The Female Doctor.

It buzzed in my ear like a bad bout of tinnitus.

“The worst woman to marry is the female doctor.”

A few weeks ago I attended a talk on balancing family and medical life as a doctor, held by two female senior doctors who had their fair share of challenges throughout their lives and who loved God, their families and jobs passionately. The talk was encouraging, enlightening, but a tad disturbing, too.

“The worst woman to marry is the female doctor,” said one of them. It stuck in my mind like bubblegum on a train seat.

While it is of course a generalisation and a sweeping statement, I could understand where the speaker was coming from. Sure, there’re many wonderful female doctors out there who’re good mothers and daughters and wives and humanitarians all rolled into one. But it was quite clear to me, that I understood what she meant, and where she was coming from.

Because it’s no fairytale to be attached to a doctor. Maybe it’s still moderately acceptable to be attached to a male doctor if you’re a very understanding wife, but to be attached to a female doctor… who falls into a particular kind of category… especially when one is not from the medical fraternity… can be… quite sobering, actually.

We’re in the hospital before dawn and depending on which specialty we’re in, we leave by dusk, if not, later. For the first many years of our working lives, we’ve to do 36-hour shifts once or gasp, twice, thrice a week. We are in the wards, running about, sometimes up and down stairs because a patient needs to be seen NOW. LIKE NOW, DOCTOR, COME NOW!!! We are assertive because a doctor very often has to be the leader and give clear instructions to the team, or at least, be trained to be decisive and upfront, because if not, SOMEONE MIGHT DIE. By the time we get home, we are tired and need to study for the next day’s work and next exam. (There are always exams, even while working. We are constantly being assessed by The System. ) We have a 5-year bond to fulfill after graduation. We might need to go abroad to further our studies for a year or so, even while pregnant or married. We are competitive, strong-willed, financially stable, and fiercely independent. We don’t need you to buy us pretty things because we can get our own Kate Spade if you don’t. (Of course it’s nice if someone does, but you get my point.)

Scary, aren’t we. Or so she portrayed anyway.

She told us her wake-up call came one day when her husband who isn’t in the medical profession told her he was tired of her running the family as if she were running a hospital ward or the emergency department. He gave her feedback that he wasn’t her nurse. Ouch. It was then when she had to take a stop-check and fall on her knees to ask God for strength, wisdom and a spirit of gentleness at home.

The talk, among other things, sobered me.

My injury showed me how busy I already am even without training. On a typical day, I train in the morning, get to the hospital by dawn, work till evening, attend talks/conferences/bible study/church at night, study when I can, journal, and then fall asleep. Weekends are fun, I train more, and do my little artsy-fartsy projects to keep my head sane. I made a commitment to myself and God that I wouldn’t see anyone until I graduated, because this season is important for me to focus on personal growth and getting to know God more. I’ve only just tasted the goodness of life after recovery, and tasted what life with God should be like. Pastor S confirmed it, and said when the right person did come along at the right time, things would be sealed quite quickly and divinely. I think I believe her.

But it’s also true, how some part of me is terrified, too. I like spontaneity, change and freedom-those clingystickybubblegumchewygooey couples reeaaally get under my skin. I am allergic to them by sight. And I am afraid because I have seen so many unions fall apart. I have seen and heard dramas unfold, in the most tragic, graphic and treacherous of ways. While seeing more heartwarmingly lasting marriages at church and the mission field has helped strengthen my faith in this area, there is still fear, resistance and a great deal of skepticism. The female doctor complex is not helpful.

One of my professors shared with me over lunch that his girlfriend (now his wife) broke up with him during his housemanship year (the year where one never sees daylight and does 36-hour shifts once, twice or thrice a week) because she couldn’t understand why he had to work so much. He fell apart in the operating theatre one day and cried his eyes out. (Don’t worry, he wasn’t operating.) That was when he knew he couldn’t live without her. Many years and hurdles later through the medical minefield, they are happily married and having their first child.

I could see why things happened that way. I mean, this job is… in some way, insane. It baffles me to know how anyone could tolerate this crazy life led by their spouses.

I used to think it was terrible for medical professionals to get together because each was so busy- I still think so now. But I now also see how it can be terribly difficult for someone from a different profession to understand the terrible demands, emotionally and otherwise, of this very unique and demanding profession which forces one to grow up too soon, too fast. One can never get used to seeing death and illness and injustice on a daily basis. All in a day’s work.

Sometimes I come home from a crazy day-one death, one emergency, one really cool operation, then another terrible heartwrenching story, and wish to share the day’s happenings with my family. But no matter how much they love me, they’d have none of it. It’s just too gross/depressing/downright weird for dinner conversation. Think: hey MOM! I just performed my first rectal/vaginal/eye examination today! They try to be encouraging, but end up fidgeting with their food and saying, “Oh…er, okay. Good for you?”

I don’t blame them.

At the question-and-answer session, I asked the speakers how they coped with being married to non-doctors. Thankfully, both were married to people from other professions. ” We have our rough times. But understanding each other is very important. And if he’s a good man and really loves you, he would want to understand and support you in every way possible as well.”

Really.

I remembered a female doctor who invited me to her home once for lunch, just so I could see her family. She’s a well-known doctor. Her husband is a technical college teacher. They both share home duties. They have 2 sons. You could tell their love was thick. They laughed about the times she had to take major exams to be a registrar from a medical officer, then a consultant from a registrar, while working and when life was utterly miserable. “He really took good care of me.” They both laughed. Life was tough, but good.

Yesterday, I heard of this high-flying, middle-aged female doctor who only got married 2 years ago. She told all her trainee doctors not to date or get married until they had become consultants because they should know they had sold their souls to The System.

Haa.

I always told God that He’d have to give me a really big, obvious and consistent sign should He find the right person for me. Because in spite of my idealism, what I’ve seen and heard has turned me into President of The Skeptic Society with regards to relationships and marriage. I suppose, nothing short of the drama of lightning and thunder might move me. Just 2 weeks ago as I prayed, the image of a flower bud consistently showed up in my mind. It was like God’s way of assuring me that it’s not time. And if anyone or I should pry that bud open, then it shall never bloom. One day it might, but when, nobody knows.

It was a few days later when I came acoss this quote, ” Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

Life’s greatest risk. That’s what it is. Indeed, God’ll have to move me to take this heck of a giant risk, if I ever do.

Backpacking alone to Nepal and China and India is, I find, far less risky than this Decision. And although I do carry admiration for many of my peers who’ve gotten together, I can never understand how they could get together and commit to each other so early in their lives.

Of course there are days I wish I had someone to take me out. But those times have become fewer and fewer. A few weeks ago, my cycling friends and I went to the jazzy Ben and Jerry’s icecream bar at Dempsey Hill, a popular place for chilling out at night with friends and loved ones. To my horror (and most definitely theirs), I realised that was my first time ever to the place-I have never been much of a night person. I don’t drink a drop, don’t like being around alcohol and would rather wake up at an unearthly hour to bike than to sleep at an unearthly hour. It was then that I wished I had had some company to drive me around, take me to nice places, you know? Yup, here I am backpacking by myself to rural ends of the earth, and then complaining I’ve not been to Dempsey Hill because no one is taking me. Riiight.

The future holds a great deal of uncertainty. I no longer know what specialty I’d like to pursue. Obstetrics and Ophthalmology look far away in the horizon for many reasons. All this, plus everything else, makes this female doctor feel very terrible and terrifying indeed.

So I suppose, it is a good thing, that I am a bud now, because God knows I need so much time to sort these things out, to let His plans unfold in my life. I’m just a big kid trying to grow up in time.

The future holds so much uncertainty. Nonetheless, the only thing that comforts me is knowing that like the flower, everything happens in due season, even if it takes a long time.