Confessions of a GP

‘Doctor, please work with me here. Man to man. My marriage is on the line. Why don’t you prescribe me a double dose and what I do with the pills is my responsibility. I don’t mind paying for them.’

‘Look, I feel really uncomfortable about this. I appreciate your predicament but I’m not prepared to prescribe you this medication knowing that you’re going to give some secretly to your wife.’

‘Do you really want to be responsible for the break-up of a family, Dr Daniels?’

‘To be fair, it wasn’t me who cheated on my wife.’

‘You’re not paid to judge me, Doctor. Look, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you call my wife in for a smear and while your down there, you can do a quick swab for chlamydia.’

‘Look, we can’t just test people and give them medicines without them knowing. We need to have consent.’

‘There must be something you can do. If you don’t prescribe me these antibiotics, I’ll get them off the internet and that’s even more dodgy. God knows what I could be poisoning her with.’

‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you get yourself tested? It’s only a urine test and then if you’re negative, you don’t have to worry.’

‘And if I’m positive?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’

Thankfully, Gary tested negative and I never had to worry about a second attempt by him trying to talk me into secretly drugging his wife.

Beach medicine

Last year I was lucky enough to have been lying on a white sandy beach with calm, crystal clear, blue waters lapping on the shore. It was a picture of idyllic tranquillity until a woman dropped down dead a few yards away. Had it been an episode of Baywatch, I would have run over heroically and, with sweat glistening on my tanned bulging biceps, I would have brought her back to life with a few seconds of mouth to mouth. The rescued lady would have been 22 years old with large false breasts and gleaming white teeth. After spitting out a couple of gulps of sea water, she would have gazed into my eyes with her make-up still perfect and declared her undying love for me.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an episode of Baywatch. The woman was a German tourist in her late seventies and was dead as dead could be. I did run over and try resuscitation and my wife bravely started mouth to mouth, which was impressive given that the German woman had vomited before collapsing. A crowd of onlookers developed and an ambulance was apparently on its way, but after 15 minutes of CPR, it became clear that this lady wasn’t coming back. The problem we had now was what to do? The ambulance was coming from the other side of the island and could be another hour. The sun wasn’t reflecting off my tanned rippling biceps because I don’t actually have any. Instead, it was beating down on my pasty white back and I could feel that I was beginning to burn.

I really wanted to call it a day. Not just because I was getting sunburnt but because this woman was dead. In a hospital I would have ‘called it’. This is where the team running the resuscitation makes a decision to stop. I am quite happy to make this decision in a hospital because I am surrounded by lots of other doctors and nurses and a hospital full of equipment. On this beach I had none of that. I didn’t have a heart monitor to tell me if there was any electrical activity coming from the heart. I didn’t have a blood glucose machine to tell me that she wasn’t a diabetic with a very low blood sugar and I didn’t have a team of other doctors to agree that it was the right decision. I did, however, have my common sense. It would take at least another 45 minutes for the ambulance to reach us and then another hour on bumpy roads to get her to a small, poorly equipped hospital with no intensive care department. The husband had told me that she had survived a heart attack earlier in the year and so it didn’t take a diagnostic genius to work out that she had probably just had a second one after returning from an overenergetic swim.