This is Going to Hurt: so sick !

I actually love this book so much. Every story from cover to cover. And it feels like I have favoritism for this book given that Adam Kay writes about how his experiences shaped him to leave medicine, when I’m just out here gettin’ started. It portrays a lot of the deep-rooted, systemic issues in healthcare and how much the pressure is passed down to the individual doing the basic duties of their jobs (i.e. the physician), and how living through the perspective of that individual, you cycle through so. many. emotions. Being in healthcare is such a huge privilege, as I often echo with my friends in healthcare. But there are also certain foundational emotional events that occur, that I think I will eventually grapple with them like Kay does, later in my career, because everything right now is still perfectly rosy.

This book’s super funny. It’s not inundated with tongue-in-cheek humour, but there’s some pretty silly, cut-and-dried anecdotes served straight up (I think I’ve a soft spot for British humour), as the events unfolded with the characters (patients, attendings, midwives). The level of medical jargon hit just right. Chuckling at some inside jokes from the terminology we’ve accumulated as med students feels nice, now that we’re on the inside. I literally smiled so much reading this book it just felt warm and fizzy like listening to some chitchat and zoning out. I’m excited to actually see medicine through clerkship, or is that something to also be wary of?

This is Going to Hurt is like Diary of a Wimpy Kid as it’s composed of journal entries, and each journal entry is (mostly) standalone. Parts are pretty hilarious, but when they all come together, they’re a sum greater than their parts. Because then, the stories strike a more complex emotional tone, and at the closing of the anthology of experiences Adam Kay presents us, the ending is both sentimental and monumental. The stories come together as poignant. Adam Kay is also fucking hilarious and his writing slaps.

Okay, back to my final exams now.