I would like to phrase the question differently. I moved to attend medical school (there wasn't a university where I came from, I had to take 1 hrs bus ride to be able to go to highschool).

I moved again, to a new country, a few years after finishing med school because an opportunity I couldn't decline presented itself.

I'm currently trying to get a job in yet another country because the positition (even though it is only a year) is too good to be true.

Have I left people behind? I certainly have every time I moved. I moved away from my family, I moved away from my friends I saw every day and I've moved away from colleagues who helped define who I am as a doctor.

The toll on some of these people have been enormous, on some it has been a slight inconvenience. Some, I'm sure, were happy I moved.

But I have done all these things, and I continue to do all these things, because they are precisely what I want. I can work in FM in my home town. I can work in gen surg or EM in any town close to it. I can probably do ortho or EM in the city I trained in.

But I don't want to. Nobody else has forced my hands and forced me to accept a position I didn't want or move to a place where I didn't want to go.

Is that medicine's fault? Wouldn't I be equally motivated and equally willing to sacrifice the same things to get what I want if I had a MBA? I think I would.

I don't think I've done those things because of medicine, but because of me.

That said after that I work a lot. I sometimes get phone calls requiring me to stop what I'm doing and go to work immediately (and I'm not even senior enough that there are things only I can do). I work holidays. I'm stressed out after long shifts when things didn't go as planned and sometimes my loved ones are forced to carry part of that stress - even though I'm pretty good at not making them. Loved ones have had more than one conversation with me when they didn't know if I was actually there or not - because I had lost someone or hadn't slept for 3 days.

A close family member died while I was on-call in another country. That could certainly have happened for most people, and you cannot always be there even for your closest family when they are dying. I didn't feel a need to be there, but having seen so many people die I failed to understand that some of the other people had wanted me there.

So there are also things medicine does do to you. The advice? Make sure you always ask you close ones how they are doing, and what they need. Talk to them. Tell them you love them.