“Dr Aneja here” I answered my phone, as soon as I could, before I could’ve missed that call, while stepping out of one of my patients’ rooms I was seeing this morning.. “Hello Dr Aneja, good morning” the nurse went on about another patient’s pending discharge medication reconciliation and also that she had just sent my other patient down for a modified barium swallow evaluation. “Good morning Dr Aneja” , came another voice from the hallway, to whom I spontaneously responded, given the familiarity more to the words, my own name and probably just a little lesser the person herself who’d greeted me. Taking a seat at the doctors’ dictation area now, asking the colleagues how they’d all spent their weekend or ski breaks with their kids etc. off my beeper went, with more of “Hey Dr Aneja, please call me when you get a chance, regarding an issue with a patient family here for Dr Smith” from the telemetry floor director. As I quickly take the staircase to run a couple flight of stairs down, I hear my name being paged overhead, another page to answer, another colleague to greet, another introduction to a new patient, “Hi I’m Dr Aneja”Yes I am “Dr Aneja”. I haven’t known myself other than or better than this very name for the last thirteen years.. That’s me, up or asleep, on a day off or on, being on call or off, to my patients, staff or administration, ER, floors or colleagues, residents or case managers, nurses or students, this one hospital or five others I’ve been working at.. “Dr Aneja” it is.But all of a sudden today, as I sat down in my car, to drive back home, to get out of the parking lot, I looked at my phone to see what time it was and quickly scrolled down checking for new texts/mail/phone calls.. From early this morning was Papa and Ma’s call from 5 am today when I’d last spoken to them. Usually my routine first call. Every single morning, maybe not since I’d ever moved out to be away from them, but certainly since the time I’ve ever had access to a cellular phone. When I was still not “Dr Aneja” yet, but in the making.. # 1 on my routine things to do since then has been trying to get in touch with my very own, in any possible way.. my parents, then my sister.I recall still how I used to feel embarrassed when they used numerous nick names for me. I barely get the time to be able to hear those now, but when I do, even if during a minute’s quick phone conversation or FaceTime or WhatsApp or whenever they’re able to visit, it reminds me of my little me, of myself and my life where I wasn’t yet “Dr Aneja”. I wasn’t yet a wife or a mother or anyone at all, but a child. Their child. And that’s all.And I’m thankful I’ll always be. For them, for whom I was not even ever “Pallavi”, and that was too formal already. For that’s where I came from and still belong, for they’re the ones who’ve made me who and what I am today.. And I’m grateful to them with all my life, heart and soul, for being this “Dr Aneja” today, who can so comfortably still be called those loving nick names, I’d so naturally respond to, yet still not be able to share a single one of them with anyone else, even now.I’m blessed that I can let that child in me be, yet still grow up, knowing who I was, who I’ve been, no matter what more I continue to become. A doctor, a wife, a mother, a medical director now, with so much overlap of each role that blends, to make me one whole, as a person.. So much I can identify myself with who I am just by my name, how you call me, reminding me of what for and whom I’m here for.And to reminisce who named me so and I’m forever indebted to them.. For in a name perhaps is nothing, but in mine, seems to be me..
NotesOfADrMom 