My mother said that when I was a child, I was too sickly…
…Okay. Wait. Let’s start from the beginning. I was born dead. I was one hour dead to be exact. They even named me Patricia. Yes, that was my unregistered yet “original” name. No one would ever think that that baby who was (sadly) not breathing would move its tiny little fingers and cry. It was a miracle.
I consider myself lucky after knowing that story. I could say that I’m a survivor. But to ensure that I was really a “few” distance away from danger, I often had regular visits to the hospital or clinic which started when I was still about weeks old. “Regular” means having not less than five visits a month, and in that place I dreaded so much, I often see those people wearing the blinding all-white clothing, but I hated most the people wearing caps which matched the white dress. I even had a phobia of being near people who wear white because I was too afraid of having given shots or medicines- from what my young mind think to be -every few minutes… and that was really a dark stage for a little girl like me.
I think I still have the memory of saying to myself that one day I will become a doctor or a nurse. But don’t get me wrong. That time, I hated them so much that with tears rolling down my face, I said, “I want to be a like them so that I can hurt the children and make them cry”. But the girl who said that was long ago gone, for what has now become of her was a tiny little dust left in the memory of struggle and survival. Years later, I understood that the people in white did that to save me, and I was too inspired by them that I even wanted to be like them. During my elementary years, I decided that I should become a nurse or a doctor not because of my earlier motive, but because I wanted to help people the way they had helped me survive. Without them, I wouldn’t be here.
Judging by the way I’m praising them (nurses and doctors), you would say that I really pursued studying a medical course but… no. I am quite contented with the college program I am in right now. I chose not to study that because of the simple fact that I am prone to catching an illness so… That’s the reason; I did not want to be the one lying down the bed and being tended to instead of the other way around.
Though I’m not enrolled in the program which focuses on medicine or something like that, though I’m not going to be one of those people wearing white, with clipboards on their arms or stethoscopes on their necks or thermometers on their desks, I am still thankful for without them, there wouldn’t be me. So I guess everything was just a mistaken idea after all.
~anamellie~
