Medical Humour

Samantha is a professional seductress and con artist with a heart of gold. If she talked about her work, she’d tell you she only pilfers organs for medical research and that she only takes one kidney, and she only steals those kidneys from dishonest people. It’s hell on her social life. Abe is the doctor and Sam's partner in crime. He isn’t much of a criminal. Except for the kidney stealing. But he’s using that money to fund his research that he anticipates will be able to cure diabetes. So, all for a good cause...? You decide. Of course, it's hell on his social life.

When he arrives in Bilbury, a small village on the edge of Exmoor, the young doctor doesn't realize how much he has to learn. But he soon finds the extent of his ignorance when he meets his patients. There is Anne Thwaites, who gives birth in the middle of a field and local rogue Thumper Robinson, who knows a good many tricks that aren't in any textbooks. And there is Mike Trickle, a TV show host, who causes great excitement when he buys a house in the village. The young doctor's employer is elderly Dr. Brownlow, who lives in a castle-like house and drives an old Rolls Royce.

In An Irish Country Christmas, the third book in Patrick Taylor's Irish Country Books, Barry Laverty, M.B., is looking forward to his first Christmas in the cozy village of Ballybucklebo, at least until he learns that his sweetheart, Patricia, might not be coming home for the holidays. That unhappy prospect dampens his spirits somewhat, but Barry has little time to dwell on his romantic disappointments. Christmas may be drawing nigh, but there is little peace to be found on earth, especially for a young doctor plying his trade in the emerald hills and glens of rural Ireland.

Corey Curtis is coasting. At 33, she's in the best shape of her life and has a satisfying position at Jackson City Memorial Hospital. With a good paycheck, great friends, and occasional relationships with smart, beautiful women, she couldn't be happier. She thinks. Dr. Thayer Reynolds, whiling away some time before the start of her Emergency Department fellowship at JCMH and intrigued by the stories she's heard, crashes the morgue to get a look at Corey - the woman her young colleagues are whispering about.

Dr. Cyrus Mills returns to his hometown after inheriting his father's failing veterinary practice. Cyrus intends to sell the practice and get out of town as fast as he can, but when his first patient - a down-on-her-luck golden retriever named Frieda Fuzzypaws - wags her way through the door, life suddenly gets complicated. Cyrus gets caught up in a new community and its endearing residents, both human and animal. Sensing he may have misjudged the past, he begins to realize it's not just his patients that need healing.

A New York story, a dark comedy, Balls tells of the thirty-year-old Henry Schiller, a songwriter and lounge-player, in love with a woman far younger and more musically gifted than himself, one with her eye on other men and the rise of her own career, whose crisis deepens when he discovers he has testicular cancer.

Charles O’Brien, Irish bard and giant: The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. The Surprising Irish Giant may be the sensation of the season but only his compatriots seem to attend to his mythic powers of invention. John Hunter, celebrated surgeon and anatomist, buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch. Where is a man as unique as The Giant to hide his bones when he is yet alive?

Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there, but already he knows that there is nowhere he would rather live than in the emerald hills and dales of Northern Ireland. The proud owner of a spanking-new medical degree and little else in the way of worldly possessions, Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice. At least until he meets Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.

After the death of his fiancee due to medical errors, hospital pharmacist Daniel O'Dwyer escapes to Oak Island, North Carolina. The only things on his mind are fresh sea air, fresh seafood, Fat Tire Amber Ale, and the avoidance of any type of healthcare institution. But fate and jellyfish draw him back, and reluctantly, he agrees to go undercover to combat narcotic drug diversion at nearby Boiling Grove Community Hospital.

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr. Barry Laverty. After Barry's first month as an assistant to crusty Dr. O'Reilly, he has been offered a permanent spot. But Laverty's excitement is dashed when one of his patients unexpectedly dies.

Readers of Patrick Taylor's books know Mrs. Kinky Kincaid as the unflappable housekeeper who looks after two frequently frazzled doctors in the colourful Irish village of Ballybucklebo. She is a trusted fixture in the lives of those around her, and it often seems as though Kinky has always been there.Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Bilbury Grange is the second in Vernon Coleman's series of Young Country Doctor books. The place is the English county of Devon. The time is the 1970s. A young doctor, just married and in a new home (a vast and rambling country house in desperate need of repairs and renovation), has taken over a small village practice when suddenly the authorities decide that the village isn't big enough to have its own doctor. The villagers decide otherwise. Bilbury is the village everyone dreams of living in. It's the village where people speak to strangers and where doors are left unlocked.

Ed Patrick is an anaesthetist. Strong drugs for his patients, strong coffee for him. But it's not just sleep-giving for this anaesthetist, as he navigates emergencies, patients not breathing for themselves and living with a terrifying sense of responsibility. It's enough to leave anyone feeling numb. But don't worry, there's plenty of laughing gas to be had.

Disaster strikes during a long, relentless storm which batters the village and blankets the whole area in a thick covering of snow. The doctor nearly loses his life, and the village schoolteacher loses her cottage roof. The excitement really starts when the villagers join together to raise money to repair the devastated cottage. Vernon Coleman describes an old fashioned music hall evening (during which just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong), and one of the funniest cricket matches ever described is reported in Chapters 16 and 17.

A successful entrepreneur in the mushroom industry, Jaakko Kaunismaa is a man in his prime. At just 37 years of age, he is shocked when his doctor tells him that he's dying. What is more, the cause is discovered to be prolonged exposure to toxins; in other words, someone has slowly but surely been poisoning him. Determined to find out who wants him dead, Jaakko embarks on a suspenseful roller-coaster journey full of unusual characters, bizarre situations and unexpected twists.

Inside every hospital exists a world no outsider is allowed to see: a storm of malpractice, corruption, sex, drink and drop-dead exhaustion. But for first day junior doctors, their initiation into this world - the 'Killing Season' - is about to begin. A whistle-blowing despatch from the frontlines of hospital life, Jed Mercurio's Bodies takes us on a nerve-jangling journey through one junior doctor's loss of innocence and his desperate, dangerous attempts to right his - and his colleagues' - wrongs.

Driven by money, power and success, Gabriel has worked ruthlessly to get to the very top of the banking game. He's not going to let the inconvenience of a terminal brain tumour get in his way. But the tumour has other ideas. As it grows, it appears to be doing strange things to Gabriel's personality. Whether he likes it or not, he seems to be becoming less selfish, less mercenary, less unlikeable. Once he could dismiss the rest of humanity as irrelevant. Now he's not so sure.

Years after the events of The House of God, the Fat Man has been given leadership over a new Future of Medicine Clinic at what is now only Man's 4th Best Hospital, and has persuaded Dr. Roy Basch and some of his intern cohorts to join him to teach a new generation of interns and residents. In a medical landscape dominated by computer screens and corrupted by money, they have one goal: to make medicine humane again.

We've all been there. One minute, you're sprawled out on your bed, minding our own business, and the next, you're lying in the back seat of your best friend's car as she races you to the ER. And not the closest one either. No. You're headed to the one 50 miles farther out, because the one five minutes away is where you start your residency next week. So there you are, lying in cubicle nine, hoping like hell that the doctor about to examine you isn't young, sexy, or male. Of course, he's all three.

This book is not about life and death struggles. This book is the polar opposite. It is about the absolute, over-the-top insanity that I have witnessed during my time in the ER. This book is the untold, unseen, and unshared rants and raves of an ER nurse who has been slowly driven mad by his patients. I want you, the listener to step into my scrubs, see this bizarre world through my eyes, and understand that once you stop laughing in the ER, it's time to quit.