Top surgeons and brave mums unflappable in the face of death
Being a mother is the world’s most ruthless job. Any occasion, no matter how tough, has to be seized as a chance to chivvy your children into line.
Motorcycle fanatic Ben’s mum turned up at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, on Surgeons: At The Edge Of Life (BBC2), as he struggled for breath with a collapsed lung after a horrific accident. His ribs were crushed, his leg was shattered, and the painkillers were wearing off. All Ben could think about was whether he was going to die.
Mum took her opportunity. ‘You’re not getting another bike, are you,’ she said. Clearly this was a discussion they’d had before, but this time she wasn’t asking him. She was telling him.
Medical documentaries, more than any other genre, show us life at its most raw and honest. no one fakes their feelings when they’re about to go into surgery — apart from the doctors, of course.
exaggerated calm is expected from the medical team. When Ben was on the operating table, having his right thighbone reassembled with titanium plates, his one working lung was struggling to cope.
As his oxygen levels flatlined, the anaesthetist sounded a warning: ‘He’s getting a little unwell.’ The only other professionals ever to use understatement as effectively as hospital medics were World War II
bomber pilots: ‘Jerry’s a bit cheeky tonight,’ they’d remark, as antiaircraft guns turned the sky over Berlin white-hot.
The doctor screwing Ben’s leg back together dismissed the idea that his job required any special talent. When all the bits fitted together, he said, ‘anyone can do it — the village policeman can be an orthopaedic surgeon.’
Previously, this series has concentrated on ground-breaking treatments for life-threatening conditions such as brain cancer. This episode was more straightforward, following three emergency procedures by trauma teams, with exceptional close-ups of both the surgery and the tension on the surgeons’ faces.
Over on Channel 4, 24 Hours in A&e tracks similar cases but with much more emphasis on the patients and their families. As its title suggests, Surgeons: At The edge Of Life is chiefly interested in the expertise of the consultants wielding the scalpels, though the personalities of their patients inevitably break through.
The neurosurgeon trying to save a vestige of movement and feeling in the hands of a single mother with a dislocated spine choked up, as he thought of how difficult her future was going to be.
Jasvinder broke her back in a car crash. Paralysed from the waist down, she was determined not to give in. ‘You’ve got two options,’ she said. ‘You can cry or you can smile. i’ve got kids, and kids better respond to a smile.’
The consultant welled up at her courage. Understatement can’t hide everything.
Fern Britton doesn’t do understatement. exploring the spectacular landscape of her adopted home county in My Cornwall (Ch5), she gasps, whoops, marvels and cheers.
everything delights her, from the scenery to the history, the people to the pilchards. in the final episode of the series, visiting england’s most westerly and southerly points, she chatted to a former tin miner and listened in on band practice in Pendeen.
And she scrambled into a fogou hole, a stone chamber amid the ruins of an iron Age village, to listen to a man playing the penny whistle.
Her favourite treat was a plunge down a lifeboat ramp with the RnLi. Then she bustled off somewhere else. Fern’s great fun, but a holiday with her would wear you out.