Flaviu Bocos had a moment of great clarity ahead of the birth of his son Dominic almost 12 years ago.
His wife Crina was about to have a Caesarean section, and he wanted to be by her side.
“When I put the scrubs on … and I looked in the mirror it just came over me and I could see the dream that I had kind of put away many years ago,” Dr Bocos said.
“I only opened up about a year and a half later to my wife.”
Romanian-born Dr Bocos, an intern commencing his first year of medical practice with Mackay HHS, has navigated careers and continents over many years to finally achieve that dream.
“I planned to study medicine when I finished high school,” he said.
“I had a rare genetic condition as a child and was in hospital, but conditions at that time were not good in Romania.
In 1998 Dr Bocos moved to Australia in search of more opportunities and he worked in a range of jobs before meeting his wife Crina.
“For 12 years I was a real estate agent in Melbourne; the last six we had our own agency in Narre Warren,” he said.
Dr Bocos credits his wife Crina for encouraging him to reconsider medicine.
“One day she asked me ‘What is your dream? If nothing was a problem, what would you really love to do?’,” he said.
“When I said I would have been a doctor she said, ‘why don’t you do it?’.”
Thus began a difficult decade for the family which now included five children, as Dr Bocos completed his degree at an English-speaking university in Romania.
“My family joined me in Romania for two years, but the rest of the time I would come home every single holiday, sometimes for 10 days, sometimes for two months.”
COVID also caused delays in completing qualifications.
“Studies stopped and I had to apply to come home on compassionate grounds, to reunite with my family.”
With medical studies in limbo and a need to replenish the family finances, life for the Bocos family took another turn and they moved to Western Australia.
“I accepted a job at the gold mines. I spent nine months as a bus driver and then I was driving 400 tonne dump trucks for over twelve months,” he said.
In 2023 Flaviu took time off work to study and pass his Australian Medical Council exams.
He clearly remembers both the day and the hour that he received a phone call from the Mackay HHS medical recruitment team with an offer of an internship.
“I had returned to Romania, thinking I might need to do my internship there,” he said.
“My wife called me at 2am in the morning on November 16 to tell me I had an offer and I needed to call back within six hours.”
In January Dr Bocos commenced his first rotation in the General Surgical ward at Mackay Base Hospital.
Despite the years of detours and disappointments he is feeling he is where he is meant to be.
“I am feeling very relieved to be here and to achieve this dream, and I want to hit the ground running.”
By Mackay Hospital and Health Service
