Catch Your Breath: The Secret Life of a Sleepless Anaesthetist

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Coffee and Covid podcast - where I catch up with NHS friends across the UK about life on during the pandemic lockdown (edited by my girlfriend, please say it sounds good). The author masterfully avoids any hint of bragging or entitlement, presenting the challenges Anesthetists face with humility and authenticity. Patrick are crucial in providing intravenous access, making them the go-to person during challenging moments when doctors and nurses struggle to get cannula into patients with difficult veins in the ward. It was a draining time for doctors that even their days off did not feel like days off, there were simply days where they were at the hospital and days when they are not. Throughout the book, as I have seen in many others, are scattered complaints about how underfunded and unmodernized the NHS is, along with compliments for it, of course, as it seems the author still has a job he would like to keep.

Perhaps I am a little biased, having specialised my reading in non-fiction and with a weird interest in reading/watching medical stuff. It reminded me that humour is the greatest tonic we have, that at it darkest it is the most healing, the more perverse, the more irrelevant the funnier it can be. Written in short snippets of cases, experiences, and daily life this book was super easy to read and would be a great book to dip in and out of if you're short on time.

No multiple choice exam can prepare one for the reality of dealing with people in crisis and not all good doctors have the right answers.

He gives us a glimpse of his life, and that of the other medical professionals, in the ICU as they helplessly watch patients die in spite of their best efforts.Of course, this book isn’t solely based around the pandemic, though the chapters that are show us the harsh realities of life on the frontline. He has performed across the UK, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and hosts the “Comedians’ Surgery” podcast where he speaks to guests including Joe Lycett, Rose Matafeo and Reginald D Hunter about their health stories and experiences. I feel that the author was trying quite desperately to be funny in an Adam Kay sort of way but it just wasn’t working… sorry. True stories from the Police, prisons, armed forces, the legal system, but especially those about the medical profession, so I knew Catch Your Breath would be right up my alley. Would it be boring, too technical, dark and creepy (some people may not even wake up from the deep sleep).