Doctor, Doctor

Around a year ago I got a phone call from the pharmacist attached to the general practice at which I am registered. He wanted to review my repeat prescription and indeed tried to talk me out of having it any more, to no avail. He then completely overstepped the mark, in my view, and asked me a lot of offensive and impertinent questions about my drinking. He subsequently confounded this social faux pas by exhorting me to cut down on my alcohol consumption, his position being that I would laugh the other side of my face when I got a cardiovascular or cerebrovascular event. As someone who was responsible for a substantial tranche of the research on alcohol and chronic disease risk, I told him, albeit in more diplomatic terms, to go and take a running jump to himself. Who the **** did he think he was, telling me what to do, jumped up little punk bastard?

Anyway, a few days later, one of the doctors rang me up and gave me a telling off. I was humble and conciliatory, although I had no intention of taking the advice given.

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This may give the impression that I am not happy with my general practice or the medical staff there. On the contrary, I am full of admiration for them. They are caring, responsive and as non-bureaucratic as you are allowed to be in these times when governance (which seems to mean people with no experience or qualifications telling people with experience and qualifications how it should be done) rules the roost.

Think back to twenty-odd years ago, when our Tom was four years old. One day, the nursery telephoned me at work to say that Tom was doubled up in pain, clutching his abdomen. I picked him up from the nursery, drove straight to our general practice, and with Tom in my arms, gave the receptionist the crucial facts.

Within seconds, Tom and I were seeing a doctor. No messing about. When someone comes in with a sick child, our general practice springs into action. Formalities can wait until later. However, by this time, Tom’s symptoms had gone altogether and he was as happy as Larry. The doctor said that it had probably been trapped wind, but I was right to bring him in as a matter of urgency. I took Tom home, where he immediately fell into a deep and refreshing sleep on the settee.

The telephone rang. It was the doctor we had seen half an hour ago.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘Only after you had left, I noticed that Thomas has had an operation for a hydrocele.’

This is a condition where fluid can transfer from the abdomen to the scrotum, and is readily fixed by a quick operation.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I replied.

‘Well, it is just possible he has a twisted testicle, which might need attention. Can you check for me?’

‘What do I have to do?’ I asked, nervously.

‘Just poke him in the testicles. If he doesn’t react, then the original diagnosis of wind stands. If he jumps four feet in the air, bring him back in.’

I poked Tom in the testicles and he continued to slumber on. I reported back to the doctor and he was relieved and apologetic. As far as I was concerned, there was no reason to be apologetic. He had done absolutely the right thing.

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Now, let me step back another year or so, when both children were pre-school. One evening I was waiting in the Chinese takeaway for cookie-boy to do his stuff, when another customer said, ‘Hello there.’

‘Hello,’ I replied, wondering who this chap was and under what circumstances we had met.

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ he asked.

‘No, I am sorry, it’s not rudeness, it’s forgetfulness.’

‘I’m your doctor,’ he said with an amused smile.

‘Doctor Dawson! Of course. I do apologise, but it’s meeting you out of context. If you had one of those things with a light on it, and you were looking in one of the childrens’ ears with it, I would have recognised you immediately.’

Doctor Dawson thought this quite funny, and understandable, and we chatted until our takeaways were ready. Cambridge is a rather small world, and I saw him quite frequently thereafter outside of the medical context, as his children were of similar ages to ours, and we would run into each other at swimming pools, play areas etc. He was clearly a devoted parent.

Hugh Dawson was a terrific doctor, a great listener and a great explainer, and although I am not qualified to judge, he seemed to me to be a brilliant diagnostician. He was also a very caring and humane person. He looked after our children with their regular ear infections, he looked after me with my biennial paranoia that I had a fatal disease, and he looked after Linda when she had Salmonella poisoning.

I remember on one occasion when I had consulted him about persistent headaches and he had done quite a thorough examination, and decided correctly that there was nothing seriously amiss, his asking me what exactly my job was. I explained that I was a cancer epidemiologist, but I wasn’t medically qualified, which meant that there was always the risk of layman’s panic when you think you might have some dreadfully aggressive cancer as a result of a rather non-specific symptom.

‘How do you cope with that?’ he asked.

‘I compartmentalise. I tell myself that all this stuff I do at work has nothing to do with me personally, although it doesn’t always work.’

He thought for a moment, and then nodded.

‘Probably a good strategy,’ he remarked, and it was clear that he was storing it away for possible discussion with future patients. The adjective thoughtful might have been invented for him.

Terribly sadly, he died in 2016, aged only 63. I am sure he is sorely missed by his medical colleagues, and by his patients. He is certainly missed by this one. He was a lovely man. RIP Doctor Dawson.