CATCH YOUR BREATH

The author is an anaesthetist and comedian who hosts the Comedian's Surgery podcast and who writes for BBC Radio 4 about the intersection between medicine and comedy. His book is sub-titled 'The Secret Life of a punchSleepless Anaesthetist' and is a funny, sad, harrowing and hilarious gut-ing memoir by a doctor whose job it is to keep people alive by putting them to sleep. Strong drugs for his patients, strong coffee for him, he navigates emergencies, patients not breathing for themselves, and living with a terrifying sense of responsibility. It's enough to leave anyone feeling numb! But don't worry there is plenty of laughing gas to be had as we read about the soon-to-be mother who giggles and surprises us all with an accidental snort. 'Both parents are terribly excited and talk to me like I am a wine sommelier with vintages on offer. I go through orders of the day like the drug sommelier I am.' To summarise - cannular in the hand, a spinal anaesthetic, followed by the delivery of one baby. How does that sound? The frontline hero was finishing this book when the country was in the grip of a worldwide pandemic. One of his first anecdotes is about a football sized cyst in the abdomen of a patient who had eaten a dog tapeworm during a meal some years ago, presumably by accident. If it had burst it would cause anaphylaxis and death. And this doctor loves parasites because they have personality and are exotic, like pinworm which causes the classic itchy bum to river blindness and Chagas disease spread by insects that kiss you at night and bugs that colonise dead bodies! 256pp.