Why I Love Medicine But Hate Residency

From rehab gyms to night shifts — learning to love the chaos anyway

Before I ever wore a stethoscope, I was a physiotherapist.
My world then was simple, physical, and human. Healing meant movement — the slow miracle of helping someone walk again or lift their arm without pain. Progress was visible, measurable. And I loved that.

Then, I left that world behind and went to medical school in the Middle East — at an Irish university tucked in the desert, where the heat was relentless and the lectures even more so. That’s where I fell in love with medicine — not the textbooks or the exams, but the feeling of belonging to something universal. Healing, everywhere, looked different but meant the same.

Now I live in Montreal, my hometown.
Residency here is… a different kind of storm. It tests me in ways I didn’t expect.
It’s the 3 a.m. pages for Tylenol. The days that blur into nights. The weight of responsibility that never fully leaves your chest. It’s learning how to be calm in chaos, how to lead while still learning, how to care for others when you’re running on fumes.

And yet — I still love medicine.
Even on the hard days. Especially on the hard days.

Because somewhere between the exhaustion and the uncertainty, there’s still that quiet spark — the one that made me want to do this in the first place.
A patient’s trust.
A diagnosis that finally clicks.
A small “thank you” that reminds you you’re not just surviving — you’re becoming someone stronger.

Residency is brutal. But it’s also the forge that shapes you.
And even though I sometimes hate the grind, I’ve learned to see it for what it is:
a difficult, humbling, human apprenticeship in becoming the kind of doctor I once dreamed of being.

I love medicine. I just don’t always love the path it takes to live it.
But maybe that’s okay — because the hard parts are where the real growth happens.

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