The Patient

Perhaps this book came into my hands as a cry for help from days sitting by various loved one’s bed sides as they left this world bit by bit, or perhaps Dr Khadra had some points to give me for future moments – may they never come.  Or maybe I was just keen on a completely different topic to my current reading list.  A few degrees more than a novel; not quite an autobiography, Dr Khadra spoke from different perspectives: As the patient and as the doctor.  The patient had a lot to say about life in general; the doctor remained aware of his clinical limitations.

“As surgeons, we dip in and out of our patients’ lives much like a flying insect touches on a pond. The insect lands for a moment, then flies to another spot and lands again.  It remains … unaware of the vast and intricate complexity that lies within the pond…”

Jonathon Brewster wakes up in agony one morning and, unprepared and ignorant of his health in general, finds himself thrown into the chaotic, under-funded and confronting Australian health system.  Jonathon’s accelerated  journey is told with empathy and sincerity.  He is anyone who thinks they’ve still got a long life ahead only to find that may not be so.  The author pulls on actual medical experiences to detail Jonathon’s story, which is why the book is so real and readable, it’s almost a very long magazine article in its readability.  Many of us have a Jonathon story.  Along with the physical and mental rollercoaster ride, the practical journey that Jonathon and his wife are now thrust upon is heart-breakingly accurate. The chaotic side-track from their plans leaves very little time for emotional observation once the ticking clock was placed in Jonathon’s bladder.

Dr Khadra is Jonathon’s Urologist in the book.  He speaks with compassion and understanding while outlining the disheartening physical, financial and practical constraints to patient care and the medical profession. Politics and administration, the change in nursing practice, the ridiculous demands on staff all get considered; as do other medical dilemmas outside Jonathon’s case:

“What a macabre situation: a pencil stuck up the urethra into the bladder.  The patient obviously had what we lovingly call in medicine the “Fith Syndrome’, ‘Fith’ being an acronym for ‘fucked in the head’.

The doctor’s brief but probing experience on the other side of the knife shows him the faults in the system.  Khadra discovers that the myriad faults are easier to cope with when the people who work inside the caring profession actually care.

“”What had I done for this man, save talk with him now and then?..why had he picked me out to be the representative of compassion on earth? All I could surmise was that the rest of his care must have been very lacking indeed..”

The frustration on everyone’s part was obvious but not the point of the story.  This book was mostly about someone trying to get well, with what he had available to help him from our hospitals, staff and specialists. There are those who work in the system well and those who work in the system with difficulty, but it is a system in need of help from every aspect. What is needed is simple: more of everything.  While Dr Khadra raised these concerns he has also told a very readable story where behind and underneath there is an awakening happening with both patient and doctor that provides some hope for the lives they lived and choices they made.