“You son, are going to be a doctor. That’s right. Doctor Sohail Abbas. Now that sounds nice doesnt it?”
At 9, I didn’t really know whether it this is supposed to sound nice but I nodded yes anyway. I was told this repeatedly throughout my childhood till the time I entered medical school at 18. I was an ok student in elementary school. Always daydreaming, imagining grand intergalactic wars, Star Wars style, or living as an explorer in different times through history, I was always distracted in school. My report cards from the first through to the 10th grade all say pretty much the same thing. ‘Has potential, can do better. If he applied himself, he could achieve his potential. Vivid imagination but poor attitude in class.’ These were the kinds of comments I got from pretty much all my teachers except the history and sports teacher.
History was the one subject that I adored. I would read all kinds of books on history with the result that I knew sometimes way more than my teacher and that didn’t go down so well. Sports was another area where I shone. I was a natural athlete and played all kinds of sports, eventually settling on cricket as my main sport. More on this in future posts. School was boring for the most part and somehow, I stumbled into high school where I found myself as one of the top students and had to study enough just to maintain my reputation as a ‘good’ student. God works in mysterious ways and I got enough marks on my graduation to get into a medical school.
Scared, confused, apprehensive and alone, I entered the gates of Rawalpindi Medical College in the fall/ winter of 1993. The imposing building off of Murree Road was not exactly welcoming. There was no guide at the gate, you just walked in and had to find your own way to the lecture halls. Being a new student meant being ready to be hazed by your seniors. I was able to make my way to the first lecture with no incident but as soon as it ended and I walked out, I was grabbed by one of the seniors who then proceeded to take me to a group of them waiting. I was made to sing in front of a group of senior girls, scream an obscene name into a lecture hall where a much unloved Professor was teaching and march around in military fashion saluting random people. All in all, it was a decent start to my medical career and those seniors promised to protect me if anyone else tried to haze me again.
The med school years were a great education in the turmoil of human emotions. My own turmoil being my greatest teacher. Maybe I will write about those years in a future post. After graduating, I spent a little over a year as an unpaid house officer in PIMS, one of Islamabads biggest public hospital mostly so I could hang around my future wife who was being paid for her job. The experience was good though I did get to see a lot of the broken aspects of the public health system in Pakistan. My aim was to get through the US medical licensing exams and make my way to the US hopefully. Initially I had decided not to take the exams, but my wife and my mother both convinced me to try. Money was a major barrier as we were dirt poor at the time but as usual my mother came up with the money from her savings.
Somehow, I got through the exams and as luck would have it, made my way to the US for my interviews just 4 months after 9/11. The immensity of the event had not really entered my consciousness at the time. I was just in a daze, making my way to the US thinking about all the Hollywood junk I had digested over the years and which was my main frame of reference in conceptualizing the US. Making my way through immigration, I told the officer that I only had a hundred dollars in my pocket, I still didn’t get the immensity of the steps I was taking. The year went by quick and I found a residency program who would take me, much to my own surprise. I made my triumphant return to Pakistan a year later to get married and in a few months, we were back in the US with nothing really to our name. Charleston, West Virginia was our destination as we made our way to the home behind the hospital where we would spend the next 5 years.
I chose a combined training program, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. Why, I cant really remember. Maybe partly because I really believed that a combined residency would make me much better trained as a future psychiatrist, and partly because I had to convince myself and my family, that I was training to be a ‘real’ doctor in addition to becoming a psychiatrist. They were incredulous when they found out I was going to do psychiatry, how could I become a doc for crazy people they asked.
It has been 14 years since I graduated from training and 9 years since I have been working as an independent physician with my own practice. It has been a journey for sure and along the way, I have met thousands of amazing people whom I have had the privilege to know and treat. Their struggles have inspired me to do the best I can. As the years have gone by, I have had even more appreciation for the tenacity and resilience that these wonderful people have shown while facing down a formidable foe like Depression, Schizophrenia or Panic Disorder etc.
In this blog, I hope to share my own journey, along with some of these encounters with all identities hidden and other random musings. Scattered brained as I am, you might notice me jumping back and forth between different times in my life. I hope you bear me with as I piece together the story and hope that you might find interesting things that might even help you in your own story. The aim is to write at least one post a week. Being consistent has always been a struggle, but I will try. If anything I write piques your interest, send comments my way and I will try to respond to as many as I can.