Xmas Day 2006
DOCTOR-turned-comic Adam Kay was on duty across six Christmases in his years with his beloved National Health Service.
His festive experiences ranged from the painfully tragic to the downright bizarre.
Now the best-selling author of Diaries of a Junior Doctor has written a new book capturing the highs and lows of having to work while many of us are celebrating.
In his first book Adam told how punishing long hours on the ward forced him to quit the vocation he cherished.
These extracts from Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas, again based on his diaries, are equally funny, thoughtful and searingly honest.
The NHS front line sadly doesn’t get invited to Christ’s all-you-can-eat birthday shindig. For medical personnel the world over, Christmas is just another day.
Employees divvy up the shifts and put in absurdly unsociable hours to ensure the rest of us make it through to the New Year in one piece. Of the seven Christmas Days I was a practising doctor, I ended up on the wards for six of them – removing babies and baubles from the various places they found themselves stuck.
Sharing what I think is a top-level anecdote in the doctors’ mess. I’m delighted with my story of the 20-yearold whose half-a***d attempt at a costume for his Christmas party landed him in A&E.
He had wrapped himself in layer upon layer of tinfoil, made a couple of holes for his eyes and one for his mouth, then dispatched himself to the party as a turkey.
Hours later he collapsed, having desiccated himself to the human equivalent of a Ryvita and needed intravenous rehydration.
Santa might be putting his feet up but his pal the Grim Reaper never gets the day off. And so I find myself in a side room with a distressed family having The Chat about mum/gran.
Granny is outnumbered by E.coli bacteria in her bloodstream to the tune of several billion to one and there’s now only one way this can end.
Hoping to show empathy through my body language, I lean in to say all we can do now is keep her comfortable and concentrate on her dignity. As I do so, I inadvertently lean on my tie.
It’s a seasonal tie – a night-sky blue with old Santa on his sleigh perched right up near the knot. Moving down the tie we come to Prancer and Dancer and the rest of the reindeer massive with Rudolph proudly front and centre.
Crucially, and disastrously, underneath Rudolph’s red nose – and now the pressure of my elbow – is a button that activates a tinny speaker to blast out a frantic rendition of Jingle Bells.
I turn ketchup red, apologise and jab at my abdomen. But all I succeed in doing is restarting the f***ing tune.
Thinking of superlatives to add to my apologies, I notice one daughter laughing uncontrollably. Maybe there is an easier way to deliver bad news, after all.
I meet Patient AW who prepared for the new year with a bang. Followed by a whimper. Finding herself in a suitor’s bedroom, in need of lubrication, she went to the kitchen and returned with a tub of peanut butter.
It wasn’t the most terrible choice – it’s oil-based, plus it offers the option of smooth or crunchy for added “pleasure”.
Downsides include the fact that oil-based lubricants are kryptonite to condoms. Also, some people have peanut allergies. Patient AW, for example.
‘But whyyyy?’ I asked, stret
Adam in the operating theatre ching the word longer than Annie Lennox ever managed.
“I assumed it was only a problem, you know, up the other end,” she explained. Luckily, she escaped the worst-case scenario of breathing difficulties and ultimately not breathing at all.
Despite my best efforts it’s a hat-trick: three Christmases on the trot opening up patients instead of presents. I’m bleeped away to see Patient NW who has come to the labour ward with reduced fetal movements at 38 weeks. And the baby’s breech – so caesarean section it is. “Oh, for f***’s sake,” she says.
I reassure her everything’s going to be absolutely fine. “Oh, it’s not that,” she groans. “My other one was born on Christmas Day too. Everyone’s going to think I do this deliberately to save on presents.”
And then there’s Patient KM, a lady in her 60s, about to kill herself with sharon fruits.