Reviews

I'm a believer

"Once a man stops believing in God," said G K Chesterton, "he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything." Yeah right, I thought, what would he know? But the Road to Damascus can come in unlikely forms. Being a cynic is not something I'm proud of, as if it's a skill I've refined through years of cold and impeccably logical reasoning. It's more of a physical trait, like my height and baldness and poor eyesight and incredible sexual potency. If I can't actually put my fingers in the wounds, I don't believe. Faith and intellect are uneasy bedfellows; faith hogs the blankets and the hot water bottle, intellect doesn't want to use condoms etc. But lately I've been having serious doubts and it's all because of bendrofluazide.

I've been using bendrofluazide since I qualified 20 years ago. Around that time there were mega studies coming out on the treatment of mild to moderate hypertension, with about a zillion patients in each trial, all of which proved the efficacy of bendrofluazide in the prevention of stroke and heart disease.

But I've never put my fingers in these wounds, because bendrofluazide never seems to work. I can't remember the last time it actually brought anyone's blood pressure down, and I always end up having to add in something newer, more expensive, and less academically correct, as well as something to correct the side effects.

So the things that I read are perhaps more real to me than the things that I experience; statistics are the substance, reality is only the shadow. In my own way I must believe as firmly as any religious fanatic in the superior reality of things that are not seen.

But then some of the best things in life are not seen. I have no visible proof of the many children I've saved from serious illness by vaccinating them, nor the many patients who haven't had an infarct or a stroke because I've been prescribing them aspirin.

And here I am, still hopelessly in love, still crazy after all these years, still starting patients on bendrofluazide, still desperately wanting to believe, although the sphygmomanometer dial resolutely refuses to budge. The statistics from all those years ago weigh heavier than all those same years of ineffectual treatment; love sees not with the eyes but with the mind . . .

Liam Farrell, general practitioner. 

Crossmaglen, County Armagh