I watched a documentary tonight in BBC2’s Storyville series that I taped on Sunday called “The English Surgeon”. It’ll be available on the iPlayer until Sunday if you want to watch it yourself.
It followed a neurosurgeon, Professor Henry Marsh, who normally works in London but who has struck up a partnership with a Ukrainian neurosurgeon, Igor Kurilets, who he met around fifteen years ago. Since visiting at that time to give some lectures, he has sent “used” NHS equipment to Igor, as well as visiting to give consultations on cases deemed untreatable locally and also carrying out difficult operations.
I personally found it, in places, very moving - those who know me well will know that that says something about the quality of the documentary! It followed in particular one gentleman who Marsh operated on to remove quite a widespread brain tumour which was causing epilepsy and would eventually have killed him. Seeing this relatively poor man being wished well emotionally by his fellow villagers as he left for the hospital really got to me. He was surprisingly calm during the operation, especially considering the drill used to get through the skull was a Bosch cordless from a local market… and he was only under local anaesthetic! Fortunately he went on to make a good recovery.
Watching the queue of hopeful people outside Marsh’s consultation room in the Soviet-era hospital was hard, especially when the news was bad. One lady had brought her young grandchild’s charts, only to be told that the tumour was inoperable and the child had less than a year to live. She was understandably upset by the news, but another consultation was even worse. An apparently healthy and beautiful 23-year-old lady had come to see Prof Marsh following tests that the local doctors thought might indicate encephalitis following a tick bite. In fact the lady had a diffuse and inoperable tumour that would first blind then kill her in under five years. Igor and Henry grappled with their consciences in English, trying to decide the best way to proceed. In the end, the lady was told she needed to come back with family - I presume the news was broken to them eventually.
The two surgeons also visited the family of a young girl who Marsh had operated on a few years ago unsuccessfully. The family had prepared a meal of thanks for them - both the surgeons and myself found it pretty distressing that, in spite of the outcome, this poor family were so grateful for their efforts.
There was a lot to take away from this excellent documentary. Programmes like this always get me thinking about what informs our life choices. Igor summed it up at some point: “What is more important, being a professor or being a good doctor?” I think that says it all really.
I have the utmost respect for people who have real jobs, jobs that matter, where they’re actually helping people: doctors, nurses, teachers, fire fighters, things like that. I’m not sure who I’m helping with my ‘career’ to date, maybe that’s something I should think about more. Being a doctor of engineering is of no use to anyone in itself, I suppose it’s what you choose to do with it that counts.
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