Most medical students go through a brief period when they develop all manner of imaginary illnesses – I myself had leukaemia for at least four days – until they learn, as a matter of self-preservation, that illnesses happen to patients, not to doctors. This necessary detachment from patients becomes all the greater when you start working as a junior doctor and you have to do frightening and unpleasant things to patients. It starts with simple blood-taking and inserting drips, and progresses over time – if you train as a surgeon – to ever more radical procedures, cutting and slicing into
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