SAVING A STRANGER’S LIFE: REVIEW

There are moments when the reader needs a strong stomach, but the writing is engaging and often the stories Biccard has to tell are very funny, in a dark kind of way. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)

After 30 years of working as an Emergency Room doctor in Johannesburg, Anne Biccard, like the rest of the world, was suddenly faced with the Covid pandemic and, although used to being on the front line of medicine, she was parachuted into mayhem. Pandemics may have been on the radar of scenario planners, but no-one could really foresee the reality.

Saving A Stranger’s Life: The Diary of an Emergency Room Doctor covers her experiences from March until August 2020, dealing with the first rumours of a new virus, the first lockdown and the first wave of infections. There are moments when the reader needs a strong stomach, but the writing is engaging and often the stories Biccard has to tell are very funny, in a dark kind of way. It seems that before Covid changed people’s habits, a fair number of patients turned up in the Emergency Room for a bizarre collection of reasons.

One woman announced that she had swallowed a weasel – in actual fact, some serious questioning elicited the fact that it was a weevil. And there was the patient who wanted to see “his” cardiologist. When contacted, the doctor showed a distinct lack of enthusiasm as it transpired that their previous interaction had been when the patient had tried to run the doctor over.

But something that shines through the whole book is the dedication of the medical staff as those who arrived at hospital changed from emergencies, real and imagined, to Covid patients. The pandemic may have started slowly, but Biccard charts its progress, and the growing loss of faith in the government’s handling of it. By July last year, the full horror of what was happening had hit home, and Biccard admits to her desire – and that of many other health care professionals – to quit and get out of it all.

Coping strategies are many and varied. For Biccard, it is getting home to her partner and their rescue dogs and walking in the countryside. And what shines through the funny stories, the poignant episodes and the horror of what she is living through is her dogged determination to do what she can. - Margaret von Klemperer

Saving A Stranger’s Life is published by Jacana. ISBN: 9781431430659