Most of you probably know Joanna Cannon’s name from her works of fiction, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and Three Things About Elsie (longlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction). What you might not know about Cannon is that she is also a doctor – specifically a psychiatrist. That insight is part of what has made her characters so compelling, complex and real. Her bread and butter, as she tells us over and over in this memoir, is stories. She collects people’s stories, compulsively searching them out in every context.
In medicine, every patient has a story. It could be a short one or a long one, and often they don’t have happy endings. But they are all stories, and each story is as unique as a fingerprint. Good doctors need to know these stories, because our physical symptoms are only ever part of what makes us sick. Our physical well-being is tied to our emotions and our circumstances, and our stories are what catalogue what our minds and bodies have experienced.
For Cannon, stories were also what sustained her. Her training took everything she had, and nearly broke her. When she entered medicine, she had an uphill battle to fight. She was doubted because of her age, and had to keep up with people half her age. Which is hard in any context, but in the context of an over-burdened medical system that demands back-to-back shifts spent working at breakneck pace without a chance to stop and eat, let alone sleep, it’s nearly impossible. What she found hardest was keeping a distance between her natural compassion and her patients. She couldn’t help investing in them, and each time she lost one or had to sit by as one suffered, she suffered along with them. Her superiors were equally burned out and either threw her in the deep end, covered for those who did, or berated her for shortcomings without so much as considering what she might be going through. She struggled, and she considered giving up. Then she got a rotation in psychiatrics.
Where her desire to spend time listening to patients had been a liability in a rushed emergency department, it was the whole point of psychiatry. For the first time her pace slowed down and she had room to breathe. Not only that, but the staff took the time to notice one another. Even the patients cared about her and made her feel valued.
This book is a personal story, but it is also a look behind the scenes of Britain’s NHS system. I don’t live in the UK, but we have a similar publicly funded medical system in Canada. It’s great to have free access to quality medical care, but the system is full of flaws. Wait times for routine tests and appointments with specialists are months, if not a year or longer. Doctors, nurses and other medical staff are overworked and under immense pressure, which not only affects the quality of their lives, but the quality of care they are able to provide. If you only have ten minutes per patient, there’s no time to hear their story. No time to look beyond the most obvious symptoms and the most obvious causes. I have first-hand experience of details being missed that have led to serious medical complications. It’s terrifying, and frustrating. For me and for the nurses and doctors who are doing their best and falling short, often through no fault of their own.
This isn’t a long book, but what it lacks in page number, it makes up for in depth. Cannon has a talent for distilling the most important parts of her experience down to the most potent, the most affecting. I think most of you will find something in this book that speaks to you. I certainly recommend finding out.
‘A few years ago, I found myself in A&E. I had never felt so ill. I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, I hadn’t eaten properly or slept well, or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains…and I shook with the effort of not crying. I was an inch away from defeat… but I knew I had to carry on. Because I wasn’t the patient. I was the doctor.’
In this powerful memoir, Joanna Cannon tells her own story as a junior doctor, and the stories of many others like her, facing the extraordinary and sometimes daunting landmarks along the way: from the first shock of holding another person’s life in your hands, to moments of crisis and loss. In a profession where weakness remains a taboo, this book will bring this tension to life with vivid, human stories, and hope for how we can better care for those we rely on to care for us – as well as crucial lessons on mental health at work for all of us. – Goodreads
Book Title: Breaking and Mending
Author: Joanna Cannon
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Wellcome Collection
Released: September 26, 2019
Genre: Memoir, Health, Medicine
Pages: 160
Date Read: October 8-14, 2019
Rating: 9/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.54/5 (114 ratings)
I loved Three Things About Elsie. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. I need to read this book and The Trouble With Goats And Sheep. I’m pretty sure I’m a Joanna Cannon fan.
I haven’t read Elsie yet, but I did enjoy The Trouble, and this was a huge hit. I’m glad to hear you loved Elsie so much – I wasn’t sure based on other reviews I’ve heard if it would be up my street. But it’s on my (very long) list and has now moved up several places! I’d love to hear your thoughts if/when you do get to either of her other books!