In my first years in Australia I was working as an anaesthetist.
At some stage I was living in some sort of doctor’s share house, rented by my German doctor friend, who was flying for the
Royal Flying Doctors.
For a few weeks a young doctor in training came to live with us: Kerry.
Kerry was one of the really promising youngsters in our little hospital: intelligent, hands-on, quick.
She had spent some years in Canada and had an overall good drive.
Her performance was for sure much above average.
However, poor Kerry came ‘home’ every night…angry, desperate, rebellious.
She just KNEW that something in the hospital (which was a fairly good hospital!) was going wrong, and that something in the whole health system was going terribly wrong…
But, like so many others, she could not figure out …what would be…right!
Therefore Kerry had now (very closely to her final exams) decided to return to her roots and to become a farmer. That would have been within reach, as her partner was getting ready to buy a farm in the area.
As much as I could understand Kerry from the bottom of my heart( as I had been there at her age), and as much as I like farming, I managed to talk her out of the farming idea and back into medicine.
Moreover, I used the next weekend to teach her ART and some basic ART-related therapies, in her case mainly Neural Therapy.
In her good-bye card for me she wrote:
“Thank you for sharing your KNOWLEDGE and enthusiasm with me.
I appreciate it more than you will ever know.
You are like a ray of sunshine, brightening the future and shedding light on bigger and better things-
the endless opportunities that abound.”
The card cover is well chosen:
My best assistant for 16 years, my little black and white terrier Fiete, is flying the aeroplane.
In the back seat a small brown dog, my now assistant, Daria.
The text reads:
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!”
Well, I am still trying my best.
And I would like to take as many as possible of my colleagues with me!
When we once started our journey into the health services, did we not all have a dream?