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

by Adam Kay

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

“Apricot stones contain cyanide,” he replies drily. “The death cap mushroom has a fifty percent fatality rate. Natural does not equal safe. There’s a plant in my garden that if you simply sat under it for ten minutes, you’d be dead.” Job done; she tosses the tablets. I ask him about that plant over a colonoscopy later. “Water lily.”

Got rid of hundreds of the bed-blocking fuckers.

“You’re going to get fired if you write that. Change it to pus-like or put a hyphen in there somewhere.” I look down at the offending phrase: She has a pussy discharge.*

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

glance at the notes before seeing an elderly gynae patient on ward rounds. 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.

just wants to know there’s someone out there who cares. And actually, that’s a very large part of what being a doctor is.

You don’t cure depression, the same way you don’t cure asthma; you manage it. I’m the inhaler he’s decided to go with and I should be pleased he’s gone this long without an attack.