Aiza Viegas MD CCFP

Since the age of 2, Dr Viegas wanted to be a physician. For the calm: she remembers her own doctor, who despite the immunizations and examinations always made his little people feel safe. She remembers the wall where her doctor kept photos of new mothers and babies, and thinks that this wall was more important than just having her own picture on it: the wall meant that each patient was a person, that time was taken to memorialize each patient. She has her own board now, and on it are pictures drawn by her pediatric patients (You’re the best doctor doctor viegas) and also thank-you notes from adult patients. These notes and pictures all come from the same place: the doctor makes the patient feel better or not as the doctor makes the patient feel heard. One of those patients wrote Dr Viegas about her daughter, also a patient. The daughter was a woman in her mid-twenties who fell ill with depression while attending university. This daughter couldn’t continue in her studies, but with persistence and time and treatment she got better, eventually graduating and working in a woman’s shelter. In an office visit her mother told Dr Viegas that she heard her daughter say that the doctor is a source of belief: when she was at her lowest, her physician was there.

As for sacrifice, it’s there in the cart: a 2-year-old boy, Fridays spent with him, planning work around him, planning him around work. Dr Viegas recalls an article published in this journal shortly after the birth of her son: in it, female physicians described the curse of equality while maintaining traditional gender roles, that doctors felt limited in their careers by their decisions to be mothers and wives, but also limited in their home lives by careers. Dr Viegas went back to work 6 weeks postpartum. We are all handmaidens of expectation, hope, and belief. But that little boy, he’s learning his own thank-you as he learns about belief: Dr Viegas takes him to the grocery store once a week where he picks out 3 things that he will then put, on a Sunday, in the church food bank bin. Betwixt: Dr Viegas expects another child and further grand limitation.

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