This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor

by Adam Kay

In 2010, after six years of training and a further six years slugging it out on the hospital wards, I quit my job as a doctor. My parents still haven’t forgiven me.

Sorry for the spoiler, by the way, but you knew the iceberg was coming in Titanic, and you watched that all the same.

Universal health care is obviously a bit of a political hot potato on your side of the pond, but—much like ant-egg soup or a night of bukkake—don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

So here they are, the diaries I kept during my time as a doctor, genital warts and all.

In the UK, would-be doctors make their career choices at age sixteen, two years before they’re legally allowed to text a photo of their own genitals.

a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.

getting drenched in bodily fluids (not even the fun kind),

Today he took a dump on the floor next to me, so, sadly, I had to retire him from active duty.

Sorry, Death—you’re one short for your dinner party this evening.

Work has pretty much given me PTSD.

I’ve been a doctor less than a year, and this is the fourth object I have removed from a rectum—professionally, at least. My first encounter was a handsome young Italian man who arrived at the hospital with the majority of a toilet brush inside of him (bristles first)

Me: And how much wine do you drink per day, would you say? Patient: About three bottles on a good day. Me: Okay . . . and on a bad day? Patient: On a bad day I only manage one.

Age twenty-five was the first point I actually got to make an active decision in the Choose Your Own Adventure book of my life. I not only had to learn how to make a decision, but also ensure I made the right one.

Good news: The physical therapists have finally been to see her. Bad news: The entry reads, Patient too drowsy to assess. I pop in. The patient is dead.

For the rest of the day, we all check our shoes and backs in paranoia, just in case a stray one has become attached—this is one label nobody wants to be walking around with, since a slightly unfortunate surname means that every sticker says BABY RAPER

Prescribing a morning-after pill in the ER. The patient says, “I slept with three guys last night. Will one pill be enough?”

“I’m sorry,” I say to him as I take the samples I need. “There we go, all done now.” I dress him again, look up to a God I don’t believe in, and say, “Look after him.”

But there’s clearly a time and a place. “Trichomonas vaginalis,” I say proudly, pointing out the telltale green discharge residue on the stripper’s vulva. And just like that, I’m ruining the bachelor party, apparently.

You don’t cure depression, the same way you don’t cure asthma; you manage it.

But there were two things keeping me there. First, I’d worked long and hard to get as far as I had. Second—and I realize this might sound a bit earnest—it’s a privilege to be allowed to play such an important role in people’s lives.

Even though I felt protective of my profession, particularly with the other tables around, Christ knows we need people to go into it with both eyes open. So I told them the truth: the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected, and frequently physically endangered. But there’s no better job in the world.

A lovely Thai dinner at the Blue Elephant restaurant. At the end of the meal, the waiter brings over a pair of heart-shaped sweets in a beautifully carved wooden box. I eat mine whole. Turns out it was actually a candle.

The operation is straightforward, and a little boy is delivered safely (presumably to be immediately dressed up in Baby’s First KKK Hood and given a rattle in the shape of a burning cross).

“I had no idea patient was such a demeaning term,” she says. “I’m so sorry, I’ll never use it again. Client. Client’s much better. Like what prostitutes have.”