When medical science fails

As a doctor one of the most frustrating things you can experience is failure, the realisation that medical science is not good enough to fix a person.  It's worse if that person is a friend (or the spouse of a friend) and they have a health problem that is part of your specialist interest.  It is also important to note that as a doctor you should really not be involved in the medical care of your friends.

I wish medical science was better.  I wish that the drugs we have now were available 20 years ago.  I wish we were better. I wish we could stop young people becoming disabled.  I wish everyone could live full, pain free lives with no fucking problems at all.

My wishes are unrealistic.

As a doctor I want to make things good for my patients.  I know this is not always possible.  I can accept that. It's just fucking difficult to accept if it's someone you know, with a disease you work with, but sadly the boat has been missed and the great drugs came along too fucking late. It's a shitty fucking deal.  Sometimes you wish you could turn back the clock but life is not going to let that happen.

You also want to give all of your patients all of your effort all of the time but that is not possible either. As a doctor you are still human and your resources are limited.  It is impossible to fire on full cylinders all the time.

Anyway, I'm on holiday.  Rant over.

A gentle nudge

After a gentle nudge I've got back to writing the blog again.   Service, as always, will be intermittent.

Life is currently full and generally great.  I'm pretty happy.

The return of the Forbidden Planet Glasgow Book group - Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehimann and Kerascoet

The Forbidden Planet book group has been resurrected, much like this blog.  I'm glad the book group is back as it's great to have a chance to discuss comic books with other people.

Beautiful Darkness was an interesting choice. It's a French book, a sort of twisted fairytale.  The art looks great but I didn't really enjoy it.  The story revolves around some fairytale characters who come to live in and around the dead body of a young girl, lost in the woods.  We don't know how she died or if anyone is looking for her.  She is the elephant in the room.  The fairytale characters gradually turn feral, meeting horrible fates or dispatching each other in senseless and cruel ways.  It has a "lord of the flies' feel to it.

This comic book is like a cipher.  The reader can project his or her own ideas onto the story with no real confirmation of anything from the creators.  I guess it would qualify as art and many of the others in the group really liked it.  I felt it was needlessly unpleasant at times even though it looked great.  I don't think I'll rush to re-read it.

Interestingly, the writer Fabien Vehimann has also written some Spirou books.  They are much more wholesome and enjoyable to my mind.  I would like to see other work by these talented creators but Beautiful Darkness just didn't float my boat.

Check it out if you want a really twisted fairy tale but this is not a book for children.