My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chapter 21: Dedicated To All my Teachers, Near and Far

The cup given to me from the Pediatric Department I was interning with as a souvenir right before my graduation.

The cup given to me from the Pediatric Department I was interning with as a souvenir right before my graduation.

It came to me as a pleasant surprise when a cup from almost a decade back rolled out of my cabinet and sat at the kitchen table a few days ago. And so I thought it would be nice to write something about the beautiful memories it brought up.

The cup was given to us by the teachers of the Pediatric Department when we were about to leave China upon our graduation at the end of our internship. Looking at it indeed immediately teleported me back to the days when things were simpler yet challenging, happier yet difficult and tough. As one of my blog posts wrote about calling in the security in one of our night clinic shifts and looking at the photo of the teachers/doctors that were taking care of us and having been a fully active doctor now myself, I really hold great respect to these earth angels. They deserve the respect not because they hold the responsibilities to treat and heal, but also the magnanimity and big heartedness to take on nonsense of all kinds in the job, treating hundreds of patients daily (and not all patients are appreciative of what doctors are doing for them), teaching and guiding students who could make them vomit blood sometimes, dealing with difficult nurses and management and many others. But the duties and responsibilities were still upkept, day in day out, without fail.

Don’t you see the light shining from all of them?