Tom Templeton - 34 Patients: The profound and uplifting memoir about the patients who changed one doctors life

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First published by Michael Joseph in 2021
Published in Penguin Books 2022

Copyright Tom Templeton, 2021

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Jacket design by Dan Mogford
Jacket photograph Getty Images

This book is substantially a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. To maintain patient confidentiality and to protect the privacy of individuals, names of people/places/dates/sequences of the detail of events have been changed and certain situations and individuals may have been merged to further protect identities. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-405-94466-3

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

For Siobhn, Oscar, Molly and Sam

Perhaps youre on the bus looking across the aisle at a scruffy woman with purple hair jerking her head up to the ceiling. Whats wrong with her? Why does she keep muttering to herself?

How about the middle-aged man in the suit playing Candy Crush on his phone? He had a heart attack two months ago and now hes worried every twinge in his chest is a sign of impending death. He cant concentrate at work or at home, his marriage is on the rocks, all because he feels unbearably vulnerable all the time. The phone game is a brief attempt to escape.

The mum ignoring the screaming child is worried sick about how shell cope without her mum, who has just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The grumpy-looking old woman with the annoying shopping trolley just left her demented husband with the carer and has multiple chores to do in the precious hour before she has to get back. Shes increasingly forgetful because of the stress, and is worried she might be losing her marbles too. That guy with the hipster beard, nodding happily along to whatevers blaring out on his headphones, found a lump on his testicle a few months ago but hes too scared to see the doctor. Hell be relieved when he goes eventually and is told its benign. Several other passengers are on their way to hospital or doctors appointments. Why is the bus driver driving so slowly? She is preoccupied with memories of her young nephew who died on this day ten years ago.

Everyone you see on this bus today has lost a loved one.

And what about you? What are you carrying with you? Do you sometimes rub that arm you broke as a child and feel the lump it left behind? Is your older brother still under section on the mental health ward? Have you had a double mastectomy? Did you contemplate suicide some years back? Is your already stressful life becoming overwhelming with the Covid-19 pandemic? Youve also spent time in the borderlands between sickness and health, and you too carry the scars.

Looking back at the muttering woman, maybe she isnt as odd as you first thought. Maybe were all odd, all suffering, all normal. Look out of the window. Its raining. Or is it sunny? Its incredible to be alive. Damn it, the doors have opened and its your stop. Quick! Get up, get out and get on with your life.

In 1999, aged eighteen, I had a summer-holiday job as a ward clerk at St Thomas Hospital in London. Id been placed there by a temp agency and had no interest in medicine at the time. The work itself felt routine, banal. In a high-ceilinged Victorian ward overlooking the River Thames I logged patients on to the computer system, chased down medical notes and X-rays in the far reaches of the hospital and made many cups of tea for the nurses. But although I hadnt especially wanted to work there and was doing it to help fund the next year of university, the hospital quickly became a profound environment for me. The patients were what changed things. They came from all parts of society, from rough sleepers to aristocrats. Some were dying rapidly, some were temporarily ill, others chronically so. Some shouted and sobbed, while some did everything to avoid emotion. I didnt understand much of what was going on, but I could see how vital it was, and how different it was to what I saw in my everyday life.

I was particularly struck by one patient. Others were in and out (or had died) within days or weeks but Jack was bedded in, and seemed as if hed always been there. A few months earlier he had gone for a drink with his partner. Theyd chosen an old haunt, the Admiral Duncan, a popular gay pub in Soho. Though they didnt know it as they went in chatting, another young man had left his sports bag by the bar. While Jack was queuing for a drink the rudimentary explosives in the bag were detonated by a cheap alarm clock. Packed around them were 500 nails. Three people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child, were killed.

Seventy wounded, said the papers the next day. At St Thomas I got a small taste of what wounded meant for one person. I saw nothing of the on-scene and subsequent hospital efforts to prevent Jack bleeding to death from his stump. I didnt witness the touch-and-go month in intensive care, the several revision surgeries that followed. Two months after the bomb blast, what I saw was a man with scars on his arms and a colostomy bag, whose leg ended just below the knee, awkwardly navigating the hospital ward in a wheelchair or on crutches.

Jack and I used to chat about football. He lived for visits from friends and family; his spirits always plummeted when they left. As I got to know him I discovered this wasnt the first hurdle in his life. He told me that, years before the bombing, hed suffered from depression and alcohol dependence. Now he was learning to walk again, struggling with severe pain, deafness and post-traumatic stress disorder. Struggling to make sense of the vicious act that had occurred and its consequences for him. Why, he used to ask, why did this happen to me?

The perpetrator was caught the day after the bombing and placed in a different sort of institution a hospital for mentally ill prisoners. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and a possible personality disorder before being transferred to prison years later.

Until that summer I had always thought of the NHS as a bland, antiseptic institution. Up till then it had meant the drab waiting room at the local GP surgery I scarcely visited. This holiday job opened my eyes to what I now know is the reality. The hospitals and surgeries of this country are a pulsating, variegated hive of pain, lunacy, death, sorrow, redemption and recovery, and when a stone crashes into the waters of a life many of the ripples wash on to its shores.