Being a medical Jack of all trades, and making no secret of my taste for adventure, I am often approached by people who seek to include a medic in some ambitious scheme or other. Would I oversee a sponsored swim in a pool in someone's back garden, with 50 children aged 4 to 17 (and, by the way, they all have diabetes)? Would I fly to South America to escort the wayward offspring of a friend of a friend whose gap year exploits had landed him cocooned in plaster of Paris?
At one short-staffed school fete, they stationed me on bash the rat where I managed a five hour stint, breaking off periodically to attend to a bilious toddler or pick the gravel from a scraped knee. The only incident that merited recording in the official log book was when I poked myself in the eye with the aerial of the walkie-talkie.
Then there was the unfortunate farmer who had fallen on hard times and (against his better judgment) taken to organising children's birthday parties. He had been up all night lambing, and when our party arrived was up to the elbows in a struggling ewe. With 25 brats demanding his services for donkey rides and hide and seek, I offered my assistance.
I was thinking of holding the leading rein, but he passed me the rubber gloves and galloped away with the parting shot that if a head came down, I was to shove it back and fish around for a pair of hind legs. By the time that he had returned from the treasure hunt, I had delivered quads.
One of my sons, wise to this kind of improvisation, had the cheek to ask the credentials of the gentleman who came forward when he was stretchered off the rugby pitch.
“Actually,” replied the doctor as he administered the bucket and sponge, “I'm a gynaecologist.”
When all else fails, bluff. A few years back I turned up to run a marathon that started at high noon. Among the crowds I spotted the duty doc—an old chum from medical school who had proved squeamish and retreated into public health immediately after her house jobs.
“Good grief!” I said, “You wouldn't have any idea what to do if one of us collapsed.”
“True,” she said, eyeing the cloudless sky and unforgiving sun. “But I'd know what to do if a thousand of you all collapsed at the same time.”