Description
Book SynopsisBlack Bag Moon: Doctors' Tales from Dusk to Dawn is filled with inspiring, educational, entertaining and often quirky tales. Based on a series of interviews conducted with general practitioners across the globe, the book creatively presents myriad aspects of clinical practice. Each fictionalised story illustrates various themes in the human condition, whilst simultaneously highlighting the struggles and achievements of both patients and doctors. This insightful collection offers stimulating reading for all healthcare professionals and general readers alike, who will appreciate the honest, often moving scenes which effortlessly unfold in each chapter.
Trade Review'The stories are refreshing because the doctor heals and doesn't have to deal with insurance companies, HMOs, electronic medical record glitches, or other aspects of a bureaucratic medical system. The doctors' clinical acumen and the doctor-patient relationship are central. This is where healing began and may have readers yearning for those days of yesteryear when technology and the insurance industry were not in the forefront of medical care.' - Amy Ellwood, Family Medicine Journal 'Many of the characters are unforgettable: elderly Mrs Dymphna O'Reilly, who has a special reason for requiring visits at a specified time; old Eddie Mayfield, the Aboriginal artist; Mrs Eastley, the wan, just-coping wife of a bipolar vicar; Shep Skurley, Elvis fan and collector of Japanese swords; Hughie Weed, who sees angels on the picture rails; Whoople the Cadger with his two wives. But what comes across, along with the entertainment, the tension and sometimes the sadness, is the doctors' determination to do their best by their patients and their families, often against the odds. Butler's point is that it should be what we can still expect and that doctors should be better supported in providing this kind of care. The patients are all of us; the doctors are doing their best. The stories reveal another side of human experience with compassion and wit, showing all kinds of people facing difficult, odd or funny situations with the best resource they have: their humanity.' Saskia Seurat, Amazon UK
Table of ContentsForeword. About the author. Black bag moon. Get on with it. Whitefella dreaming 1. 'I'm back.' Samurai swords and tongue lashings. Fried brains and the Polish corpse. Pieces of eight from Graham, Joseph, Herman, Ian and Errol. Hot diplomats and black-booted gazelles. Whoople the cadger. Forty years of dust and spit. 'About the size of a potato, doctor.' Mining families. Knives and old lace. Whitefella dreaming 2. An English Christmas. It comes by air. A farmer's demons and Hughie's angels. Boorish geese and car horns. Locked up in chains. The teaberry patch in Doctors Bog. Putting down pooch. Gimme that old-time religion. A lot of water flowing. Mr Wallinsky. Whitefella dreaming 3. Pursued. Snakebite! The virgin and the roadster. Sued. Bibliography.
