My daughter is studying medicine.
My dearest daughter!
In just a few months, you'll graduate from university with a medical degree and wear your doctor's coat. Seeing the sparkle in your eyes, full of excitement, every time your father drops you off at the hospital to pick up your mother after her shift, I knew this day would come. What could be happier than seeing you pursue and realize your long and challenging dream? How could I not understand that when, long ago, I myself harbored the same dream as you?
"It's so hard for a girl to study and work in medicine," my grandfather told my mother the day she received her acceptance letter. My grandmother cried her eyes out, feeling sorry for her youngest daughter, who at home wouldn't even dare slaughter a chicken, and now had to deal with scalpels, needles, pale corpses, and the pungent smell of formaldehyde. All those years my mother spent studying at medical school were countless times she had to overcome her own fears. Even now, though the work has become a habit for her, sometimes it still sends shivers down her spine and stirs up an overwhelming sense of unease, a moment when she sees life drifting precariously before her eyes, like a fragile raft she must reach out to hold onto, preventing it from being swept away by the current to eternity. In that fleeting moment, the idea that it wasn't fate, nor any divine being, steering the ship of life and death, but that she herself was guiding the way between life and death, made her realize just how heavy the medical coat she wore truly was. Waking up tonight to watch my daughter sleep peacefully before returning to Hanoi, I'm troubled by the question of whether my daughter's small shoulders are ready to shoulder such a heavy responsibility.
No matter how many years pass, no matter how society and medical advancements change, no matter how much the role of doctors is eventually replaced by advanced machines, never forget what I'm telling you today. When you receive a call from the hospital at midnight about a patient in critical condition, don't selfishly cling to a good night's sleep and a refreshing stretch to greet the new day, because the dawn will forever fade away for those unfortunate people who depend solely on you. When you see an elderly person struggling to cling to their last days with their remaining strength, don't begrudge them a smile or a word of encouragement. You know, the elderly constantly talk about their passing, but in reality, their hearts are trembling with extreme fear. As a doctor, when you cannot defy the will of nature, you must help your patients accept it with resilience and not feel that their journey is cold and lonely. When you see a mother in pain because her baby is born unable to cry, or when a child never gets to know the person who gave birth to them, think of your own children and empathize with those unfortunate people, just as I, returning home after a birth where either the mother or the baby died, looked at my children sleeping peacefully and cried with gratitude and guilt for my own helplessness towards those people. Being a doctor doesn't mean viewing patients as objects to be examined, scanned, photographed, injected, or operated on. It also means putting yourself in their shoes, feeling their pain, sharing their fears, and fighting alongside them for every breath, every heartbeat against illness and death as if it were your own battle. You must live as if you are living for hundreds of thousands of lives, and when one of those countless hearts stops beating, your own heart must ache as if it had just skipped a beat for a single moment. Compared to overnight shifts, lengthy surgeries lasting for hours, and the suffocating smell of disinfectant and blood, this is the real challenge for those working in the medical profession, do you understand?
We medical professionals face countless hardships. We suffer to help patients recover, and we suffer when patients pass away. Society doesn't always remember that medical professionals are human beings, not gods who decide life and death as easily as a feather. Don't resent them for this, because everyone fears and desires life and death. Just love, be passionate, and be proud that being a doctor means sowing hope, nurturing life, and cultivating the future, my child!
Hai Trieu (Email from Paris)
