By Ann Toh
As one looks on a face through a window, through life I have looked on God. Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
——Amelia Burr
Work-Life Balance
I need to be on time. I have to-do lists running like a continuous tape at the back of my mind. I need to function — well! — and deliver, and care, and fulfill, and not generate adverse feedback.
The drawing in the feature image shows how we always hope our day does not end. Just before closing time, a patient comes in with a long list of problems to be solved. His list wars with my to-do lists at five in the evening.
My workday ends and I go home. My daughter greets me. I put aside my to-dos and all the incessant buzzing for a while. How was your day? What was your story today? (How much screen time did you get today?)
We have dinner together on nights when my husband is not working, chatting about the day, discussing plans. What did my sister say? What is she doing about it? How are your brother’s kids? A wife is something to be, not do. Not a list of to-dos but to be here, to be with, to be beside.
My daughter nags me to play with her. Sometimes we do puzzles. Or I sit at her restaurant and we count change. Sometimes we struggle through a book or two so that she earns her television time. I shower her. She combs my hair and I comb hers. Bedtime story. Mummy, can I have another story?
Me Time!
Sometimes I get none, if I fall asleep too soon. Or I catch Netflix or read a book. The last book was about a fire-breathing dragon. My husband enjoys his computer games, or Chinese king fu novels. Men are still boys at heart.
My day tries to begin at five in the morning. I try to sneak in some work with my coffee, then my regular Grab driver picks me up. I reach the food court at six-twenty and sit there with paperwork, then I head to the clinic.
It’s hard for me to grasp work-life balance. To me every hour of my life is bursting with mysterious, interesting, intense, rich flavors. I want to live life.
Ann Toh is a Family Medicine resident who enjoys the privilege of caring for patients in the context of their real lives from cradle to grave, and feels that she is currently passionately pursuing the heart of medicine.
The commentary and vignette were reproduced with permission from the book “Being Human, Stories from Family Medicine” edited by Cheong Pak Yean and Ong Chooi Peng and published in 2021 by the College of Family Physicians Singapore.
Pictures of illness experiences were drawn by NUS medical students in workshops conducted from 2012-2017 by A/Prof Cheong Pak Yean. Senior family physicians subsequently shared vignettes and commentaries based on the pictures.
