{"id":138,"date":"2019-07-04T14:32:01","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T14:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=138"},"modified":"2024-04-06T16:20:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T16:20:52","slug":"fringe-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"Fringe Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
First published in the NASGP Newsletter in October 2018 <\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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Medics have a long-standing relationship with the annual August circus that is the Edinburgh Fringe.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Medical\n students reprise their pantomimes as reviews. Specialty registrars mine\n their store of horror stories to test whether a career in theatrical \nstand-up would be more rewarding than a career standing up in an \noperating theatre \u2013 former obstetrician Adam Kay is one who made the \nmove. Peri-retirement consultants play the Fringe one last time, \ncreaking their way happily through the old routines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is never a shortage of shows of professional interest to \ndoctors. I don\u2019t usually turn to the BMJ for cultural hints, but they \nhighlighted The Mould that Changed the World. It’s a musical about the \nhistory, blessings and problems of misuse of penicillin. Well, you know \nthe story. In truth, it isn\u2019t a great show for grown-ups. More fun to be\n a child performing it in a school production. And hopefully taking in \nthe message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hold up my hand: I have never understood why for so many doctors \nJohn Berger and Jean Mohr\u2019s book A Fortunate Man, about GP John Sassall,\n encapsulates the ideal to which all doctors should strive. I hoped a \nshow examining how the book was made and claiming to compare medical \npractice then and now might change my prejudice. Sadly, no. Sassall \napparently acknowledged every patient utterance with \u201cI know\u201d. Really? \nDid no-one find that irritating? And the final statement, about how \nSassall was so devoted to patients he wouldn\u2019t have put up with the \ncurrent box-ticking, I found patronising. Do the show\u2019s authors think \nmodern GPs prefer paperwork to patients?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Fringe you may well be baffled but you are unlikely to be bored. With any luck you will have some laughs. But whatever you see, the buzz of Edinburgh in August is a tonic in itself.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many performers take to the stage to share their anxieties: menstruation, impotence, infertility, sexuality, body dysmorphia (in one show, once inside the venue, audiences were required to remove all their clothes). Autobiographical shows may be cathartic for the performers but do you want to spend 55 minutes living someone else\u2019s existential angst?

However, if you have a point beyond the personal to make, humour may be a powerful way to get your message across. In her show Pricks, Jane Byrne, who has endured 70,000 pricks since she was diagnosed diabetic at the age of four, uses laughter rather than lecturing to educate people about diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year several comedians with a cause plumbed their personal \nexperiences to tackle dementia. Pip Utton\u2019s solo show And Before I \nForget that I Love You, I Love You wasn\u2019t comedy \u2013 the title captures \nthe tragedy and pain of losing someone to dementia. In past shows Utton \nhas turned himself into Hitler, Churchill, even Maggie Thatcher. This \nyear, he was a grieving husband giving the eulogy at his wife\u2019s funeral,\n telling us that when the diagnosis of dementia brought her career to an\n end, she insisted they draw up a revised bucket list to accomplish \nwhile she was still able. Five years later she is dead, and then we \nwitness his identity and capabilities degraded by the same disease, \nuntil Utton morphs into their son, giving his father\u2019s eulogy. It was \ntotally absorbing, painfully real \u2013 no surprise to learn that Utton\u2019s \nmother died of Alzheimer\u2019s. I hope it got a good audience and helped \npeople understand brain failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dementia, along with obesity and its attendant chronic problems is one of the threats to the viability of the NHS. Of any health service. Several performers looked forward to a post-NHS healthcare, and didn\u2019t like what they saw. Be your own surgeon, anyone?

Mark Thomas is an active political campaigner, born at his namesake hospital 54 years ago. He has been howling with rage at the politicians across the river ever since. In Check up Our NHS @ 70 he took a serious look at the NHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spoke with patients and GPs, he spent a month shadowing staff at St Mary\u2019s Paddington and he interviewed Dame Sally Davies, Chris Ham, Michael Marmot, and two former Health Secretaries. His findings: the good \u2013 the dedication of staff in the face of appalling pressure. The disappointing \u2013 cancer outcomes. The tragic \u2013 increasing gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor. The ruinously expensive \u2013 the internal market, and PFI which Frank Dobson admits is the decision he most regrets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wouldn\u2019t be Mark Thomas without humour \u2013 see his sleeve gastrectomy and you could do one yourself tomorrow \u2013 and it wouldn\u2019t be Mark Thomas without anger. He rails at the ideological decisions that are bleeding clinical care of funds and making the likes of Richard Branson even richer. He laments the return of the fear which Aneurin Bevan\u2019s NHS had eliminated. Looking to his own future, he doesn\u2019t see hope in more technology. It\u2019s people like the dementia nurses he met, who find creative ways to ease their patients\u2019 distress. Will kindly care be there for him, and for us, when that\u2019s what we need?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Thomas\u2019s show is on tour and you can catch him at the Arcola in \nLondon in October. And why not plan to do the Fringe next year? How \nwould you choose from 3000 shows? You can start the day with the \nirreverent Shakespeare for Breakfast (e.g. Macbeth covets Duncan\u2019s \nallotment and kills him with a croissant) and squeeze in maybe six shows\n before a late-night review (Shitty Deal Puppet Theatre for instance), \nbut you need a strategy. Friends\u2019 shows. Friends\u2019 children\u2019s shows. Word\n of mouth. Tips from people in queues \u2013 very useful. Reviews, even. \nChecking the Fringe app to find out what is on now, nearby, to fill that\n 90-minute gap can lead to the crazy boundary-testing shows that make \nthe Fringe so stimulating. A Korean group dressed in tissue paper \ngrunting through a show billed as Chekhov\u2019s Cherry Orchard? A woman \nblowing a feather around while her companions unload a bucketful of \nrocks? Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Fringe you may well be baffled but you are unlikely to be \nbored. With any luck you will have some laughs. But whatever you see, \nthe buzz of Edinburgh in August is a tonic in itself. No rest-cure but a\n great pick-me-up. The 2019 programme will be published next June so \nlook out for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next post: Getting Under Your Skin<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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First published in the NASGP Newsletter in October 2018 Medics have a long-standing relationship with the annual August circus that is the Edinburgh Fringe. Medical students reprise their pantomimes as reviews. Specialty registrars mine their store of horror stories to test whether a career in theatrical stand-up would be more rewarding than a career standing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fringe Medicine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judith","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9388,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/9388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}