Sick Notes

I love reading books about people's jobs and Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield is a very good example of the genre. As the title suggests it's about the work of a GP and it's very funny - and sad. The people who really need the GP's services are almost always the ones who fail to keep their appointments. The surgery is often full of the worried well clutching Internet print outs. There are people with many symptoms - none of which fit any known disease and there are people who will talk about everything except the problem they really want dealt with. Women are far better than men at describing symptoms - especially pain. Men just know it hurts women will tell the GP when it started, what it's like, what makes it better and what makes it worse and what they think caused it.

Obviously this is a generalisation but I've read before that women are in general better at describing symptoms of any sort. There are sad cases in the book - the Type 1 Diabetic who is not using her insulin properly and the hypochondriac who does turn out to have something serious wrong with him. But the big thing to take from this book is that 90% of complaints will get better without any medical intervention at all and medical intervention may even make things worse. Your doctor's job is to keep you away from the hospital and away from all the expensive tests - not to save the NHS money but to allow your body to do what it does best - heal itself.

Should be required reading for all patients.

Still reading . . .

I am still reading Phil Rickman. I rarely read a series back to back because I usually start getting bored after the first few but with the Merrily Watkins series I am number 8 with 2 more to go. I recently visited the author's web site and have discovered that he is working on another one www.philrickman.com

There is just so much packed into the books - ghosts, the supernatural, religion, paganism, local history and folk lore. Then there's the characters - Merrily herself and her teenage daughter Jane and her boyfriend Eirion; Gomer Parry - semi retired plant hire expert; Lol Robinson - singer, song writer and guitarist; Sophie - the Bishop's lay secretary; Frannie Bliss - detective and his boss - the ice maiden Annie Howe. Great stuff and I find myself totally lost in their world on the Hereford border with Wales.

When I get to the end of the series I have several other books to start on. Matt Haig's The Radleys; Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson; Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles; Sick Notes by Tony Copperfield. A fair old mixture there!

The stop press news is that I have finally ordered an e-book reader. I've been debating for about a year whether to get one. Now Amazon are selling a UK version of their very successful Kindle I'm going for that - which will be released at the end of August. I had favoured the Sony but having found out their latest one has a shiny screen I decided to go for the Kindle. I dislike reading books printed on shiny paper as I find them difficult to read so trying to read on a shiny screen could have been difficult.