universal: Ride on the left, overtake on the right, slow down in heavy traffic. But it dawned upon me, that whatever the rules were, there were none- people rode in opposite directions, overtaking on the left, riding abreast each other, forgetting to signal, stopping suddenly… and it didn’t matter how “right” I was, because for all it was worth, if an accident happened, it would be to nobody’s profit.

That day, I learnt a very important lesson.

In real life, few play by the rules. In professional life, we ought to be courteous, compassionate and responsible. There is a professional code of conduct we all think the civil should follow. But in real life, people can be curt, compulsive and demanding. Behind closed doors, they can strip you naked of your dignity and throw dirt to your face. Unreasonableness, can take on new meaning when you are lowest of the low, and made to remember that. For all your effort to stay on your own lane and ride responsibly and courteously, somebody else’s reckless riding could knock you off your bike and fling you to a muddy drain. There will be bloody abrasions.

Looking back at my traumatic experience in the orthopaedic trauma team (no pun intended), and knowing that I’ve been rotated to yet another surgical trauma team next month, I wonder if God is giving me a second chance to apply the lessons I learnt there in this situation. Humility, submission and gentleness. Humility: being hurled verbal abuse even though one is right; submission: submitting to the authority God has placed above you, even if you think they may not be worthy of respect; gentleness, staying meek even though situations tempt you to talk back, fight back, tooth and nail.

What does it mean to shine, blameless and pure, in a crooked and perverse environment?

I am challenged.

But I maintain, that Medicine is healing. In my broken, fractures places, I have found God to be hidden within; in my scars of bitterness, I have found forgiveness; in the crevices of my heart, infected with selfish ambition, I have found humility. In the heat and depths of depression, I have found my worth and security and identity, not in what seniors or people think of me, but in what I root myself in. No matter how we have been vilified, we can always go back to that God-shaped jar of sunshine and find our honey-suckled God-shaped dreams placed in there for a cause bigger than ourselves.

Just today, over a drink at a place near hospital while talking to a colleague who was giving me survival tips on my new rotation, I could feel my heart sink lower and lower as he told me the hellish scenarios of other junior doctors under this team of seniors. It was then that I heard a voice call out to me. It belonged to a woman whose face looked slightly familiar, “Hey, aren’t you that doctor who gave the talk last weekend?” She walked up to our table. “ I recognize you! I just wanted to tell you, that the sharings of Chew Chor Meng and you touched me the most. I loved your Rainbow book. I just want to say, keep sharing your story of resilience to inspire others.”  

During the mental wellness campaign and public health forum, they labelled me a “resilience hero”. Now I had to apply my own principles into my situation. With this uncanny coincidence, I felt God telling me, I am resilient, we are resilient, if only I put my trust in Him, if only I believe in His abilities more than mine, if only I believe that He will carry me through the distance I think I cannot run.

The past ten months have been tough and awful and fulfilling and meaningful all at the same time. I’ve never grown so much in my life. There’re another two more to go, and I pray that every moment, no matter how awful, unfair and obnoxious things can be, God will use that experience for good. It is only for a little while that we shall suffer. Our wounds, when healed, leave us scars of integrity, grit and perseverance like medals.

As long as we play by the rules and uphold our own integrity, we will enjoy the journey once the roads are clear again. And oh, be all the more thankful for it. They can take away our position, they can take away our pride. But they cannot take away our joy, our self-worth and our hope in a God who loves us. All this, I see as training, for the tough times that lie ahead in the mission field. God is in control. 

One day at a time.

“Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

–Philippians 4

“Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.

On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?

But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

“Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”

But in your hearts revere Christ as God.

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience,

so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in God may be ashamed of their slander.

For it is better, if it is God’s will,

to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”

– 1 Peter 3

“Your attitude should be the same as that of God… who…made himself nothing,

 taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become

blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation,

 in which you shine like stars in the universe… as you hold out the word of life…”

–Philippians 2