From the eyeball to the umbilical cord, from a messy corpse to the value of ECT – doctor Gavin Francis recounts his adventures in medicine and explores the wonders of the human form
Before starting my GP clinic yesterday I glanced through the list of patients I’d see that day. Most of the names I knew relatively well: their appointments would be follow-ups on diabetes, mental health problems, heart disease, or any number of the myriad difficulties many of us struggle along with. Other names I knew less well: one turned out just to need her contraceptive pill, another had broken his wrist, yet another felt overwhelmed by a paralysing sense of despair. One of the rewards of this often difficult but fulfilling work is that when my patients take their seat in the consulting room, I never know what they are going to say. I have between 10 and 12 minutes allocated per patient, but, as for most GPs, this is never enough.
The first patient was a new name new to me. With a click of the computer his records popped up on screen, and I noticed his date of birth was last week. He was just a few days old; our consultation together would become the first entry into notes that, all being well, will follow him for the next eight or nine decades. The emptiness of the screen seemed to shimmer with all the possibilities that still lie ahead of him.
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