I moved to Arizona this time last year and on my first day we met our closest neighbors Dr. Roger Olade and his beautiful family. Over the last year I have grown quite close to Roger and it is fascinating to see what doctors are like away from the hospital. Dr. Olade specializes in internal medicine her in Arizona, although he can turn his hand to quite a number of medical branches, he even helped me to take action against my back when I was in terrible pain with a muscle injury. Not many of us have the chance to see the real person behind the medial gown, so I thought that I’d offer an insight based on my experience.
Emotional
We all think about doctors as being almost robotic in the way that they treat patients, viewing them in the same way that an electrician would view a fuse box, with absolute pragmatism and zero emotion. This however is not the case and what many doctors do is to push the emotions to one side whilst they carry out their duty. The problem with this is that those emotions must be dealt with at some time or another and I have had lengthy chats with Roger about this and how he often struggles with the emotional pressure that he is under.
Studious
I innocently thought that when doctors had completed medical school that their studies were over, but this is simply not the case. In fact I cannot tell you how many times I have seen Roger in his study in the wee small hours, and when I have asked him why he still studies, he tells me that he has to. The reason for this is that there are always new and exciting treatments in how we deal with diseases and disorders and doctors must stay on top of this new information in order to help their patients as much as possible.
Fatigue
We all know that doctors must work very long hours but what many of us don’t see is the impact that these long hours have on our medical professionals. I have spoken to Roger on a number of occasions where he has barely even known what day of the week that it is. Of course he is always rearing to go when he is at work and fatigue rarely affects him then, but when he comes home after work I see the other side of him, the side that is tried beyond belief. Worse still, Roger will often talk to me about how during these bouts of extreme fatigue, he often struggles to actually get to sleep because his brain is so wired because of what has gone on at the hospital.
Doctors are very well respected and they certainly should be, especially when you realize what goes on once they have clocked out and go home, truly remarkable human beings.