Anne Chamberlain Update of blog dated 1 August 2011: "What do I do now?"

Life is quieter now .I often walk in one of the largest and

most beautiful parks in England, Roundhay Park, at the end

of my road.

In terms of Medicine and specifically, the specialty of

Rehabilitation Medicine, I am a trustee of Global

Rehabilitation, a very small charity that links with colleagues

whom we have taught, in Madagascar. We are expecting to

do more on- line teaching soon and visit the country in

2023.However, my clinical experience ended in 2007 so I will

not go.

I remain a trustee of the William Merritt Disabled Living

Centre in Leeds which gives professional advice to disabled

and older people and those who care for them, mainly on

equipment, which can be viewed, and on driving with a

disability.

Within the University dept., I still supervise a very small

number of clinical students doing an Intercalated Degree in

International Health .This is highly enjoyable.

I was president and am now a member of the Leeds Medico-

Chirurgical Society .These societies served as a meeting point

for GPs and consultants before the NHS .Few survive.

I enjoy ceramic and art exhibitions, and the cinema but am

not as sociable as before the pandemic.

John Maile

  

From Guys I started house jobs in May 1961 in Brighton, as casualty/orthopaedic H S at the Royal Sussex County Hospital (a classic Barry, Victorian building).

The work was varied, and plentiful.  My bedroom was located between two wards, with views down to the sea.The orthopaedic women’s ward was one floor down with “extra beds” in permanent use, and the casualty area one floor below. Action central! 120 hours a week was the normal.

A good snowfall brought 36 broken wrists one day; a chance to improve one’s technique, with follow up some days later. But a head in a biscuit tin in the ambulance from the railway, needing death certification  got no follow up. A slice through a cornea from a broken mirror in a car accident of a professional cricketer was sent on to the eye hospital with good results.

After 6 months the H P job was different with an older, sicker  clientele, and a depressing death rate, but the learning experience, and talented consultants were the positives.

The bright event was the annual Christmas hospital dinner/dance, held in the Royal Pavillion ballroom,where one of our junior doctors, a member of the Magic Circle, demonstrated his skills, with one success, followed by a failure that I can still see in my mind today.

My application for the obstetric job at the Brighton general hospital was accepted. My 6 months there was with a talented registrar, Geoffery (Bodger) Chamberlain. Every day working with him was a joy. Still only 2 housemen, so 120 hour weeks. And my colleague was carrying a growing pregnancy herself!

I remained at Brighton General for another 14 months as orthopaedic SHO, and married Susan, and had some dinghy racing wins in Merlin/Rockets.

Early June 1964 saw us embark on MV Franconia,  sailing from Southampton to Montreal, through 2 days of Atlantic gales, then calmer waters, with wales and icebergs to see.

We had a Ford Cortina with us, and had a steady cross country drive of 3000 miles to Vancouver, for me to start a years anaesthesia residency. We realised the size of Canada by then.

At the end of the year, I accepted a position doing general practice with anaesthesia and obstetrics, in the centre of British Columbia in Quesnel. The population served was 27,000 with a main road going north and south, with towns 75 miles away in either direction. There was an 80 bed hospital, 2 surgeons and 8 GPs. the surgeons handled everything but head and chest surgeries,and fractured hips, but burr holes occasionally arose as being needed, and broken necks were stabilised, and sent to Vancouver.

As anaesthetist there was plenty to do , and I was able to handle some fractures and carpal tunnel surgeries, along with Caesarean sections which over 50 years have totalled over 1,000.

We did shifts in the emergency room, and did family doctoring in our offices. Anyone seen there and sick enough, was sent to the hospital, where we also looked after them.

The ambulance service in 1965 was provided by the local taxi service and operator, who ran a 1950’s station wagon, one bed with an impressive siren on the roof! In the event of a call, a doctor was asked to ride along with black bag.With temperatures down to –40 and plenty of snow, traffic accidents could be a feature, and the tally of deaths before seat belts were mandatory was significant.

After a year, the offer of a partnership was accepted. Our son arrived, with two more to follow, and we were able to get on with building a house.

I had done some flying locally, which showed the amazing countryside to east and west, but after a few autopsies on plane crash victims, that activity faded, and I did pilot medical exams only.

There were lakes close by, so we did water skiing and fishing, and skiing on a local hill in the winter. I joined the local  ski patrol and was with them 29 years.

One Saturday afternoon I was in the emergency room, and an older man from out in the backwoods came in: “There is no vet in town, and I have a dog with porcupine quills in its muzzle, would you help, please”. So I had a look, a fierce looking dog, used for chasing cougars, with about 100 quills around mouth and face. They needed pliers to pull them out, and I needed anaesthesia to do that, and my training did not cover dogs, except to say they could easily fibrillate.

In the 1980s I  took a sailing course, with colleagues, to enable us to charter sailing yachts out of Vancouver. We had trips sailing in Greece, Croatia, the Caribbean and around France and UK.

I have lived through a major evolution of medicine, and demographics have changed. We used to do ulcer surgery regularly, now it is laparoscopic surgery. Medications have improved, and we have seen new illnesses, cardiac management has evolved. We had the first ICU of a small hospital, along with dedicated internist. the hospital has shrunk to 33 beds, with expansion of the administrative staff occupying rooms formerly having beds for patients.

Our ambulance system is now modern, with proper vehicles and staff. Even air ambulances have now removed the need for me  to accompany a patient with dissecting aneurysm from a car accident, or a spinal fracture on a ventilator in a military flight to Vancouver. I will no longer have to ventilate my Guillaume Barre patient here for 10 days myself.

In 2005 I retired from full time practice after 40 years. I did some locums and remained on the C.Section call list 1 week a month. I then found i could do 2 or 3 mornings a week in the operating room,assisting in the larger cases of general surgery, orthopaedics and obstetrics/ gynaecology.

in March, I had pneumonia, so took full retirement. Up till then I had felt it to be a pity to discard all that accumulated experience.

Mary Dowsett (nee MacKeith)

 

I retired from my post of Consultant in Community Gynaecology for the east London borough of Waltham Forest nearly twenty years ago. I continue to live in Woodford Green where I moved in 1966 on my marriage to Peter. We are blessed with reasonably good health and are able to be active in our local church and to enjoy our garden. We have two sons and eight grand children, none of whom are showing an interest in Medicine. One granddaughter is about to start a huge postgraduate course in Physiotherapy at Kings College Hospital during which she is likely to spend some time at Guys.

Anne Kenshole

After house jobs at Guy’s I moved to Nottingham to explore Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The hospital there was an early adopter of the Obstetric Flying Squad which mainly served the surrounding mining villages. When called out I quickly learned to look for the parrot cage. Miners no longer needed canaries but they were traditionally fond of birds so it was always a great relief to take down Polly from her stand, otherwise, as the lowly SHO I had the task of acting as the IV drip stand, sometimes for what felt like hours on end.

After discovering that babies have the uncivilized propensity to be born in the middle of the night I moved to Plymouth to do Medicine-my family are Devonian. There I had a great year developing a burgeoning interest in Diabetes in addition to sailing in the Sound and walking on Dartmoor.

With an MRC scholarship in my pocket I came to Toronto to do a year in research where it was was quickly confirmed that my forte lay in clinical medicine and not in intermediary metabolism.

I got married and had two children while taking my Ontario and FRCPC exams. Public health is a  required subject here and while knowledge about building safe septic tanks and outhouses might be of limited use in London, it is vital here in Ontario-the land of 10.000 lakes and the ubiquitous “cottage”.

I joined the staff of Women’s College Hospital, the “Canadian Royal Free”. At that time budgets were generous, so if one had a reasonable proposition it was usually funded. Cross-appointed to the Departments of Medicine and OB/GYN I was instrumental in setting up a combined high risk maternal obstetric service for women with diabetes. This later morphed into a Regional service for women with medical conditions that impact on pregnancy and vice versa.

After retiring from the University I became actively involved as an Assessor for MAID, (Medical Assistance in Dying). Having been fortunate enough to enjoy and get real satisfaction from almost everything I had done before, this has proved to be the most fulfilling role of all. It became law in Canada over 6 years ago with 80 % of both the population and physicians mandating it. The legislation is robust and the oversight meticulous.To be able to provide relief of suffering when there are no further treatment options is a rare privilege.