Specialist in Gastroenterology and Fatherhood

Growing up with a doctor as a father has implanted certain habits into my head (not surgically) that I've always thought to be second nature for everyone else too. It wasn't until relatively recently that I learnt that not everyone is as used to doctoral behaviour as I am. Here is a list of some of my discoveries:

1. There doesn't have to be a relatively high probability of you dying in order to justify calling an ambulance. But it is frowned upon, if that isn't the case.
    
2. Most people do not have drawers upon drawers at home full of colourful pills of different shapes and sizes. Those that do are either doctors or drug dealers (or both).
    
3. Normal people go to a hospital or clinic to get an injection. I, however, when discovering syringes in the freezer when looking for ice cream, know it's "Vaccine Time" that evening.
    
4. You should avoid taking your work home with you. Especially if that work is a video tape of the endoscopy of someone's intestines you performed that day. And you're playing it during dinner. And dinner is bangers and mash.
    
5. It's cute when you get your 9-year-old son in the office to do useless tasks like organising stationary on your desk. It's questionable when you have him playing with your sphygmomanometer or tongue depressors (don't worry - my dad threw away the ones I did play with).
    
6. Weighing yourself in the clinic waiting room is not a common pastime.
    
7. A scratch on your knee from falling over is a boo-boo. Being hit in the face with a hockey stick and requiring stitches inside your mouth is more than a boo-boo (my cheek swelled up to the size of a golf ball).
    
8. Most people have never napped on a bed that twenty minutes prior, was used by some poor fellow being probed in the butthole. But to be fair, it's probably the most hygienic nap I've ever had or will have.
    
9. Violent vomiting is something you can't just "sleep off", but it helps if you sleep near enough to the bathroom (this knowledge will prove invaluable during my university years).
    
10. It sucks not to have a doctor for a parent. 

I love my dad to bits, and I'm so grateful he's always been a great doctor as well as a great father. A lot of childhood panics were sidestepped, and I was ever confident that I would always be in safe (rubber gloved) hands. I now live with my eldest brother - a promising, budding, young doctor - and I wish him every success. After all, he has clumsy little me to take care of.

And I hope my future wife is a doctor, too; I've really grown to rely on the perks of living with one. I mean, where else am I going to source my Viagra pills from?