On my evening walk today, I bumped into my classmate from medical school. She’s a pediatric oncologist. A medical specialist caring for children battling with that deadliest of diseases - cancer!

She is an intelligent, compassionate and emotionally strong doctor. That’s the only way she could sustain a busy professional schedule in such a stressful specialty for nearly 7 years.

But eventually, the strain became too much.

A few weeks back, she decided to move out. The decision came when her young daughter asked one evening:

“Mummy, have you forgotten how to smile?”

That’s when she realized that the severe emotional burden of caring for terminally ill children had changed her usual vivacious and cheerful nature into one of a shell-shocked veteran.

Yes, doctors die a little bit… every day.

As a heart surgeon treating little children born with heart defects, I find the emotional challenges the hardest part of my work.

It is the most devastating experience to see a young patient succumb to a serious illness. It leaves a caretaker feeling helpless, frustrated, impotent… and angry.

How much potential is lost! Every child that falls prey to these horrible illnesses could have been an Einstein, a Mother Theresa, a Mozart or a Gandhi. The snuffing out of this bright candle plunges everyone in that universe into the coldest darkness.

When a child with congenital heart disease dies, a part of me dies too.

And that’s the most powerful motivator for what I do to help fund expensive, yet life-saving heart surgery through my Children Heart Foundation.

Today, after talking it over with my friend, I had a tiny, faint glimpse into the reason why doctors are larger than life, live in an illusory world of exalted self-esteem.

It’s because they see life from a unique, unusual and different perspective.

And make unreal, unnatural, abnormal adaptations to make sense of the distorted reality that is part of our everyday professional existence.

Allow us our posturing and pretence. We pay a heavy price in exchange - every day.