The Doctor Will See You Now

Grey's Anatomyand Scrubsfor bookish types--a charming and funny memoir of a young doctor's life A uniquely funny, insightful, and touching take on medicine and those who practice and receive it, this is the story of Max, a young doctor who works marathon shifts in the dementia and Accident & Emergency (A&E) wards treating a wide and colorful range of patients that his previous years of experience somehow failed to prepare him for. Dementia, though serious, is not without its funny moments, and Max soon realizes that one of the benefits of working in the memory clinic is that patients frequently forget to turn up! But the patients who do show are charming and lovable--from Mr. Brownlee, a removal man with Mad Cow Disease who removes furniture from the ward in the belief that he's still at work, to Valerie, a senior whose dementia has convinced her that Max is her son. As we follow Max on his hospital rounds, we fight with him to save the A&E ward from shutting down, to expose and improve on the deficient care in private nursing homes, to defend his friend's honor after she's assaulted by an older man, and to ordain the marriage of a gay couple in their 80s.

Max Pemberton is a practicing doctor as well as a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Reader's Digest. He was recently the recipient of the Mind Journalist of the Year Award for his writing about mental health.