hey
how are you today
good good
so i've known you for a really long time
and i value your friendship
not only as a really old childhood
friend but also all the free medical
advice you give to the whole batch
thank you so much for being there it's
my honor
uh so you know we were talking recently
that you've gone through some personal
challenges
and as a physician who's practicing
medicine in the u.s
let's hear what you've gone through and
your journey
well uh thank you for offering me this
opportunity to talk about it
and
since we've known each other since
childhood
i know
i can talk freely
and
i don't fear
being judged
so
i moved to the u.s uh
about 25 years ago after i got married
and um
you know to get into medical practice in
u.s is a big challenge
uh combined with that new country new
culture
new family
um all of those challenges uh affect
everyone and
they also affect physicians
during
those
challenging years of
training and
practice
Story
we physicians uh are expected to be
perfect human beings
uh we build a lot of pressure on
ourselves
you know we are highly functioning
but
sometimes uh this gets the better uh out
of us
and we we seem to think we are
invincible
and we can
overcome all challenges
uh without seeking help
so actually within the physician
community in
u.s there is a lot of anxiety and
depression
and
there are statistics that there is a
high rate of
suicide in physicians
a lot of
professionals
Support System
do not seek help or seek help late
so um since i was aware of this and
i have had a very strong
support system
family but yeah i have a wonderful
husband who is not a physician
who has always been
there for me
and i would always get the
the non-physician human
sort of abstract perspective from him
that after all
being a physician and your profession
uh is
a part of you
but
you know you do have the same challenges
as anyone else so
for a long time i
fought it on my own
but
a few years later
i actually
seeked counselling
and that counseling helped a lot
and
i have been able to
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enjoy my life more
Advice
and also um
professionally
i feel that when i see
patients
suffering those
those issues
i have more empathy for them you can
relate to it i can relate to it yeah
so you it's basically what you're saying
is that
you just need to be a perfect human
being right being a
highly professional doctor
you can't seem vulnerable
you need to
just be the right in the right you know
check mark all the boxes i know i know
and i
that is what i want to convey
that
physicians have the same inadequacies
same fallacies
and
i would encourage
anyone and everyone
to
be at ease with yourself
tread
lightly
you know have a light heart
because ultimately
you know ultimately
most of the uh problems are in our minds
so we are always living either in the
past uh carrying that baggage
or living in the future where we think
that
one day
life will be perfect
but
we should always bring ourselves to the
present that this is my personal
uh
i would say
learning yeah that
you can never have a perfect house you
can never have
a perfect spouse or perfect children
but what you have today can be perfect
yeah true great thank you so much either
great talking to you thank you
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