This Is Going To Hurt

5.0/5.0 stars

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Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's diaries provide a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this is everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward.

This Is Going To Hurt is hilarious and devastating in equal measure. It is a book I wish everyone would (should) read because a) it is, genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny from the get-go and b) it allows you to catch a glimpse through the window into the heartbreaking, painful reality of what the NHS faces day after endless day, and that we, as oblivious, ignorant observers take for granted and so casually overlook. The gruelling hours, the brutal shifts, the severely underpaid (or unpaid) staff, the heroism in saving a life and the cruel reality check that sometimes a life is not yours to save...all of this, in a series of diary entries that Kay writes in an almost blasé way, each anecdote so casually witty yet echoing with the harsh realities that fill hospital hallways. 

There are many, like me, who work in healthcare, whose professions lie within the NHS or are well-connected to it. With whom this book will resonate more than it does others. But I don't think any one person will be prepared for the sheer lunacy that accompanies not just the stories that Adam Kay walks away with, but also the way in which he and so many others are ground to the bone to keep it running.

I don't think any one person can possibly deny that the NHS front line is made of heroes. It's no secret that it's unequivocally the best healthcare system in the world. What remains secret, however, is how much of their staff take a beating to make it so. After reading this book, the word superhuman takes on a whole other meaning. The words selfless, dedicated, sacrifice, cannot describe enough what these doctors embody.

And the hardest thing to take away from it was how having single-handedly the most important job in the world can make or break you. How being a doctor can literally mean destroying yourself to save others. And it blows my mind that so many people - Jeremy Hunt included - can't fathom the truth of it.

There are times when I was reading this book and forgetting that these are real-life entries. It's a clever way to hit the message home - in a way, the stories wrote themselves and they, in turn, tell a more profound one. It's such a light-hearted approach to the difficult world that he draws out for us; I love how he states the disturbing, the gruesome, the tragic in all their glory in the most brazen, sarcastic manner that makes you choke out a laugh and then immediately feel guilty about it. The challenges and tragedies, the deaths and new births, the small victories and the devastating losses - they tell a story that is seldom heard but should be told more often. While Kay (and every doctor/NHS member alive) deserves a freaking award for literally everything he has ever been through, his diary entries deserve a merit of their own; his writing style is one of envy though its source of inspiration not so much. I guess you have to balance the humour with the hurt to soldier through in a war zone and my God is life within the NHS just that.