The Yorkshire Vet recounts 'biggest mistake' as he started career - Julian Norton
We’ve been watching the new series of the hilarious BBC1 programme Would I Lie to You. The premise of the show is that comedians on two opposing teams tell funny stories, some of which are true and some not. The other team has to identify which is which. It’s hosted by Rob Brydon and I can highly recommend it.
Some of the funniest episodes are the ones where Bob Mortimer features as a guest, but the most recent was also a classic. As Harry Hill, the bald, comically bespectacled, big-collared comedian related his anecdote, I nudged Anne on the sofa, confidently declaring, “He used to be a doctor, you know.”
As he told a story (was it true or was it a lie?) about his early professional career as a junior doctor, I nodded sagely- that bit, at least, was true. “I accidentally mixed up two patients and sent them for one another’s tests,” he declared, confidently. He went on to explain that one patient was dispatched to the radiography suite for an X-ray of his neck. The other unfortunate patient was sent for a barium enema. How and why neither mentioned that they didn’t have a sore neck- but rather a problem at the other end of his body- or, more curiously, why the neck patient didn’t sound alarm bells when asked to remove his trousers, Harry didn’t explain.
On the sofa, two current, senior clinicians (that admittedly who treat patients with four legs) both shouted at the telly, “TRUE”. It sounded eminently plausible to us, although neither could recall having made such a basic error. The panel, however, were adamant it must be a lie.
When the time came for the big reveal, as predicted, the word TRUE appeared on the display screen, confirm that junior Dr Harry had, indeed, sent a rectally diseased chap for a neck radiograph and a person with a sore neck for an enema. He commented that both patients had complemented him on being so thorough, before adding “they were different times back then.”
I found myself nodding in agreement. At the start of my veterinary career, I remember many situations when straight forward errors were mercifully overlooked by owners and more senior colleagues. Nowadays, our junior clinicians tread with fear and trepidation over the outcome of making a simple mistake. I could probably write a whole book of the errors I have made. In my first week of practice in the summer of ’96, I pulled into the empty carpark by the expansive beach next to Dunnet Head in Caithness. I read and re-read the description of the clinical signs of anthrax in cattle and people, as well as the consequences of performing a post-mortem examination on an animal which has died of this nasty disease. I looked at the bloody bag on the passenger seat, containing samples of almost every internal organ of the dead steer to which I’d done just that twenty minutes earlier. The lesions on my face, which were swelling before and around my eyes, could surely only be the tell-tale human manifestation of Bacillus Anthracis. I pulled myself together and drove to the lab, knocked on the door and held out the plastic bag. “Can you analyse these? I think I’ve made the biggest mistake of my [so far short] veterinary career.”
I related the signs and clinical details and the pathologist touched my shoulder, telling me not to worry. A few anxious hours later, I got the best telephone call of my career: it wasn’t anthrax! The cattle were suffering from an acute respiratory infection, and thankfully, I hadn’t rendered the northern most part of Scotland a wasteland. We live to tell the tale.