15 Minutes of Fame (By Proxy)

My mother decided that all four of her children would be doctors, and this was the message I received from an early age. My father was a psychiatrist and my mother worked as a nurse before parenting took over. Medicine was the only career path mentioned.

When I missed out on entry to medical school, my father said if I studied hard I could reapply in a year. There were no congratulations for getting into dental school, which felt like second prize, if it were a prize at all.

I failed my first year of dentistry. Undiagnosed ADHD? Poorly developed study skills? A distracting boyfriend (as my mother believed)? Or an unconscious wish not to follow in the family footsteps? Whatever the case, I repeated the part of the subject I failed (chemistry) and passed very creditably the second time around, particularly since I then went to all the lectures.

My parental ambitions for me lay in tatters, but by this time the miracle had occurred. I had fallen in love with dentistry, both the job and the profession. I loved the way my own previously aloof dentist treated me as a colleague from the moment I shared I was in dental school.  I thrived on tales of oral hygiene transformed and delighted in working with my hands. I spent the time I had aside from study to do voluntary assistance in the oral biology department, beginning a life long passion for research. And I took classes in karate and bicycle maintenance, ideal for improving my fitness, confidence and coordination.

By the time I graduated, I was one of the top students, winning scholarships and research prizes. I did an honours science degree in oral microbiology. In my first paid job, I was able to offer free dental care for my parents, who by now had started proudly telling friends and colleagues that their daughter was a dentist.

I settled in London and worked as an associate for some years before setting up my own practice in Harrow. I acquired both the diploma and memberships in general dental surgery from the esteemed Royal College of Surgeons in between gestating, lactating and rearing my daughter. I thanked God I wasn’t a doctor. I didn’t see how I could have worked and parented if I’d had the life of a busy GP or hospital doctor instead of the manageability of dental practice.

My dental school days carry distant memories of despairing tutors chastising me for spending too long talking to patients and not enough time doing ‘real work’ (drilling and filling). I’m grateful that today my real work involves a lot of chatting, or ‘quality conversations’ as the psychiatric profession calls it. I love getting to know my clients, and helping transform their lives for the better, not just their teeth. So maybe I have integrated my medical/psychiatric/nursing family culture after all.

And my siblings? My older brother became a doctor and a medical researcher. My twin sister became a doctor and later a psychiatrist. Both, like my father, became professors. My younger sister, a renegade, became a film producer with her own production company. My parents, in their own ways, loved us and were proud of us all.

Her offspring were not the only children exhorted to achieve by my mother. One of my dear school friends shared her wish to become a teacher with my mother, who then decried her lack of ambition and told her she must do law. Today Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister of Australia, my claim to 15 minutes of vicarious fame, and the living proof that my mother wasn’t always wrong.