So this is where my journey ends.. When i first arrived in kuwait for my vacation, i was home sick for toronto and i never expected myself to break down like this.
Ive been pretty emotional and tearful in the past few days prior to me leaving to toronto. Ive been having so many regrets regarding not spending enough time with my family and fears about losing them.
When i firat arrived to kuwait at the beginning of october, my dad told me that one of my aunt"s was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but she was pretty stable and asymptomatic and within one month, ive been informed that her condition has deteriorated so badly and that she has less than 6 months to live. Being a doctor, i know what pancreatic cancer is and i knew that she wasnt going to be cured but just realizing that she wont be here next time i come for a visit has struck me with fear.. Within one month, she recieved a diagnosis of death and within 6 months, she will no longer be here.. Realizing how things can change so quickly !! I realized that it could be anyone else, it could be my dad, my mum, my grandmother, any of my siblings b3id elshar inshallah.
Being abroad, away from family and friends could you put you in that risk, the risk of losing anyone and being left with regrets for not spending enough time with them.
My friends keep telling me that therez nothing i could do and the reason i am abroad is to make my dreams come true, little they knew that i dont see my subspeciality as a dream and it is definitely not worth it but its a choice i made ans i have to stick to it. Dont get me wrong, i do like psychiatry and i have no regrets choosing it as career but its not worth the pain im feeling right now.
My friends and family dont really know what i really feel. I only post my happy moments/pictures. They have no idea how lonely it is there, how tough it is to go through this on my own. Toronto is one of the busiest and fast growing in the world. It is full of immigrants and people seeking a chance to live. Everyone is working hard here and they have no interest in socializing so its hard to make friends here and most people are found in groups, like all asians, all indians, all arabs! Most of kuwaiti students are doctors like me and they are either too busy trying to survive the residency and the on calls or have their own family and satisfied with that as a social life .. everyone thinks of being abroad as a '' COOL '' thing, actually, i used to think the same way .. maybe it is a cool fun way if you are off as a student, as a bachelor student but definitely it is one of the most stressful experiences as a doctor/resident ..the way medicine is taught and practiced here in kuwait differs a lot from the way things are done in canada. i don't think they train us and prepare us for such responsibility here in kuwait. In canada, you feel as if the medical students are waaay better than you and can handle critical situations better than us residents/doctors. with this, comes great amount of stress, depression and low self esteem. you feel as if you wasted your life away during these past 7 yrs . add to that the long working hours in canada .. the average working hours for any profession is 8am till 5pm but for doctors it can get as hectic as 7am till 7pm .. during my consultation liaison rotation, there were days when i left the hospital around 8:30.. it can get really crazy!
so we got stressful job , no social life and then lack of support. the time difference between kuwait and canada is like 7-8hrs .. even in the lucky days when i leave work as early as 5pm, it will still be too late to call home coz that would be around midnight and most of the people would be asleep by then. you can try staying up late till midnight canada time but then that would be as early as 7 am in kuwait and the majority are busy getting ready to work or still sleeping .. this leaves you with nothing but the weekends to try to keep in touch with people back home.
i have no regrets coming here or doing that .. it wasn't my 1st choice but i know this is happening for a reason and i have a feeling that amazing things will happen in canada .. I'm just saying, its not as easy as it seems .. and I'm not as happy as i pretend. in a matter of fact, i don't dare to show my family and friends how fragile i am here .. in the past few days, i broke down a couple of times and i told a couple of friends about it, a lot of em were shocked and didn't know why i was crying. they thought things were perfect here and that i was having a blast ..
i think I've ranted enough …
just wanted to get these thoughts off my chest . and I'm beginning to get really sleepy right now .. i still have 2hrs before my next flight, I'm so drugging myself out and sleeping the whole flight ! its 14hrs25min flight and there is no way on earth that I'm going to stay awake all flight long.
sadly, im reaching toronto around 5pm so i can't just jump in bed, i got one day to fix my sleep which is impossible but one can only hope right? so ill probably go for some grocery shopping then deal with the piles n piles of mail that i know that they r waiting for me and i bet most of them are bills!
cant keep my eyes open anymore
