If you want to know what life is really like as a junior doctor than this set of edited diary entries is the best window into a world that is hard going.
A dear friend hands the reviewer books pretty much every time she sees her, now it must be said most of them have been added to the ever growing ‘to read’ pile but this is the sort of book that hooks you the moment you open it.
If you want to know what life is really like as a junior doctor than this set of edited diary entries is the best window into a world that is hard going with its ups and downs and gallows humour. Such as all emergency service workers develop because if you don’t find pain and death at least mildly amusing, you may break.
The book is split into segments documenting the process a newly qualified doctor goes through to become a consultant, each stage is explained with a witty foreword. So that you can understand the diarist’s place in life at home and in hospital and the goals so that the diary entries make sense.
In the diary entries there is the theme that resonated strongly with myself the reader that most people are idiots (no offence) and that the poor doctors are chronically overworked. The writer faces hard tasks of being covered with bodily fluids ‘not the fun kind’, death, trauma, suicide and the type of career that steals from family life and friendships.
In essence the writer is recording an extreme existence with humour and massive amounts of sarcasm, in such a way what when the author is angry the reader is too. The writer describes his specialism, Gynaecology and it must be said that vaginas are a fairly good source of humour and provide a break from some of the more heart-breaking entries.
Life can be hard but an extreme one is harder and the descriptions of some of the births makes you wonder how someone can be so cool in the face of so much potential for bad things to happen.
If you’re worried you won’t be able to understand the terminology don’t worry there are handy footnotes written in plain but sarcastic English.
With the nature of the book and the invariable toll hospital life takes on the writer it feels odd to say it was an enjoyable read or that I was desperate for more deliciously funny anecdotes but I will say it is the single most humorous book I have read this year and that it took me only two days to finish.
Humanity’s love of the morbid means that this book is a must read.
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