Dear Doctor,
Please let me start off this letter by letting you know my admiration for you on choosing this profession. Obtaining a medical degree is no easy feat and you have come a long way from cramping studies and prepping for your exams on all those sleepless nights.
But dear GP (general practitioner), please don’t assume that I will google all my answers before I go to you. Please have patience and hear my worries, hold my hand and tell me the truth.
Please, Doctor, with your respectful profession, don’t dismiss my questions and tell me to find my answers on the internet. Please don’t scoff at my anxiety and think I’m exaggerating. If I’m worried, you need to address my concerns and not dismissed me because you have a queue outside your door.
I may have ‘just a cough’ or underlying I may have a lung infection or something even worse. Please don’t send me away with over the counter medicines and wait until my fourth appointment with you before diagnosing something serious.
Or what about the time I visit you because I couldn’t sleep due to body aches. You took one look at me and my baby, in your expert opinion, diagnosed exhaustion and send me home to rest more. In the end, I was hospitalized the next day with dengue fever.
Dear Specialists, I know you have a specialized field whether it is gastrointestinal or oncology or some long funny sounding medical word but you are my ward doctor. Even though you volunteer to take on a certain number of patients with general illnesses to fulfill your ward duties, thank you for not taking my dengue lightly.
Your serious concern and gentle care show as you pop in to visit me twice a day as early as 7am. Thank you for being my nagging mother to remind me to rest more and stop touching my iPhone. And thank you for granting my request to be released early to go home for Christmas.
Dear Dentist, I know in many people’s eyes you are no doctor but to me, you are a doctor of dental health and that’s good enough to me. Thank you for not overcharging your fees. Please do know that we couldn’t voice out if we want which kind of treatments done or if we want it at all when we are in your chair, mouth wide open with your sharp tools in it.
Please let us decide what options we want and not choose the most expensive or drastic ones for us. Maybe we prefer to suffer through root canal treatment than to have the molar pulled out. Maybe we like to have composite fillings instead of amalgam ones because of aesthetic purposes. Please let us have a choice.
Dear Obgyn, you are the one person in the world I trust the most because I place my life and the life of my unborn child in your hands. Your monthly appointments are something I look forward to.
Please allow me to take videos of our visits. The grandparents are dying to see her ultrasounds. Please listen to me as I whine about my backaches, leg cramps and don’t be quick to judge me with your eyes when I confessed to you I accidentally ate Tiramisu while pregnant.
Thank you for not rolling your eyes as my husband bombarded you with million and one questions every visit. And allowing my 30 odd family members to squeeze into your tiny consultation room altogether so they can hear the tiny heartbeats of the unborn baby.
Thank you for popping into the delivery ward every hour just to reassure me that you’re around and on standby, waiting for her to be ready to get out into the real world. Thank you for your smooth and calm voice, gently encouraging and gentle hands as you coax and guide my little one out into the strange new world.
Dear Paediatrician, I know you must be extremely patient. Otherwise, how would you have chosen to specialize in pediatric and have your patients to be the little people. Specifically, little screaming people. Thank you for listening to us – parents as we squirm over every little cough, sneeze and bump on our children’s head.
Please reassure us that this phase will pass over like all the other phases and that she’ll outgrow screaming on top of her voice / banging her head on walls for the fun of it / having night terrors/teething pain soon before we lost our minds.
Thank you for being so gentle with us when we squirm and scream as you jabbed our precious ones with vaccines. And answer our endless questions about our babies.
Doctors are absolutely noble and thank you for choosing this profession. I salute you and your professionalism. As much as I am aware that there are black sheeps out there for exploitation (which industry doesn’t?), I believe that there are good ones far more than the rotten.
Thank you, Doctor.
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