After recording a highly acclaimed debut album, musicians sometimes struggle to come up with what is often described as ‘the difficult second album”. I don’t know whether something similar is true for writers, but it’s clear that Dr Lucy Pollock has overcome any such difficulties and has followed up “The Book About Getting Older’ with another 18 chapters of outstanding writing, which, whilst they are neither sing along-able to or toe-tapping are nonetheless both thought provoking and engaging, and every bit as enjoyable and enriching as those in her first book.
‘The Golden Rule’, subtitled ‘Lessons in living from a doctor of ageing’, reads like the resumption of a conversation with an old friend, a friend who cares deeply about what she is talking about and whose evident wisdom is the result of years of experience working as a consultant in geriatric medicine.
But whilst this is an easy book to read, it doesn’t shy away from areas that are often difficult to talk about. Subjects like growing old without children and, equally hard perhaps, approaching death with children who, for whatever reason, still need looking after. And there is, of course, a chapter that discusses death and dying itself, and, in so doing, importantly encourages us to discuss them too, urging us to be realistic about the inevitability of death without ever underestimating the value of those who live to advanced old age. As with her previous book, Dr Pollock writes movingly about real case histories and, for me at least, most movingly of all about Henry, whose wife Iris is left feeling guilty for loving her husband enough not to want to unduly prolong his life. I don’t mind admitting that, on reading her account, I was left close to tears.
I found myself similarly affected when reading of real life examples where those who, manifesting their prejudices, had genuinely detrimental effects on those to whom those prejudices were directed. Such discriminatory language and behaviour will, sadly, no doubt continue, but this book, as well as calling out such unacceptable attitudes, will, I hope, go some way in reducing the ageism that is still all to apparent in a world where, rather than celebrating all that the elderly bring to our communities, far too often consider them nothing but a burden on society.
‘The Golden Rule’ is a very honest book. As well as describing some of the sadnesses that she herself has experienced in her own life - doctors are human too - Dr Pollock also writes about some of the sadness she has felt when she herself has made mistakes. ‘Kind and lovely can still be wrong’, she says. Even so, when medicine does fail, far better that the inevitable fallibility of even the finest clinicians is accompanied with compassion and understanding rather than an arrogant disregard for those who they are supposedly looking after. ‘Do as you would be done by’ is, after all, the golden rule.
But there are, perhaps, other rules that Dr Pollock suggests that we should not so slavishly seek to adhere to. And here we aren’t just talking about the inappropriate blanket application of guidelines to individuals, each of whom, having differing needs, therefore require differing management plans. In chapters that review both what went well and what went badly wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Pollock reflects how decisions taken based on blind adherence to the rules without the necessary thoughtful consideration of the real, rather than imagined, risks involved in following them, all too often did more harm than good by isolating the already lonely and adding to their unhappiness. Here, as in other areas, we are urged to consider what matter’s most to those being cared for - and allow the answers we receive to guide our actions as we go about trying to help.
Other chapters addressed by Dr Pollock are the effectiveness of resuscitation attempts in sick, elderly patients, the value of social prescribing, and how the breaking of bad news can be done most effectively. Also covered is the uncertainty that, as well as being a part of all our lives, is very much a part of all our deaths. Because not even death comes when we might expect it.
Tucked away somewhere in the middle of ‘The Golden Rule’, there’s a throwaway remark that suggests that Dr Pollock drives ‘a clapped out car’ for which she is ‘perversely fond’. Somehow I’m not surprised. Because, what is abundantly apparent from reading her book is her immense fondness for folk who, though she would never be so insensitive as to describe them as ‘clapped out’, are, nonetheless, at least a little past the best. And equally apparent is the fact that her fondness, far from being perverse, is nothing other than wonderfully appropriate.
And this, at heart, is what this wonderful book is all about. That, at a time when medicine is in danger of becoming ever more impersonal, we maintain a deep and abiding sense of what it is to be human and remember that, irrespective of our age, we all need to be listened to and understood in order that we can then be cared for rather than merely managed.
To read a review of Dr Pollock’s first book. ‘The Book About Getting Older’ click here, and to read ‘Paddington and the Ailing Elderly Relative’ in which Dr Pollock, or somebody very like her, makes a cameo appearance, click here
Other blogs related to ageing:
To read ‘On approaching one’s sell by date’, click here
To read, ‘Vaccinating to remain susceptible’, click here
To read, ‘Shot of Love’, click here
To read, ‘On not remotely caring’, click here
To read ‘Assisted Dying – we all need to be happier to help’, click here
To read ‘Bleak Practice’, a fictionalised version of ‘On approaching one’s sell by date’, click here