Cover Story: Dr Say on the unspoken truths of fatherhood, and soaring high as a medical influencer

On this Father’s Day, we’ve got just what the doctor ordered: a special ‘zaddy’ issue featuring Shazril “Dr Say” Shaharuddin. As he rocks the new Longines Pilot Majetek and Spirit Flyback timepieces, we sit with the doctor-turned-influencer to talk about the quirks and perks of putting himself out there, the parts of fatherhood that often go overlooked, and juggling real life with social media.

Is ‘zaddy’ still a thing? Alas, as a millennial who’s a bit behind the times when it comes to modern slang, it is the first word that pops into my mind when I meet Dr Shazril Shaharuddin for the first time at the studio. Fondly known online — and everywhere else in real life — as Dr Say, it’s easy to see why so many are charmed by the doctor-slash-influencer. A naturally striking young man whose smile can get you smiling too, Dr Say manages to appear both confident and humble at the same time. He laughs, unrestrained, when I reveal the angle of our cover shoot: “So, you’re a zaddy, basically. You’re like the cool dad.”

For the uninitiated, the doctor quit his post at a public hospital in 2017 and began working freelance while also dabbling in content creation. He quickly found a 300,000–strong following that propelled him to Instagram stardom, on which he built an educational platform for the public to learn about all kinds of medical diseases and its preventions. Oh, and of course, not forgetting his full-time gig as a family man to his wife and two kids — whom he regularly (and lovingly) features on his page.

“To be honest, in the back of my mind, I think I just wanna be famous — doesn’t matter in what way,” he admits with another laugh. Dr Say grew up in a house of destined medics: both his parents and their firstborn are pharmacists, and his second sister is a doctor. Our cover star, the youngest ‘odd duck’ of the group, had had a fleeting dream of pursuing mass communication, before finally acceding to studying medicine. “My parents kept saying that it was for a better and more secure future. And somehow bila you start, and once you really get into it — you kind of learn to love it. So here I am.”

Dr Say and his wife, Dr Azura Abas, are both medical experts online and in real life — so perhaps it won’t be too surprising if history chooses to repeat itself, and we see any of their kids continue on that linear narrative. “Both my wife and I left government hospital because back then, we hadn’t planned on continuing with our studies,” he adds. “So we quit, and we decided to give our vacancies to other doctors who wanted to really pursue it further and specialise.” (Today, Dr Azura owns a general practice clinic, Klinik Medinna in Seri Kembangan, where her husband works as a locum.)

For our cover shoot, Dr Say has on the new Longines Spirit Flyback, the latest addition to the brand’s Spirit collection featuring new functionality and clean design that brings a quiet grace to the line. The term ‘flyback’ here refers to more than just the executive function that comes with the timepiece — it can be traced back to the pilots and adventurers the line was long inspired by; their stories of overcoming challenges and going the distance. And like the Longines Spirit Flyback, Dr Say is brimming with stories of his own.

Navigating the medical doctor-to-influencer pipeline

“So, then, how did this whole influencer thing come about?” I ask, jumping straight into it — and just as abruptly, Dr Say blushes and shrinks back, laughing once again.

“It all started back in 2014,” he recounts, and I can see that he is completely embarrassed by the story he’s about to tell. Still, I commend him for trying his best. “I just joined as an intern in Hospital Serdang, and for my first posting, I was placed in the obstetrics and gynaecology (OB/GYN) department. And on my first day, I took a picture with the hospital logbook — just to commemorate my first day. And as soon as I posted it online, it went viral. People were saying things like, ‘Okay, this OB/GYN doctor is so… and I wanna deliver with him!’” (I can easily fill in the gaps of that sentence.)

“Then HotFM invited me on their show for the segment, ‘Boss Anda Hot’,” Dr Say manages to say, with more embarrassed laughter. “One of the nurses called them and was like, ‘Oh, I have this boss, he’s really hot!’ But then I was just an intern at the time, you know? So, I became even more viral lah since then.”

Perhaps the kid in him who’d dreamed of pursuing mass communication re-emerged then, and Dr Say decided to use his overnight fame for good. He’d studied to become a doctor; he’d worked alongside other doctors in the hospital; and though he had quit the job, the ample data and information he’d collected over the years could be put to good use.

“So I fully ventured into this ‘influencing’,” Dr Say explains. “And actually, I think I do it more than anything else — but I do it in a medical way. My concept now is to influence the general public, to be able to address everyone instead of one-on-one. And I think I also like to focus more on prevention rather than cure. I’ll leave it to the doctors at the hospitals and clinics to do a more detailed explanation. I’ll be more on the community side.”

I audibly express my admiration for what he does — after all, it’s not every day we see doctors become content creators. While very different in nature, both professions take a lot of work. He shrinks back again and says, ever so modestly. “Oh, I believe anyone can do it. Even you could too, using your own expertise, especially when you know what you’re good at, kan?”

Of course, there are always challenges when you achieve online fame. “Initially when the whole ‘influencing’ was a thing, I was having a hard time,” Dr Say opens up. “Because us doctors, we tend to go the traditional way. We don’t prefer someone who doesn’t specialise to go out there and talk about the specifics. I’m a general medical doctor — a specialist might be like, ‘Kenapa dia? Why is he talking about this disease when he doesn’t specialise in that field?’ But the thing is, most doctors don’t know how to use layman’s terms when talking about these things. And this is where I come in, by using ‘simpler’ language. But now with the advancement of TikTok and other platforms, I think people are starting to accept it more. As long as you’re not doing any unethical things, of course.”

Call it pride of a (family) man

Dr Say’s internship back in 2014 didn’t just mark his internship at the hospital. A week before he became an intern, he and Dr Azura had gotten married. They first got together in 2009, and have since learned each other’s wants and needs, so much so that they are practically in sync. Naturally, planning their future together became a seamless thing between them.

“As doctors in the public hospital, we both agreed that we would not have kids during the crucial period of the two years, especially if we wanted to graduate together,” Dr Say shares. “But we were only blessed with a child after four and a half years of marriage. So for that long period we were living together, just the two of us, and we had, like, this routine — but the moment a kid came along, it changed us both completely. I still remember when my wife was in postpartum confinement for two months and I accompanied her; that was when I truly learned the hardship of being a parent.

“If you ask me, being a doctor and being a father are completely different things,” he continues. “As a doctor, you just go in there, you put on your lab coat, and then you get back home and you take it off. Your day is done. But being a father is a responsibility that you have to hold for the rest of the day — and for the rest of your life.”

The hardships of adjusting to fatherhood hadn’t ended there for Dr Say. Just recently in May, he took to Instagram to open up about his firstborn’s autism. The photo of him holding the official OKU Card for his son Aezriel (affectionately nicknamed ‘Ace’) garnered over 35,000 likes and close to a thousand comments — with many sending virtual hugs to Ace, as well as real inquiries about obtaining an OKU Card for their own children. Dr Say describes it as a real eye-opening experience, not just regarding his son, but also what it can mean for autistic children everywhere.

 

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A post shared by Dr Shazril Shaharuddin (@say_shazril)

“As early as when Ace was six months old, my wife had noticed some things about him like not having good eye contact,” he says, his voice weighty as he recounts coming to terms with his son’s autism. “She kept telling me, ‘I think he’s different.’ And I was very, very in denial for quite a period of time. I was also very frustrated, and I started thinking, ‘Why me? Why my son?’ My wife and I had been waiting for four and a half years for this boy. I mean, wasn’t it enough that we had been agonised for so long, waiting for him? Tak mungkin lah we have an autistic kid. But then we met with a specialist and she told us, ‘Yes, your son has moderate degree autism.’ And once we got the final diagnosis, I broke down. I cried.”

Perhaps this had been a shocking blow to the male ego — not in terms of the need to show off, but more to do with how he sees his place in the world, and living up to expectations — his and those of society. As a man, he couldn’t help questioning what he’d done to deserve such a fate. But as a father, he did not hesitate to step up for Ace. He sought advice from a therapist, he was there for Ace through it all, and after seeing all the changes and improvements in his son, Dr Say has not only managed to come to terms with it but also accepted it as part of him.

Breaking the ‘man’s man’ silence (and shattering an age-old taboo)

While Dr Say has never been the kind to keep silent, coming to terms with Ace’s autism gave him the push to be even more expressive about his feelings. He understands the male ego better than most — something that’s very refreshing to see in a young father.

“Men nowadays, we want to be egoists, I know that,” he quips. “But we have to be ‘selective’ in our egotism. There are certain things that we cannot handle ourselves lah. Whether it’s like the case of my son’s autism, or even financial issues, stress at work — I think it’s time for us to come out. By ‘come out’, I mean in terms of expressing it. Because I’ve seen it before in patients, they are the way they are because they don’t have anyone to talk to. So they keep it all inside, and it makes them more depressed and anxious, and it just becomes a real tough time for them.”

He takes a close look at the Longines Pilot Majetek, now sitting comfortably on his wrist. Steeped in storied history, the Pilot Majetek is understated on the outside but sophisticated on the inside. Much like the old adage, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, this watch is exactly that. And the story of Dr Say reflects this saying perfectly — just because he is (undoubtedly) a ‘zaddy’, it doesn’t make him free from the worries of life. When life gives him a hard pill to swallow, he takes it one step at a time by first accepting the shortcomings and then addressing the issue by being open about it. He speaks about the most sensitive things online because people need to hear the hard truth — and that’s the appeal of Dr Say, to have open conversations with a dose of charisma on the side.

Perhaps not ironically, Dr Say credits the women in his life for getting him to open up. “My mum used to always say to me, ‘Don’t be like your dad,’” he shares. “What she means is in terms of this — because he always kept things to himself, and only tells us when things got worse. And I must say, kalau boleh, let’s us men break this taboo lah. It’s not wrong to open up about our feelings. It doesn’t show that we are weak. In fact, it actually shows that we are even stronger because we wanna face it instead of running away from it. So, yeah. Let’s break this taboo lah if we can.”

Haven’t yet followed the charismatic Dr Say Shazril on Instagram? You can click here to see the resident Internet doctor in action, or visit his brand new TikTok account here.

interview PUTERI YASMIN SURAYA | editor-in-chief  MARTIN TEO | creative direction & styling MAX MAK | assisted by MALLIE MARAN | photography MICKY WONG (NEW STORYBOARDS PRODUCTION) | videography POR JIA JUN | makeup ERANTHE LOO | hair styling JUNO KO | timepieces LONGINES

Find out more about Dr Say Shazril in the latest issue of LSA Digital Cover Vol. 011 HERE.