“Until today, I still run into people who tell me he was the best they’d ever worked with, that he never got a diagnosis wrong,” Amandip says. He became the clinical lead for cardiology at a hospital in Kent and was tasked with spearheading several large projects, including one at a teaching hospital in London. Over almost 25 years, Jagdip established a reputation as an excellent doctor. It was almost as if these were accepted symbols of the dedication needed to be considered a good doctor by the profession and health systems. “He felt it was a badge of honour, the fact that his shoes were worn out, that he didn’t have anything to eat or drink or even go to the toilet,” Amandip explains. He was so busy at the hospital that he had been rushing around for 10 miles (16km) a day. Amandip was shocked, but Jagdip was pleased. They were bleeding and covered in blisters. Amandip recalls how his brother bought a new pair of shoes and, a short time after he started work, showed him his feet. Then he started work at Ealing Hospital in West London. Jagdip sailed through medical school, his scholastic record peppered with awards. “And my brother would step in and say, ‘Look, just leave him alone.’ He was the only person my dad would listen to.” “I’m not academically gifted, and my dad would have a go at me about it sometimes,” he says. He bought himself a textbook and taught himself physics, eventually scoring straight As.Īmandip found it tough being continually compared with his accomplished sibling. The request was rejected, but Jagdip refused to be deterred. Just to outdo himself, he made a request to the college to be allowed to take four subjects instead of the maximum three for his exams. “He was very much the golden boy, and everyone loved him,” Amandip says.Īfter leaving secondary school with top grades, Jagdip went on to tertiary college, which was at the time a prerequisite for entrance into university. Jagdip decided that the best way to beat discrimination was to prove that he was better than his peers. This early experience of prejudice profoundly changed his brother Jagdip, who was five and a half years older than him. Having spent some of his childhood in East Africa, where his father was a civil servant, Amandip and his family keenly felt the racist microaggressions that were common across the United Kingdom at the time. London, United Kingdom – In the early 1980s when Amandip Sidhu was growing up in Harrow, a suburb on the fringe of northwest London, his South Asian family was one of only a handful of non-white households in the area. Visit Befrienders Worldwide for more information about support services. If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, help and support are available. Warning: This story contains details about suicide that some readers may find disturbing.
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