This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

by Adam Kay

The device goes off, I say ‘Oh my God’ and reflexively jump to my feet. It’s not that I’m particularly excited about my Fiorentina – it’s just that the fucking thing has the exact same pitch and timbre as my hospital bleep. H takes my pulse: it’s 95. Work has pretty much given me PTSD.

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.

This morning I delivered little baby Sayton – pronounced Satan, as in King of the Underworld. It’s hard to believe he’ll get through his school career unbullied, and yet we merrily wave him off on that journey. (Or maybe he’s actually the devil and I should have just shoved him back in.)

‘Why do we always say that people lost their battle with cancer, and never that cancer won its battle against them?’

‘It’s funny – you don’t think of doctors getting ill.’ It’s true, and I think it’s part of something bigger: patients don’t actually think of doctors as being human.