Learning should never stop. I believe that with my whole
heart. Just because you’re done with school (be it college, or a degree, or an
MA or whatever...) I don’t think you should stop learning. I don’t think you
should WANT to stop learning. If there comes a day where you don’t want to
learn anymore – there’s a problem. I hope there isn’t a day that I don’t want
to learn anything else, because that might mean that I think I know everything
or that I know enough – I will never know enough.
Anyone who doesn’t understand, I sort of feel sorry for. Not
in a mean way, I just think it might be quiet lonely to never want to know
anything else about anything. I like that I get hungry to learn things; it’s a
good thing. I’m sure there are people out there in the world, or even the near
vicinity, who think that I’m a swot, or a bit nerdy, or just all-around lame
but I honestly don’t care. Because one day, I will be able to hold my own in
most conversations and feel confident about what I have learned and the
opinions that I have formed from my own research and learning.
Recently, I have read two books that have taught me so much
about areas that I could never have studied in a dedicated institution (school,
college, university) because they aren’t part of the faculty that I put myself
into by choosing to study what I did at University. I am so grateful for the
fact that I find these books engaging and useful because, on a rather cliché
note, I will be a better/more rounded person for reading them and exploring
many other subjects that I haven’t studied.
THE SKELETON
CUPBOARD: The Making of a Clinical Psychologist . (Prof. Tanya Byron)
“The Skeleton Cupboard is Professor Tanya Byron's
account of her years of training as a clinical psychologist, when trainees find
themselves in the toughest placements of their careers. Through the eyes of her
naive and inexperienced younger self, Tanya shares remarkable stories inspired
by the people she had the privilege to treat. Gripping, poignant and full of
daring black humour, this book reveals the frightening and challenging
induction faced by all mental health staff and highlights their incredible
commitment to their patients.”
Featuring emotionally harrowing passages on child abuse,
dealings with a physically abusive and psychotic patient, treating an older
German-Jewish patient (who survived Auschwitz) now suffering from dementia who
believes that in every shower she takes she is being exterminated. As well as
exploring the lives of drug dependant patients, the fluctuations of T-Cells of
HIV positive patients, and lastly a stand-out section on a young girl suffering
from a malicious eating disorder.
Whilst all the above combined doesn’t sound like such a
cheery book to read, it’s worth it. There are light moments; happiness within
families brought closer together, congratulations on various remissions from
disease and what seems to be an everlasting stream of hope for a better future
running throughout.
Because Professor Tanya Byron is so academically decorated
it makes reading the book very easy and enjoyable; believable, real and
emotive. Whilst giving details of treatment procedures, the book also provides
insight into the lives of various medical professionals that we as outsiders
couldn’t ever fathom.
For someone who already had interest in the psychological
world, I would majorly recommend this book. For someone who has no interest in
the psychological world, I would recommend the book purely to learn about the
human race and their feats.
DO NO HARM:
Stories of life, death and brain surgery. (Dr. Henry Marsh, CBE and
FRCS.)
I’m only a third or so through this book, but I’m already
hooked. The chapters are split into medical diagnoses for example; Pineocytoma,
Aneurysm, Haemangioblastoma etc and reading through the Aneurysm passage – I
genuinely believe I could clip an Aneurysm if needed. Obviously, literally, I
couldn’t but in theory I could.
"What is it like to be a brain surgeon?
How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason?
How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong?
In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to 'do no harm' holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, Henry Marsh must make agonising decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.
If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practised by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candour, one of the country's leading neurosurgeons reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets and the moments of black humour that characterise a brain surgeon's life.
DO NO HARM is an unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions."
The book illustrates the neuroses that brain surgeons
themselves go through – the tension and pressure of holding a scalpel to the section
of the brain that controls motor function; you could rid someone of their basic
motor skills. Holding a scalpel to the temporal or frontal lobes? You rid
someone of everything that makes them who they are and wipe away their memories
as quick as condensation on your bathroom mirror.
I don’t know if I
could cope under the pressure of holding peoples’ lives in my hands – or worse
than that, if you don’t actually end up killing someone, you could just remove
their ability to move or talk or see or hear and surely that’s a fate worse
than death – being an alive being trapped in a coffin of a lifeless body;
unable to interact with the people you love.
Because I’m not quite finished with this book yet I can’t
give it a definitive review but I get the feeling I will enjoy it and benefit
from it as much as I did from Tanya Byron’s book. Henry Marsh became a Fellow
of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1984, which is home in London and plays
host to the fabulous Huntarian Museum which I visited with my boyfriend earlier
on this year. The museum holds a vast
collection of weird and wonderful things and if you too have an obsession with
the morbid and medical, I would absolutely recommend taking a trip when you’re
next in London.
Overall, these are just two examples of books I have read
this year that I have learned amazing things from. Of course I could just read
all of the information online, but when people like Tanya Byron and Henry Marsh
bother to make the information readily accessible and enjoyable – why not take
advantage?
I will always yearn for more knowledge and to learn about
things and I think you should too. Learn Russian. Learn the phonetic alphabet.
Something. Anything. J