“TO GET FIRED, YOU WOULD HAVE to kill someone. And then it would have to be someone important.” That was said to me by an official as I signed on to work at a hospital in the 1970s.
Part of what I was signing was a confidentiality agreement. I took it seriously and never even told myself what I was doing. I was given a white coat and an office, and I sat there without a clue for three-and-a-half years. I was supposed to study brains; my first discovery was that mine wasn’t up to the job. I was quite possibly New Zealand’s worst scientist, but because I didn’t kill anyone, no one seemed to notice. But I did learn a few things:
I learnt that if you carry a clipboard and walk rapidly past the Receptionist mumbling something, you can vanish for hours.
I learnt that if one is careless, using acetone to remove electrodes from a woman’s back instantly and embarrassingly dissolves bra straps. (That reimbursement claim was queried very vigorously by head office: “HOW did this woman lose a BRA in the pursuit of medical science?”).
I learnt a lot about awful neurological diseases I never want to get, but I always imagine I have. Over the last 40 years, I have never had a headache – it’s always been a brain tumour.
I learnt that saying to patients during a test, “You won’t feel anything except a small blinding bolt of agony,” wasn’t as funny to them as I thought it was.
I learnt about drugs. Well, one drug in particular – triazolam – which was very handy for knocking people out during long tests. I asked a doctor mate for some for a long flight. They were brilliant! I recall waking up as we flew into Amsterdam, saying to the lady next to me, “I must have slept through a meal.”
“No. You ate and were asleep again before they took the plates away.” I had no memory of it at all. And the scariest thing: a very dim recollection of arguing with an American policeman. We’d stopped over in Honolulu! What had I done!? (I learnt subsequently that at least two people committed murders while on that drug. How terrible – I might have lost my job.)
Because I worked with them every day, I learnt about doctors. I’d like to dispel the myth that doctors are superhuman – except I can’t; they are a separate species. Their heads have been over-stuffed with knowledge, and their days are filled dealing with pain, poop, guts, and death. And yet, most of them remain compassionate and committed. My GP once sighed and said to me, “I start my day looking at bums; I end my day looking at bums”. (He said that whilst peering at mine). Who does that? Superhumans.
And I learnt about scientists. Real scientists. I got the privilege of working with great ones. My finest contribution to science was staying out of their way and occasionally cheering them on. Little by little, they chipped away at the unknowns around awful neurological diseases and head injuries. Their discoveries were then tested by other scientists – sometimes replaced by better ideas, sometimes added to other new ideas – and, in that slow way, science progresses and ignorance recedes. Diseases that were untreatable now have great therapies. Life expectancy, in general, has increased by about a decade since I worked at the hospital, and you can thank scientists for a big part of that.
My own dismal career might not have done much for science’s reputation, but at least I had a ring-side seat to see real science in action. You will find YouTube gurus knocking science and people saying, “Do your own research” (by which they mean, “Watch this YouTube guru”). But real knowledge comes out of the fine-grinding mill of real science.
Is science ever disproven? All the time! By better science! Done by better scientists. Thank goodness I quit.
AFTER DECADES STUDYING FAMILY LIFE, JOHN NOW FOCUSSES ON THE ‘PRIME-TIME’ ISSUES OF LATER MIDDLE AGE. CHECK HIM OUT ON JOHNCOWAN.CO.NZ – ESPECIALLY IF YOU NEED SOME WRITING, EVENT SPEAKING, VIDEOS MADE, OR SOMEONE TO HAVE A COFFEE WITH.
