About Doctor Denky

Growing up, it was imprinted in my mind that I will become a doctor someday. I studied well, trained hard and followed a straight path like a horse with blinders. There were ups and downs but my eyes were always on the holy grail of being able to treat patients someday.

Becoming a specialist was the culmination of all those long nights, thick and heavy books, unending exams, foot-swelling rounds and the jitters of presenting your patient to your (tor)mentors. The feeling of eventually becoming a consultant (as we call doctors who are already practicing their profession usually in a hospital setting) was magical. It was the feeling of having already arrived.

But like the horse whose blinders have been removed, the feeling can also be quite scary. It’s like walking in the dark not knowing what to do or where to hold on to. Slowly, our eyes open up to the blinding brightness of reality. Naivete and idealism are shattered until gradually, we may wake up one day forgetting why we are here in the first place.

The art of medicine is slowly losing ground but it is the heart and soul of being a doctor. The practice of medicine is slowly departing, if not yet fully departed, from the principles of health and healing. We have become crisis managers of patients whose well-being we have sworn to protect instead of physicians maintaining health and well-being. The definition of health and healthcare has been translated into the use of drugs and technology and separation of the physical from the rest of the person. This is not to say that we should go back to ancient times but it is a call to refresh the soul of our identities as healers.

This blog is a means of sharing, of giving life and touching lives, of connecting and healing. It is a way of reminding myself why I am here and why I continue to strive despite the vicissitudes of the profession. It is also a call or reminder to everyone, young and young at heart, that we, not the doctors, are responsible for our individual, family and community health and that we are the CEOs of our lives.

Let’s keep touching lives.

In living and in health,

Dr. Denky