Benjamin Daniels

A laugh out loud account of being a doctor in general practice in the UK. The subtitle tells it perfectly. Amid the hillarious anecdotes are some quite serious ones. When it is more about life and death, less about earwax.

The book is hillariously funny with genuine insights, moral dilemmas and a really grave case that keeps haunting me and I wish I could unread it (who would expect it in an entertaining book? Then again, this is what life is like.). Sometimes you just have to have the stomach even to read his stories and he(?) experienced them! It is much more lighthearted at the beginning and is getting more and more serious towards the end.

Sometimes it’s shocking to witness him saying “oh well it’s somebody else’s problem now”. How he gives up the fight with (for) a patient. However, he always tries at least and maybe he sees his limits realistically. The problem with grown-ups is you can’t help them if they don’t want you to. Sometimes I feel he gives up too easily, doesn’t fight enough. But maybe it’s me who fights too much.

The descriptions are hillarious: “Her face looks like a pitbull slowly chewing a wasp.” (p.72) "He was only in his early forties but hadn’t left his bungalow for nine years. The medical notes seemed to suggest that this was due to a history of agoraphobia, but more obvious on meeting him was that there would be no way Mr Hogden would have fitted through the door. He was fucking enormous.” (p.85) “His back aches because, like him, it is 90 years old.” (p.119) “He’s not particularly blessed in the brains department and has a very high TTT score. TTT stands for tattoo to teeth.” (p.263)

And some genuine insights: “Regardless of the country it is practised in, most of hospital medicine is painting over the cracks rather than fixing the wall.” (p.76) “As a parent myself, I do realise that it is hugely anxiety-provoking to have this small person for whom you are solely responsible and whom you love overwhelmingly and unconditionally.” (p.104)

If I were to show you all my favourite quotes, I would quote the whole book. His opinion about being a parent, ageing, weight problems, racism, vaccines, home births, being a doctor in a wonderfully entertaining, and at the same time thought-provoking book. It is absolutely worth reading.… (mer)

A laugh out loud account of being a doctor in general practice in the UK. The subtitle tells it perfectly. Amid the hillarious anecdotes are some quite serious ones. When it is more about life and death, less about earwax.

The book is hillariously funny with genuine insights, moral dilemmas and a really grave case that keeps haunting me and I wish I could unread it (who would expect it in an entertaining book? Then again, this is what life is like.). Sometimes you just have to have the stomach even to read his stories and he(?) experienced them! It is much more lighthearted at the beginning and is getting more and more serious towards the end.

Sometimes it’s shocking to witness him saying “oh well it’s somebody else’s problem now”. How he gives up the fight with (for) a patient. However, he always tries at least and maybe he sees his limits realistically. The problem with grown-ups is you can’t help them if they don’t want you to. Sometimes I feel he gives up too easily, doesn’t fight enough. But maybe it’s me who fights too much.

The descriptions are hillarious: “Her face looks like a pitbull slowly chewing a wasp.” (p.72) "He was only in his early forties but hadn’t left his bungalow for nine years. The medical notes seemed to suggest that this was due to a history of agoraphobia, but more obvious on meeting him was that there would be no way Mr Hogden would have fitted through the door. He was fucking enormous.” (p.85) “His back aches because, like him, it is 90 years old.” (p.119) “He’s not particularly blessed in the brains department and has a very high TTT score. TTT stands for tattoo to teeth.” (p.263)

And some genuine insights: “Regardless of the country it is practised in, most of hospital medicine is painting over the cracks rather than fixing the wall.” (p.76) “As a parent myself, I do realise that it is hugely anxiety-provoking to have this small person for whom you are solely responsible and whom you love overwhelmingly and unconditionally.” (p.104)

If I were to show you all my favourite quotes, I would quote the whole book. His opinion about being a parent, ageing, weight problems, racism, vaccines, home births, being a doctor in a wonderfully entertaining, and at the same time thought-provoking book. It is absolutely worth reading.… (mer)

Actually, I think they shouldn’t have made a second book. It is not really humorous anymore. The first book was mostly funny, and at times grave and offered some impressive insights. This book, however, is mostly musing about the NHS, the system, fears, mistakes. With regular patients like Danni the prostitute or Crackhead Kenny, there isn’t much of a chance to be entertaining, is there? Then again, I don’t think anyone was forcing Dr Daniels to write a sequel. It’s a shame he did. It was quite informative but I was looking for a laugh, not a sigh.

Was it because of the years that passed? Was it the pressure to be hilarious again? He failed so miserably, I’m sorry to say. The only bits resembling funny are those that include a healthy dose of self-irony: introduction, medical notes (which he reluctantly included, in his own words a bit offended, because they were not his creative product), and the very end where he admits he was struggling to find material. He didn’t really manage.

The dedication seems like it was meant to be a joke but it is a bad one. Then it is all about responsibility, liability, death, cancer, drugs, old age and depression. I was starting to think it was me who was getting too depressed to laugh, so I counted the stories. Of the 69 pieces the book contains, 8 are about failure, humiliation or embarrassment, 7 deal with drug addiction, 5 with cancer and death, 1 cancer survivor having a baby, 7 deaths (without cancer), 2 with a person with HIV, 2 show effects of old age (dementia and delusions), 2 about war/army, 2 patients are imprisoned, one is a former inmate (a paedophile). There is a story about molestation, the other ones consist of child abuse, hunger, bitterly divorced parents, brain damaged baby, an overweight patient who eats a lot, a disgusting story, feeling guilty, one dedicating his body to science (but not his organs, that one is almost funny), the medical notes (I had to look up ‘halitosis’ though to get the joke), two with a twist, of which one he read on the Internet… Really?! Not even his own story. It could be entertaining at least, then. Five are about time wasters, and 10 are musings about health problems and health care (NHS). The humour is meant to be found in too big breasts, in poo/bottom (twice), or in foreign objects in the patient (twice, plus a list of 1 10 cases of objects in the bottom – even he says the medical staff is not amused by it at all. Neither are the readers.), and a pet in the rectum South Park style (not his story either). Well, I can Google “things in rectum funny medical stories”, too. I’m not interested, though.

There is one great story in it. No, it is not funny either but if you read anything from this book, read the one titled ‘John’. There are the ever-important parts about recognizing meningitis (as in the first book), and antibiotic resistance. Read these, too. An interesting piece about the human race’s arrogance with the rulers of this planet: bacteria. He is not the first doctor or thinker I hear this view from (the other ones are a doctor at an intensive care unit and H.G.Wells in The War of the Worlds). It was interesting but not in the least entertaining.… (mer)