Random Things Tours: Catch your Breath. The Secret Life of a Sleepless Anaesthesist by Ed Patrick

 

Catch Your Breath! And welcome to the waiting room of a hospital before being invited to sign all the papers you should to before your anaesthesia and your subsequent surgery. (In Germany they have at least the number of words requested for a novella. Hope the Brits are more practical). What is really happening there is unfathomable for the majority of - hopefully - accidental visitors of the surgery room. But if you really want to know more, anaesthesiologist and comedian Ed Patrick wrote a book about it. Now it´s all there revealed, in the book.

I was not so sure what to expect from Catch your Breath. The Secret Life of a Sleepless Anaesthesist. I am not foreign to medical interventions, hospitals, anaesthesia and other Greek/Latin words. I even count among my acquaintances a couple of anaesthesists. But how it is to write about it? Would it be boring, too technical, dark and creepy (some people may not even wake up from the deep sleep).

Patrick´s is hilarious, the British kind of hilarious, but nevertheless serious enough to introduce you to the big picture of what does it mean to practice this job, including the professional path leading to it. Told as a personal story it gives credibility to the experience. Authentic is also his account of the time spent in the hospital during the hardship of Corona times. The ´Sleepless´ part of the book title makes even more sense now, isn´t it?

In any case, if you are considering a medical career and dream about a smooth balance between work and personal life, you rather apply for a position in the medical services by the city hall. Because, in the real medical life, which involves hospital and night shifts and anaesthesia, there is nothing like that. And this is available for any normal city hospital in this big wide wild world.

As a memoir, Catch your Breath has an impressive number of dialogues which are so vivid and smart and hilarious that I´ve caught myself just laughing on my own more than once. But believe me, there are so many serious things this book deals with, it´s not a humour book. But what would life be if not a big joke that we need to learn how to make fun of. In full seriousness, of course.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own