What would you tell your children?

When I was busy applying to University, many people tried to dissuade me from studying medicine. They told me all the true things: that I would often have to work through the night without sleeping; that it would be years and years before I could even think about specialising in what I was interested in, let alone have my own practice; that I would catch nasty diseases from my patients; that I would be studying or working or trying to fit some sleep in while my friends and family had fun without me. I didn't listen to them. I guess at age 16, all those things just sounded... glamorous. And, I naively thought I really loved all people and wanted to help just everyone.

The other day a friend and I were trying to decide what we would tell our children of they wanted to study medicine. It wasn't all that easy. See, in addition to the truths mentioned above, there are other things about medicine, especially South African (or, I guess, any third world) medicine that you will only really understand when it's too late. For example, once you've finally completed your six years of routine humiliation at the hands of countless personality-disordered consultants and registrars, you'll be sent to some place far away from your home and very possibly not of your own choosing, to be abused and humiliated for a further two years as an intern. Just when you've settled into this new place - gotten comfy in your new house, moved in with/married your life partner - the government will once again move you to some backwater town with an unpronouncable name and no tarred roads to practice something that vaguely resembles medicine, but only in the crudest sense of the word.

In this backwater town, you will realise that, actually, you can't change the world when there are a bunch of idiots ruling it, and you'll watch in despair as mothers and babies and all sorts of other people die or become crippled from things you know are perfectly treatable, if you only had some basic drugs and resources at your disposal. You'll become more and more frustrated as half of your patients die as a result of laziness or plain stupidity, and the other half as a result of ignorance and corruption, and you'll wonder why it's called 'community service' as you have no service to offer your patients. You'll forget that you originally became a doctor so that you could cure people (mostly because a cure is as rare as a rabbit in Antarctica) - if you're lucky you'll maintain your strong sense of compassion, but if you're human it'll probably be, well, annihilated as you become completely swamped by people who just want things from you all day long and never seem to be interested in sorting their problems out themselves. After a year (or two, it now looks like) of this, you can go back to wherever you want, but you may very well end up slaving away at something thankless and unfulfilling as you wait for a post in something you really like, which you may or may not get.

But even with all this in mind, I can't imagine myself doing anything other than medicine. Maybe that's because, eight years later, I don't know anything else. But, it's also because there is nothing else quite like medicine. I will always have a job, and there's no part of the world in which doctors are not needed. I seldom have to do anything that really bores me for more than a few hours at a time, and I never have to wear high heels to work. I can leave when the work's done (and ok, often the work just never ends, but when it does come to an unexpected early finish, there's nobody punching a time card and forcing me to stay until five). And, every now and then, I do actually get to cure someone, or someone says a heart-felt thank you.

So, what would I tell my children if they wanted to study medicine? I'd just try to be honest, I guess. It's unlikely that anything I say will change their minds once they're made up anyway.