Edited: Human after all.

They kept trying to stick these wires into my chest, and they just kept falling out.

"Just want to see if it's a heart problem," the nurse said.

I remember the occasion when I first had that pain radiating from my left chest. It was when I was overtraining, undereating, and I remember being surprised.

A few weeks ago, the pain returned, except that it was different this time because it happened while I was not training, not doing anything much except studying. It came in spurts, then became more and more frequent. On Monday, I awoke from the pain. Last night, I barely had four hours of sleep because of how it spread, from one side to the next. It was an amorphous, sneaky kind of pain.

I lay in bed, thinking. Lay down quiet in the darkness. There was no pain again, and a certain happiness crept up, before a sharp needle-prick pierced the transient moment of relief.

I paid a visit to the doctor at school today. In the waiting room, I couldn't decide which was worse- to hear that there was indeed a problem that had to be fixed, or that they couldn't find any and it was just something I had to live with. When they can't explain what's causing you distress, they say it's idiopathic. Unknown cause. Case closed.

I waited.

"Oh, it's Costochondritis," the petite bespectacled lady said. "Inflammation of your muscles and cartilages."

"What caused it?" I asked, bewildered.

" It's idiopathic, " she uttered the dreaded word. "There's no cure, there's nothing we can do about it. Please don't try and train for a half-marathon or anything of that sort."

I looked at her, half-stunned by her last two matter-of-fact statements.

"There's... no cure... You mean... there's... nothing... nothing... you can do? There's... no medication... or anything.... ?" I was very soft, very quiet.

I left.

It was a heavy feeling.

As they stuck the wires into my chest, I thought to myself, how human we all are. We gorge ourselves fat with knowledge, bursting at the waist with information, brandishing the latest state-of-the-art technology, thinking that the practice of medicine provides an answer to all our questions, all our needs. And then when it comes to the crunch, all that is said, all that can be said is that it's idiopathic and yes, we're sorry the wires keep falling out.

I remembered the time I returned from my mission trip to Uttar Pradesh, India, the poorest place I've ever been to in my life, poorer than Nepal. It was the most traumatic experience I have ever had. There alone, I experienced the real meaning of coldness, the temperature of lonliness on wintry nights in a dingy room, stuck all alone on an Indian train for more than 18 hours surrounded by strange men. There alone, I saw disease and smilelessness in every face, and the doctor who ate next to me at breakfast falling ill to malaria, caused by tiny mosquitoes.

I returned home 2 weeks later, absolutely traumatised by the sights, sounds and experiences that I had no one to share with, at my lowest weight I had ever been, and falling apart completely when I found oil in my urine a few days later. It was blow after blow after blow- I was breaking under the emotional wear-down.

The doctor didn't know what it was. He rang his colleague in front of my very shocked and traumatised self and bellowed with a hearty laugh that bumped around the room like Indian rubber balls, saying, "Yup! I've never seen it before either! Maybe it's elephantiasis- how interesting! From India! Haha!"

"Elephantiasis? You mean the disease that makes your legs swell up like tree trunks?" I uttered.

" Yea. Elephantiasis. You're a medical student, aren't you? Yup, sure could be!"

I left.

They never found out what it was. It was... idiopathic. Right.


It was such a grand notion. To think we wanted to become doctors to become somebody to help others, cure them, treat them, help them. But for all that grandeur and glorious nobility, I forgot- how human we all are. Merely, mortal. Fallible. Like the dust of the earth, like a breath in a wind.

We try and cup everyone's problems, cradle all of their hurts, but forget, we have our own hurts to heal, too. People told me I'd get into trouble someday by feeling too much for people, taking on too much that I could bear- "Your heart'll hurt someday," they said. While studying for the exams especially, at times, I did feel the crushing weight from the struggles other people were going through. It always comes round to me when someone is depressed, suicidal, injured. "You need to release all this to someone," a friend said.

"If not, your heart'll hurt someday and you wont be able to bear it." At this point, that area of my chest really did. What dark irony, I thought.

It's not like I have cancer. But a peculiar heaviness came down on me as I heard the news. There was nothing they could do. Nothing to ease the hurt, nothing to lessen the pain, nothing to assure me I could sleep through a night and wake up without pain.

I forgot- how Frail we all are. Mortal.

For all our super-human calibre in our areas of work, study and life, we all succumb to the basic enemy that knows no status, calibre or face.

"I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do for you. "

"It's... just something I have to live with?" I asked gently, probingly, hesistantly, almost as if I didn't want to know the answer.

For weeks and months I had ignored it. But of late it had become too frequent and painful for me to ignore. Perhaps it was induced by subconsious stress. It hurt worse, that's why I went to see a doctor. It hurts- so you can fix it, right? You guys are doctors... ...aren't you?

I was very quiet, and she sensed the pregant silence. Our eyes met. And I was embarrassed she saw my eyes melt into water.

"There's.... nothing.... you can do?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

I thanked the petite lady drowning in her white coat. Then just before I walked away-

"Panadol?" she suggested.


I left.


I don't know why I was so affected. It hurt, so you can fix it, right?

But we are all merely human.

During the depression, I suffered from a physical medical condition. I never got better. I tried medication after medication, went from one referal to the next. A lot of time consumed, money spent. Yet, I never got better. I suffered for a year and a half.

Most hurts, we humans cannot heal. We just can't fix everything, or everyone. It's not a burden for us to bear. She suggested Panadol.

Hurts like these, I can only bring to a white place.

That day when I did, I felt a lightness wash down on me. A white-coloured lightness.

Hurts like these, you can only bring to a white place.

No, not a hospital.


But a White, White Place.