Book of the Week: Give the patient a comfortable chair

By READINGROOM - Dr Eileen Merriman | Posted: Wednesday Dec 10, 2025

Dr Eileen Merriman savours a memoir by Dr Lucy O’Hagan

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first started reading Everything But the Medicine by Lucy O’Hagan. Perhaps I might have been forgiven wondering what was so different about what I thought of as yet another doctor memoir. The first chapter failed to capture my attention. But after that I kept reading the book and it stayed with me throughout the week, as I led my team around ward rounds (punctuated, as always, with trips to see Mrs Brown, AKA the café), as I delivered diagnoses of both curable and incurable cancers, as I cajoled patients to come in for treatment that would make them sick before they got better, as I charted chemotherapy and blood thinners, as I quizzed patients about their ailing, failing bodies.

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