Doc Ahmad Hajiri

As everyone hurriedly took their orders and grab their lunches in that famous fast-food restaurant with an over-sized smiling honeybee as their logo, one man was oblivious and unnoticeable of them all. He sat there in a corner, singled-out from the rest of the dining tables, carrying the most precious things he had left: his fragile, ailing daughter wrapped in his caring arms and a bag that contained everything her daughter needed (or what he can afford of at least) for her first consultation in Philippine General Hospital. His daughter has been suffering from a rare disease he could not even pronounce. She was a lovely angel since she was born, bringing light to their otherwise gloomy life in the farmlands. She was their sunshine, their love, their princess. Until that fateful day when her symptoms started to appear. It started with a high fever, then she stopped eating and she became more and more weak each passing day. On her second year of life she was already bed-ri...

Becoming a doctor was never easy. But I never thought that it was this scary. As our  ICC year (third year in Proper Medicine) approaches the end of the road, more ad more realizations and learning experiences build up to prepare us for the next years of training to come. Through those months of rotations, we e have experienced the transition from dealing with paper cases to real patients, from weekly exams on theoretics of pathology and pharmacology to their applications in real clinical settings. And From choosing which letter in the scantrons to shade, to choosing which diagnostic tests to order for our patients while (always and always) considering the financial limitations our patients in PGH have.  All these you have to decide for your patient and take responsibility as a future physician. Say, if I have only one test that my patient can afford to order, which one should I choose? Which drug is cost-effective and will solve my patients’ complaints? And no ...