Dear Mum and Dad, 

How have you been keeping? Is your leg any better since Thanksgiving Dad? I hope it is. Anyway, speaking about broken legs, I was flipping through my diary I wrote when I was in med school and it took me right back to the beginning of the story.

For as long as I remember, being a doctor came with such obviousness, I never allowed myself to look at other career options. I just had to be a chip off the old block. I recall staying up till one every night, cramming in the functions of the appendix and all the possible malfunctions of the gallbladder into my saturated brain. By that point, my loyal ally caffeine, had also left my side, meaning the only thing keeping me up at night was the elation associated with me being able to change my name-or make it longer at least.Being given the responsibility to save lives felt like an important one, but life’s irony is such that this responsibility is what sent three years of unflagging efforts down the drain.

My time at the hospital wasn’t easy. I would have called you more if only every single minute I was supposed to be free, wasn’t spent on feeding insomniacs sleeping pills, or catching up on my ten hour sleep deficit. If I’d known that a quarter of a decade of mugging up the names of ribs and missing out on  Twenty One Pilots concerts is what it took to convoy doctors and follow their orders like a blind zombie, I might have just contemplated going to one of those shows. Being a non-resident medic is by far the most underpaying job to exist. With the phone ringing off the hook every hour of the day, reporting “emergencies” after “emergencies”, and piling patients under my nightwatch, it really felt suffocating to even stand in the hospital, which at that time, I found absurdly thrilling.

Every high however, gradually wears off. Work and stress eventually began eating up too much of my own life. The life outside my  blue scrubs and overpriced surgeon gloves. The life I had ignored for too long. I recall not being able to come home one Christmas eve, and spend the holiday with you guys, because Martha, my ninety four year old patient, had kidney failure on that day. That was it for me. It was all at once, all too much. I couldn’t put Martha over my family; Martha who was going to die in a few weeks anyways. I know a lot of doctors who can choose Martha in a heartbeat. More who pretend they are okay choosing Martha. But the guilt bites you eventually; knowing that either you miss your annual family visits or let your patient die. It just wasn’t for me. It only felt right to honour this responsibility and realise that it’s not one I could take.

I’m sorry if I have let you down by leaving this job, without even providing a plausible explanation for it. Here it is. This is also my official RSVP for this year’s Christmas dinner. One that I can finally make it to.

Love,

Adam