#BTColumn – Millennial doctors: Dr Sarrah Durrant (Part 2)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

by Jade Gibbons

“When I first learnt that COVID-19 spread outside of China, as a medical doctor the first thing I did was to read the symptoms. They didn’t have much on it because it was a novel virus. But my first thought was we have to get masks.

We have to get gloves. We have to get sanitizer. As a CARICOM citizen, I was praying that it didn’t hit the Caribbean countries because we are so tourism dependent. Well, in Toronto, it is heavily populated. Trains are always full. Buses are always full. It’s full.

My first thought was this thing is going to spread like wildfire because Canadians don’t like to follow rules. It hit Canada first.

When it hit Canada, it was in Vancouver before Toronto. When it hit Barbados, I knew because my family told me. My sister was still studying at BCC. She was on her way to class, and she called me.

When it was in Guyana I remembered when it happened because a whole family died. The lady had come from New York and they said she had a “heart attack” and that she had breathing problems. And after that her husband died, then her son died and then I think her daughter died also. The first lockdown in Canada occurred around the same time Barbados had its lockdown.

“I did have dark days during the lockdown. I think my darkest day was when I started to feel this weight around my neck. I was unsure about my future and started thinking ‘all of my friends graduated and start working.’ It was the end of July. Canada had started to lift restrictions.

I left home and went downtown by myself. And I sat down and thought ‘God, why did I come here?’ Everything, all of my dreams, everything that I had planned was gone.

What am I supposed to do now? In that moment, I realised that I was thinking about what the world wanted to see me do and asked myself ‘what do I want to do?’ I had a dark to light transition then.

I stopped focussing on the things I couldn’t do. I kind of had the weight moved from around my neck because I stopped worrying about myself.

Collectively, I was worried for my family. My father works in construction, so he wasn’t working. He is the only person working in my nuclear family. My mom is a stay-at home mom.

My sister had just finished school. And jobs weren’t out there. I was worried about them financially. Being this age and not being able to contribute, not being able to send home money to help in the way that I wanted to, made me worry about them. I wanted things to open back up so my dad would be able to work.

“When I returned to Barbados, I was first working at the Best Dos Santos Lab. When I started working there was the outbreak in the prison.

“I would get to work at 7:30am and set up. It was a lot of interaction. I met a lot of people. You don’t just meet colleagues on the job. You meet people.

I gained a lot of weight so I’m trying to lose it now. I was doing Insanity every morning from March of this year. I changed my diet since I came back from Canada. In Canada fast food is easy and that’s what everybody eats. Here, my mom is a health nut so it’s easy to eat healthy.

I’ve lost about 15lbs since I came back from Canada. Shoutout to my mom, Sandra Durrant weight-loss expert. Christmas 2020 was the first Christmas I’ve spent home with my family since 2015.

That morning we got up, 5 o’ clock. We went to church, took pictures. We cook. We ate. We slept because we were tired from the week of cleaning. We watched movies. That was my Christmas day.

“My new good habit I have now that I did not have in 2019 is that I exercise. My new bad habit I have now that I did not have in 2019 is spending hours on social media. I’ve gotten closer to God. I’m exercising, controlling my diet. I have a better mindset regarding my future.

[The question was: explain to me why it is so difficult for you being a person who had their primary and secondary education in Barbados and studied in Cuba, why is it so difficult for you to work here as a medical professional even though we brought in Cuban nurses last year to assist with the fight against COVID-19?] In one word, politics.

In Cuba we are taught differently. We are not taught like UWI doctors, so when we do the things we do, they think we are under par. In Canada or the United Kingdom, all I have to do are two exams and I can practise medicine there whereas here I can do CAMC but it’s a load of bureaucratic stoppages.

A lot of people have been fighting for us to have an easier transition here because in other Caribbean nations it’s not that hard.

My other friends who studied with me in Cuba are in other Caribbean nations working. That’s why the country has a brain drain. You send all of these intelligent people out there to get an education and when you come back there are no jobs.

“I do want to have children, no more than two. I want to have a balance in terms of my family and career. Family is very important. Money is going to fade. House is going to fade. Car is going to fade. But you are always going to need a family to keep you grounded. The only thing I’d like to add is don’t rush life. Just take it one day at a time.”

Jade Gibbons is an arts and business graduate with a keen interest in social issues and film-making. See https://www.jadegibbons246.com