I’m A Doctor – Please Don’t Judge Me.

It is a strange thing. The tendency to put someone in a box based on a label or a job description, even a nationality…

The tendency to judge and make decisions about their character, their integrity, their incentives, their work ethic.

I guess we do it because we have been hurt from personal experience. Or because media tells us too. Or because we just don’t know any better.

It hurts. I have been hurt. I have been judged. I have been excluded. I have had to “prove myself”, my motives.

I have been lumped …. “I hate doctors”. “Doctor’s have such big egos.” “Doing it for the money.”

Well. There is a lot you may not know.

And I will share with you because there may be a lot behind the lives of every health care professional that we may not know.

(Same goes for everything really, I guess?)

I left medicine several times. After working my butt off twice to re-enter into medical school. (I never got in straight away after school.)

I almost left several times more to become a midwife.

As soon as I was freed from the required government medical service I apprenticed with a homebirth gentle midwife.

I had my own homebirth while I was a medical student and continued to breastfeed for 3 years while studying.

And I swore that no money in the world was worth being separated from my family for such ridiculous hours – and I live to that statement.

I was ridiculed by an anaesthetic registrar for questioning about obstetric anaesthesia practices, for being a second late to theatre, for what I had in my vegetarian lunch.

I was called a “dumb idiot” post call by an obsetric head of department.

I was judged because I was introduced as a doctor and that put a stigma on my approach at births. I was expected to behave in certain ways and had to prove myself in certain circles.

I have cried and still cry in almost every single birth I attend. 

I have seen many deaths and dying people. 

I have prayed to Jesus and Krishna with other doctors. 

From the start I have challenged the ethics of medicine. 

I arranged meetings with the head of Obstetrics and handed them a list of names and abuses I have witnessed in the labour wards. 

There is loads more I have joyed, challenged, cried, laughed, continued with other doctors, patients, people…that many people will never know. 

My point is – We can never know, so let’s not judge.

I like being Dr Gauri – I worked over a decade to qualify and offer the now wide range of services (natural and medical).

But more important is to let go of the title and be authentic and me.

I understand the medical world and I understand the alternative. I am bilingual. But my practices are authentic and heartled.

Free yourself from the box labels! You may be surprised!