Traumatic echoes of life as a junior doctor: the sickening stench of stale cigarettes and hospital starch strangled sleep. The doctors' on-call room, placed conveniently between the wards, was the daytime coffee room for nurses and auxiliaries. Clouds of smoke throughout the day lingered in the fabric of the bed. Any comment to the staff brought antagonism, so it was easier to say nothing. These were times forgotten, until Michael Barrie's The Surgeon's Rhyme brought flashbacks.
He tells his story beautifully with drama, dialogue, and scratch and smell reality. He recreates the scenes so vividly. You remember the night-time nausea when you were woken by the scream of the phone, not knowing if you had slept a few moments or a few hours. You can feel the rough fabric of theatre greens and the heat of the delivery room and hear your footsteps on the ward. The one in three rota, the inhumanity, the glamorous drudgery. And you remember education by humiliation, training through exhaustion, and a fear of speaking out.
Figure 1.
Michael Barrie
The Book Guild, £8.99, pp 192 ISBN 1 85776 813 2
Rating: ★★★★
The author is clearly a sympathetic doctor who, as he reflects on his experiences since he qualified in 1991, cares greatly and has thought deeply about medicine. His father, mother, and uncle are doctors, yet he still has a refreshingly naive sensitivity. But medical life has left some scars, and I suspect not all are fully healed.
He describes, with humanity and dignity, some remarkable patients. Your heart thumps as he runs to the delivery suite, and your mouth is dry as he sucks the meconium from an infant's throat, waiting an age for the first breath. You share his feelings on the futility of a life lost, his inadequacy with bereaved parents, and feel the tears. There is no manufactured romantic ending. This is life as it is, and death is an integral part.
Figure 2.
Walt Larimore
Zondervan, £13.50/$18.99/$C29.99, pp 320 ISBN 0 310 25287 3 www.zondervan.com
Rating: ★⋆⋆⋆
The Surgeon's Rhyme is not about surgery. The title is misleading and fails to capture the suffering, kindness, empathy, anger, frustration, and rawness of the text—although there is a reason for the title, in a theme woven through the text. This is no soft focus nostalgiafest. It is history, but so recent that we should be ashamed. It is vivid, engaging, and a great book.
Bryson City Seasons could be from another planet: misty eyed nonsense; Mom and apple pie and God in the consultation. It is a story your granny would read and think medicine was wonderful. While it touches on the claustrophobia of small town America and mentions tricky relationships with medical colleagues and some of the challenges of setting up in private practice, the rose tinted perspective is overwhelming. Even serious injury, personal tragedy, and the bleak realities of family medicine are told as a happy clappy, self satisfied religious sermon.
It is well meaning, slightly deluded, shiny eyed evangelical propaganda, though it is well enough written for the personality of the narrator to come through. But I just wanted to take him aside and tell him to get real, waken up, and get a life.
The list of other books on the flysheet suggests that the author has got into a groove, but the record is stuck. This book would be more at home in the religious bookshop than in the literature of general practice.