Adam Kay - Quick Reads This Is Going To Hurt: An Easy To Read Version Of The Bestselling Book

Specially rewritten for ease of reading by Francesca Main

This is an edited extract from This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, rewritten for ease of reading. Everything you will read is true but names, dates and some details have been changed to protect the people in the book.

In 2010, I left my job as a junior doctor. My parents will probably never forgive me.

Last year, I was sent a letter that said I would never be able to work as a doctor again. It wasnt a big shock, as I had not set foot in a hospital for so long. But I still found it sad that this part of my life had come to an end.

It was good news for my spare room at least. I cleared out box after box of papers, and the only things that I saved were my old diaries. As I read through the stories some funny, some sad, some painful I remembered the long hours and the huge effect the job had had on my life. I could not believe I had worked so hard, though at the time I just got on with it.

Around the time I was reading my old diaries, junior doctors were being attacked in the news. It was hard for them to tell the public their side of the story, probably because they were too busy working all the time. I thought people should know the truth about what it really means to be a doctor. I wanted to do my bit to stick up for them.

So I decided to share my story. Here are some of the notes I kept during my time in the NHS the good, the bad and the ugly. They show what its really like on the wards, the ways the job changed my life, and how one day it all got too much.

Day one. My partner, H, has made me a packed lunch. I have a bag full of brand-new doctors equipment, a new shirt and a new email address. The person who set it up has spelled my name wrong. It is atom.kay@nhs.net. Its good to know that, no matter what happens today, no one can say Im the most useless person in the hospital. I can blame everything on Atom, whoever he is.

We may not get much free time, but we make up for it in stories about patients. Today over lunch we are telling each other the strange things we have had people complain about. They include itchy teeth and a patient who felt pain in their arm every time they went for a wee. Each story gets a polite laugh.

Then it is Sams turn. He tells us he saw someone this morning who thought they could only sweat from one half of their face.

He sits back and waits for the laugh, but theres nothing. Until we all say at the same time that it sounds like the sign of a serious lung problem. Sam runs off to make a phone call and get the patient back on the ward. I finish his Twix.

I find it strange that every patient on the ward has a pulse of sixty on their chart, so I go and watch the nurse at work while hes not looking. He feels the patients pulse, looks at his watch and carefully counts the number of seconds per minute.

I didnt panic when my patient started spraying blood out of his mouth and onto my shirt. But I didnt know what else to do either. Shove a load of kitchen roll down there?

When my boss arrived, he acted quickly and put a tube down the poor patients throat. Blood was going everywhere: all over me, my boss, the walls, the ceiling. It was like a nightmare episode of Changing Rooms. The sound was the worst part. You could hear the blood choke the man with each breath.

The man did stop bleeding, but for the saddest reason. My boss confirmed the patients death, wrote in the notes and asked the nurse to tell the family. I changed out of my wet clothes.

So there we go, the first death Ive ever seen and every bit as awful as it could have been. My boss took me outside for a cigarette we both needed one after that. And I dont even smoke.

I am called down to the ward at 3 a.m., just as Ive closed my eyes for the first time in three shifts. Its to give a sleeping pill to a patient whose need for sleep is apparently more important than mine. I must have magic powers, because I stagger down there only to find the patient has already fallen asleep.

My boss, Henry, has worked out why a patients blood tests arent normal. They have been affected by some herbal tablets the patient has been taking to make her feel calmer. Henry explains the side effects and she is shocked. I thought they were just made from plants. How dangerous can they be?

Everyone else in the room goes silent, as Henry sighs. Its clearly not the first time hes heard this from a patient.

Apricot stones contain poison, he says. The death cap mushroom has a fifty per cent death rate. Plants are not always safe. There is one in my garden where if you simply sat under it for ten minutes you would be dead. The patient throws away the tablets. Job done.

Later on, I ask him the name of that plant.

Water lily, he replies.

I have been asked to fill in a form about the extra hours Ive worked this week (not that I will be paid for any of them). I realize I have seen H for less than two hours and worked for a grand total of ninety-seven.

I saved a life tonight. I was called to see an old man who was very close to death. If the vending machine I went to had been working and Id bought my Mars bar as planned, I might have been too late.

There wasnt time to think about what to do. I just had to act fast. I did what I was trained to do and very soon the man was looking much better. Sorry, Death, better luck next time. By the time Henry arrived, I felt like Superman.

Everyone thinks we go around like superheroes, preventing disasters every day, but its the first time Ive actually saved a life in five months as a doctor. Many lives are obviously saved every day on hospital wards, but almost every time it happens its down to people working as a team and calmly carrying out a plan.

However, today it was down to me. Henry seems happy, or at least as happy as he ever gets. Well, he says, youve bought the man another few weeks on earth. I bet nobody ever says that to Superman.

Today I saw an injury I will never forget, although I would quite like to. Patient WM is eighteen and was on a night out with friends. At 2 a.m. he was dancing on the roof of a bus shelter and decided to use a lamp post to get back to the ground. He slid down it as though it was a firemans pole. Unfortunately, the lamp post wasnt smooth at all, so it was a bumpy and extremely painful ride to the pavement. He ended up with deep cuts on both hands... and all of the skin and muscle torn off his penis. The medical term is a degloving. It was a bloody mess, to say the least. It made me think of the last piece of pasta stuck to the bowl with a smear of tomato sauce.

WM was upset, and even more so when he asked if the skin could be stuck back on. My boss had to explain that this would be too difficult, since the skin was spread over an eight-foot lamp post in west London.