Understanding Illness

This book is part memoir and part case studies drawn from the author's working life as a medical student, general practitioner, counsellor and psychoanalytical psychotherapist--a career made even more difficult than usual by ill health. Kidney disease started in her 20s, sight loss in her 30s, so that she was unable to carry on with clinical medicine and had to retrain as a psychotherapist, and heart disease in her 40s. In spite of all that, she battled on with great determination and humour, and became a loved and respected member of staff in a great teaching hospital. She worked extremely hard on 'my book', as she always called it, and finished it just two months before her final illness started.