This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay

Author : Adam Kay
Title : This Is Going To Hurt
Published : 19/04/18
Pages : 256
Genre : Autobiography
Publisher : Picador 

     Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships… Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, these diaries are everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides an essential, brutally frank account of what life is like for the beleaguered vanguard of the NHS.

     Recently I've been trying to read a few more non-fiction books and try and expand my knowledge of this planet we call home and the people who live here. When it comes to the world of the NHS and the work they do I have experienced it up close a few more times than I would wish to have, from personal visits to having had family members spend prolonged periods of time in hospitals. And some who have not made it back out again, But throughout all this, I have had the utmost respect for what they do. But here's the thing all of this only adds up to a fraction of what they go through. At the end of the day I could always walk out the door and escape, this was never my day to day life. So while at the local supermarket I came across Adam Kay's book. I Wondered what his life must have been like, working these long hours and still trying to do his best to serve those who came to him for help.

     The author presented his time as a doctor in the form of a diary starting on day one the third of August two thousand and four and ending on the day the straw finally broke the camels back. This is one emotional read and took me from laughing one minute to on the verge of tears the next. This blending does help to ease the reader through the book and works to break up some of the more heartbreaking stories he tells. The workload junior doctors are routinely expected to take on goes beyond what most of us would be willing to put up with. When a snap decision means life or death would you not want them to be at there peak performance. But these men and women turn up day after day and do the best the can to make us feel safe and get us better. You have to feel for them, as a patient we think that they have all the answer to what ales us. Through reading this book I learned that some time they are just as clueless as us, and also people do the most stupid things to themselves and expect the doctor to put it right afterward. 

     To me, the author has done an amazing job in showing what life is like within the walls of whichever your local hospital happens to be. He shows why so many of us are proud of the health care system we have in the UK and the people who choose to work in it. The humor he has injected throughout is somehow a mix of laughing out loud and squinting with pain at the same time, I guess it goes with the job. And more than once the second-hand embarrassment is so painful you wonder how the people themselves could look someone in the eyes again. But as I said before you don't get the highs with out the lows. And none more so than that final straw, I don't know how I would have reacted in his situation, but it genuinely left me feeling very low. When you have done everything you can but it still ends badly I guess crying is all you can do. 

     I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone, It has given me some insight behind the curtains of the NHS. Kay writes in a way that's easy to read and I got through it in one sitting despite the roll-coaster of emotions.  It is through his book that I have gained a better understating and a great interest in the medical world. I'm sure it won't be long before I delve back into this world be it fictional or not. And as a final thought, before anyone tries's to slag off the UK's healthcare system I dare you to read this book and say it again, because these men and women do an amazing job under extreme circumstances, and still win more times than they lose and for that, I will forever be thankful.