This Is Going to Hurt

[Wouldloveanother]

I read this book a while ago but just re-skimmed it while bedridden with pregnancy sickness. I’d forgotten how funny it is, although the ending is tragic and poignant. I thought it gave a really good insight into the pressures on maternity staff and why it’s not always realistic for us to have the exact care we want in labour. I think it’s a shame he left medicine, but can see how he lost his nerve and didn’t feel able to go back. Anyone else read it?

And yes I found the Anaphylaxis's Patience video very funny - a lot of effort must have gone into that.
So many of Kay's songs and anecdotes are focused on how awful women and their bodies are.

@TheClogLady I read the review. (Also the first comment which I wholeheartedly agree with.) This line was telling “I would love to read her story.” The reviewer wanted to know more about the women in the book. She wasn’t interested in the experiences of medical professionals. But Adam Kay wasn’t telling his patients’ story. He was telling his own. And, like him or loathe him, that is something he is allowed to do. All the review shows is that this was not the book the reviewer wanted to read.

‘Women reduced to orifices with imbeciles attached’ ahh perfect summary

But that’s not really appropriate as a doctor is it ?

Instead, we have his disgust, for instance, for old women. He hates the urogynaecology clinic: “a bunch of nans” — defined, with the use of “nan”, by their child-bearing — “with pelvic floors like quicksand and their uteri stalactite-ing into their thermals”. No matter their predicament, the misery is all his: “And then a patient sneezes, you have to get a mop and bucket.”

describing an injured penis as an aubergine attacked by a tiger (and not mocking the actual penis, it’s owner, nor the circumstances in which the injury occurred) is hardly comparable.

you aren’t being unreasonable to laugh at black humour (even misogynistic black humour), but you are being very, very unreasonable to continually defend a man against accusations of obvious misogyny because ‘he makes jokes about men too’.

Quote from: unherd.com/2022/02/adam-kays-dangerous-misogyny/

I expect she didn’t want to read a book full of misogyny!

describing an injured penis as an aubergine attacked by a tiger (and not mocking the actual penis, it’s owner, nor the circumstances in which the injury occurred) is hardly comparable

Have you read the book? It was a long anecdote about his student who asked him to look at his penis because in a moment of sexual bravado he became convinced his ‘throbbing hard on’ (or words to that effect) could stop the rotating blades of a fan so he had stuck his penis into it. If you think Kay didn’t poke fun at that student and his macho-gone-wrong antics then you’re just making it clear you haven’t actually read it. You’re just rehashing an article from unherd.

Yeah but you didn’t then write them down, put them in a book and sell them for money which you spent on yourself, did you?

we must hope not.

Seriously, I think you are being a bit over protective here to an ex member of your profession. Because people are critical of the attitudes of one ex doctor, doesn’t mean that they thinks all doctors are rubbish, or horrid. It’s just that there is a difference between one to one communication, and the stand up stage.

I just think he's a sad arse who trots out all the so called 'funny' stories that are cliched, relying on cheap humour that pokes fun at (vulnerable) people in (vulnerable) situations and therefore isn't very funny at all. It's lazy and not very original either. I hope that this type of cheap humour is not deemed acceptable in 20-30 years (in the same way all the 'jokes' about and stereotypical portrayals of gay men from the 1970s is no longer tolerated).

I've heard that a lot of his stories are embellished (ie fully made up) and that he takes the credit for other hcps

The idea that doctors are oh so much more important than nurses and midwives is laughable and just reinforces the sexism.

Although i do agree the TV show did a good job of highlighting the awful issues (lack of staff, overworked and ridiculous demands from some pts ) facing the nhs

both the show and the book have been discussed quite a few times on Mumsnet:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/3163158-This-Is-Going-To-Hurt-by-Adam-Kay-I-urge-you-to-read-this

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3674059-To-have-hated-This-is-going-to-hurt-by-Adam-Kay

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3674059-To-have-hated-This-is-going-to-hurt-by-Adam-Kay

www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4244310-Adam-Kays-This-is-Going-to-Hurt

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4480359-To-think-This-Is-Going-To-Hurt-is-awful-to-women

most threads go the same way, some members loved the book, but they are usually outnumbered by those who hated it!

I didn’t ‘rehash’ an Unherd article, I literally quoted it and linked to it!

lordy, your reading comprehension skills are off (which might explain why you loved this awful book!)

I watched the TV series and felt it was bang on tbh.
I’m married to a doctor around the same level of training. The dry and dark sense of humour is on point, the sarcasm, contempt for the job but equal passion and complete inability to step away. The falling sleep in the car, even the dress sense and social awkwardness, it was all just so familiar.

The contempt isn’t for the patients, it’s for the NHS but is shown as a brow beaten resentment and ‘FFS here we go again’ attitude because that’s what the NHS has done to these people. Being a doctor/ nurse (have many friends who are both) is a professional abusive relationship. I’ve never witnessed anything like it in the private sector.

By the time junior doctors reach registrar level they seem to have completely lost the will to carry on. They've been pushed to every extreme in terms of exhaustion, lack of work life balance and are not fairly compensated for the hours and responsibilities they actually take on. All whilst the daily Mail complains about how wealthy they are and belligerent patients throw ‘I pay your wages’ at them. Seriously, that happens.

Our family life is hideous. Not only does hubby work a rolling rota which has him constantly changing between nights/13 hours days he also has no set finish time and has to be moved around hospitals in the entire region with hundreds of miles between. There is nowhere we can live that they’re all computable from so we either move with our kids every 6 months or accept hubby has to stay away.

Not to mention the endless studying for exams and constant reading that’s expected on top of the 60+ hour weeks. If you averaged out what my husband earns based on the hours he actually works/is completing work I’d be surprised if it were above £25k a year tbh. Despite having been training for over 10 years now. Although I’m sure lots of people will be along shortly to tell me that £25k is still over the minimum wage and how dare we not be extremely grateful for this.

I’m glad he wrote the book as I think it shines a good light on the reality of NHS life.

@TheClogLady so you haven’t read it basically.

I audio booked it in 2018.

are you Adam? You seem very keen on arguing his side!

Are you one of the patients in the book? 🙄

If I were, I’d be talking to a lawyer.

And if I were Adam I would be instructing one after reading all this!

I’m sorry that your life is so stressed. I agree that the NHS is under terrible strain, and that patient demands are ever increasing, and their behaviour 🔥, in some cases, lamentable.

However that really isn’t what is being discussed or condemned here. I hope your husband doesn’t find joy in relating his patients most embarrassing or distressing problems with a’comedy’ audience. As I said up thread, this is not about how awful a junior doctors life is, or how hard they work. It is about one man who for baffling motivations chose a speciality concentrating on aspects of human physiology which he finds distasteful , who then decided to make a career in relating and mocking those patients and conditions.

But if he wrote a book with zero anecdotes or real life cases, purely about the NHS and the impact of its practices on its staff, would you read it? Honestly?

I also found his attitude disgusting. The bit where he laughs at the woman for having a birth plan which sepcifies a particular type of music and for her birth to be as non-medicalised as possible.

WITH them. Not AT them. In a book for ‘jokes’ and money. Huge difference.

Yes stereotypes galore! 🙄Nothing clever about that.

Colleagues of mine were called to a very vague 999 call, "20yo male bleeding severly, o/s Address", so they cautiously approached. Young women meets them and tries to get them to go with her "very quietly" between the ginnel of her parents home and NDN, obviosuly they were very wary by this point. Turns out she had picked up on a night out bought him back to her home despite mum and dad being asleep inside, and were shagging in the ginnel. He'd been going full throtel when he'd slipped out. Walls were pebble dashed!!

We also had a male on our patch who was a frequent caller due to being addicted to wanking (his words) and consequnetly feeling suicidal. Many many paramedics and EMTs tried to guide the conversation to "how many times a day?", no one ever got the answer though!!

But apparently because Adam Kays humour was all at the expense of women, despite it being hard to find many male patients in ogs & gynae, we have to all agree that he is a raging misogynist and denounce his rather amusing book.

You’re pregnant aren’t you OP? If your baby has trisomy, can we all call them a ‘mong’ and make fun of their looks. Because this man you seem so keen on defending does that. And maybe you’ll find yourself in his book because your ‘fanny stinks’ whilst you’re vulnerable giving birth. So funny.

Im sure you’ve taken offence to things people have said about you at times, imagine that being put in a book by someone in a trusted position to you, where you were vulnerable and everyone thinking it’s funny. Let’s hope your unborn baby isn’t a ‘mong’ and your vagina smells fresh.