the mythical creature

two doctors. one clinic. a whole world of difference.

an idol in modern times is akin to a mythical creature, like the unicorn and elves. i've idolised actors and actresses when i was young, based on nothing more than their looks and the personality that they portrayed in the selected few movies and dramas. as i grew older, faced with the ugly facets of reality, nothing much impresses me. wealth, power, fame, looks, i've seen giants top giants. i have observed them boasting, yet trying to appear modest at the same time. i have seen arrogance and fake humility. can i honestly say i am not also guilty of a certain degree of haughtiness? conceit or impatience, sometimes the lines blur a little.

i met him perhaps twenty years ago. i forget. when i was an still an impressionable individual. i thought that he was the best doctor ever. him and another, who has since passed away. out of all the doctors, and for some strange reason i seem to be seeing quite a few, he stood high amongst them, and i am not referring to his stature.

yesterday i am reminded why i idolise this doctor. he is the very embodiment of what a doctor should be, at least in the perfect imaginary world. he arrives for work at 6 a.m., when most of us are burrowing our sleepy heads deeper into our pillows, denying the existence of the new day. he never hurries during the requisite q & a, listening patiently to your problems and questions and explaining every single thing in depth. his memory is comparable to an elephant. as i have not been back to his clinic for dinosaur years, they have completely vaporised my old records. i sat down with a clean empty file in front of him, expecting to go into detail about my past to refresh him. he took one look at me, a second look, and exclaim ,"haven't i seen you before?". he could go into detail about everything; that hubs is hongki, what problems she had, how hubs' mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, the position of the cancer, my grandmother's cancer even and all these took place a decade ago, at the very least. he will probably serve well as my bibliographer, if i had any story to remember and tell. the next visit, he was there and waiting for us, eventhough we were suppose to be the first early bird patient. he was enthusiastic, he was passionate, he was efficient yet careful about his diagnostic, he was thorough, he was full of energy and he was not young, he was personable. when he referred us to his partner for further consultation, he came in personally to brief him and hear his opinion on the case, eventhough he has an endless flow of patients lined up to see him. he was not only passionate about looking for abnormalities within his field of medicine but the patient's overall health. he was the one who identified mil's lung cancer eventhough his area of expertise was neither pulmonology nor oncology.

how many doctors have you met that are already jaded? too tired to explain because they have met too many ignorant and stubborn patients. too careless with their analysis because they are tired. one more, one less, no difference. too egoistic to think it is their prerogative to keep the patients waiting. too long immersed to be passionate about saving the world anymore. too specialised to even consider that the illness is most probably something else. i had a doctor diagnose my mother as possible parkinson's simply because she was referred from a routine body check for a perceived rigidity in her hand and put on medication to confirm it. the doctor did not for a second wonder if it could have been caused by trauma to the hand muscles. i had another told me my grandfather was fine following his admission into hospital, only to have him pass away in the middle of the night.

befitting this iniquitous world, it is the comparatively lacking one that is conferred with a title. then again, this lack of superficial conferment agrees with his noble image of a doctor. perhaps the other was more qualified, i wouldn't know, but he didn't note an earlier observation on the file in his very hand before providing an inconsistent preliminary diagnosis.

perhaps he is a horrible person in other aspects of his life, i wouldn't know as i do not not interact with him

to all good doctors out there i wish them a very long and healthy life. to all good doctors out there i want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart on behalf of humanity.