Novels about doctors or illness

[funnyperson]

What fiction/non fiction/authors have you read which gives a memorable and/or moving account of doctors or people who are ill?

eg Dr Zhivago/Pasternak
AJ Cronin

Two more I've remembered -

Before I Say Goodbye by Ruth Picardie - a diary she kept during her treatment for breast cancer.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (I think that's what it was called - can't remember the author) about the aftermath of a massive stroke which left him unable to speak or move.

thanks -I'm intrigued that so much is recent.

Saw the thread title and came on to make sure that Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy got a mention - a fascinating fictionalised account of W.H.R. Rivers who worked with shell-shocked patients (including Siegfried Sassoon) during WWI.

teamdamon the accounts of a very primitive ect in that trilogy are terrible to read.

It's horrific, isn't it? What I found very disturbing too was the class discrimination: only officers were treated at Craiglockhart, using psychoanalysis, the common soldiers still underwent the brutal electric shock therapy.

i also found that scene incredibly upsetting.

Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff, a son's view of a father descending into dementia. Read it years ago but it stays with me.

Also remembered Yann Martel's first novel, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Rocclamatios (sp?) which is about a dying man and friend and the story they make up to pass the time in hospital. The illness takes a minor role but is always there.

Yes to regeneration.

Also, with a neurological theme:

Saturday by Ian McEwan
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
Toscanini's fumble

Bodies by Jed Mercurio
The House of God

Isabel Allende Paula
Andrew Greig In Another Light

Going back to 'Regeneration' I found the original Lancet article by WH Rivers, the psychiatrist who treated Sassoon
net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/rivers.htm

and the original write up by Yealland, the neurologist who used ect in the same hospital
openlibrary.org/works/OL10712094W/Hysterical_disorders_of_warfare

-and its interesting to see how much Pat Barker based her descriptions on fact.
Also, I couldn't help but think how one humane method of listening and talking and compassion gave the world not only a return of men to the front, but arguably some of the finest poetry ever written, whereas the other inhumane treatment caused additional suffering.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

'The Bell Jar' always silences me. I have never read it. Though I have it. Its because of the awfulness of what happened to her and their poor son.

'Catch 22' by Joseph Heller is entertaining.

Ooh, just remembered a very absorbing Monica Dickens novel - 'The Happy Prisoner'. The title character is confined to bed, I think from war injuries (it's been a long time since I read it), but he arranges things in the lives of his various family members. She's great with descriptions of what it's like to be ill for a long period and the routines that people get into and depend on. Actually that makes me want to dig it out and read it again now

The vagabond's breakfast by Richard gwyn

Alcoholism and end stage failure from the patient's perspective.

Doctor Ibolit (Russian author K. Chukovsky - for children, inc, cartoon based on this lyrics)