The doctor’s surgery, it’s a place of confidence, of private discussions and emotions. We don’t want anybody to know what we’re in for, but as you wait your turn in the waiting room, there is an air of curiosity about what the person beside you will discuss with the doctor. In her new book, All in a Doctor’s Day Dr Lucia Gannon has well and truly opened the door to her surgery in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, a rural GP practice that she and her husband Liam have run for 23 years.
“Everyone can calm down, I’m not giving away private health details of my patients,” she laughs. Not that juicy she assures us. “I have amended stories and names, and written about themes that have come up year after year in our GP practice.
“I suppose one of my reasons for writing this book was to break that taboo surrounding the visit to the GP. By taking you into the doctor’s surgery, it is taking the mystery out of it. And as you work through it, readers begin to realise that really, we are all the same. So many of us have the same concerns, worries, thoughts and fears.”
Baby steps
Sitting across from Dr Gannon, it’s easy to see that she is a GP that puts her patients at ease and says it was that relationship with young people and children that really assured her she was in the right role. Not surprising given that Lucia was raised in a family of 12.
“I was the fourth child and my biological mother died when I was just seven-months-old. My father married again and the woman who I call my mother is actually my stepmother. She raised us four and another eight children, so you can imagine it was a very busy house with kids falling and scraped knees and crying and coming and going. So when it came to being a doctor, I had no fear of little babies.”
In fact, little babies were always on the agenda for Lucia herself, even though her mother wanted her to pursue a career in teaching.
“Our three children were small when we set up the doctor’s surgery in Killenaule but with our house right beside the practice, it ended up being a family-friendly career. We were always close to home, always around when the kids were growing up.”
The practice is positioned on the side of the road just outside the village with the Gannon house just up the hill but from day one both Lucia and Liam agreed that there would be no gates separating the two.
“It’s a small community and while obviously there are out of hours and we need a good work-life balance, we never wanted it to be the case that if there was an emergency in the village that we weren’t contactable. If someone collapsed on the street, we wanted people to know that they could run up to the house to get us. Of course, things are a little different now with mobile phones but the gate, or lack thereof, is still symbolic.”
Mental health
Emergencies are rare however. The themes that come up in All in a Doctor’s Day are more indicative of what Dr Gannon deals with on a daily basis, themes that she introduces through characters that many can identify with.
One such character is Philip O’Shea who arrived into her surgery revealing that he was so down following the death of his wife that the week before he found himself at the train station, millimetres away from the edge of the platform, ready to jump. After a talk with the doctor and a referral to a bereavement counsellor, the chapter ends with him looking at life a lot more positively.
“I suppose the story, and others in the book are indicative of how mental health has progressed in the 23 years that Liam and I are running the practice. Now people, and especially young people will come to me and say, I am feeling really anxious or I think I am depressed.
“In the past, there was no language for those sort of feelings. If you were angry, you had a bad temper. If you were sad, you were in a bad mood. It was kind of a snap-out-of-it situation. Now people are a lot more attuned to their feelings and facing it in time, it doesn’t spiral out of control. Very often, it is dealt with within the surgery. Only if it’s very severe does a person progress onto secondary care. I have even seen a big difference in serious mental illness. A diagnosis now isn’t what it used to be, people are functioning much better.”
From one extreme to another
The book also deals with the extremes of visiting the doctor. Kitty O’Dwyer is a character that Dr Gannon was very familiar with, a lady that could call with a different ailment every week.
“It can be easy to dismiss a person like that but that story was one of my biggest learning curves. These people may not have a definable disease but they do have a distress, specifically about their health. They worry about their health all the time and that is an illness, so it is our job to protect them from too many investigations and diagnosis, re-assure them and manage that in a timely manner while at the same time being consistently thorough.”
When it comes to men’s health though, sometimes there can be a reluctance to visit the doctor. “A quick pulse check and blood pressure check once a year can be very beneficial. There is often no need for a big check. Where a visit is required is when there are symptoms such as headaches, tiredness, weight loss and loss of appetite.
“A tension can arise when a man won’t go to the doctor and other family members are concerned. You can’t bully someone or force someone, they have to live their own life. But for the person in question, even a quick trip to the doctor can help relieve worry and anxiety.”
The book doesn’t just focus on life inside the surgery but also life outside. “It did take myself and Liam a good few years to settle into the community, it was probably when the kids started going to school and we were standing on the side of the GAA pitch that we were seen as people, rather than the village doctors.”
Does that mean people don’t ask questions when they are out socialising? “Ah, I have a good line,” she laughs. “I say, if you really want me to answer that, it will be €50.” That usually puts an end to it, and we can just get back to enjoying our drink with everybody else.
All in a Doctor’s Day by Lucia Gannon is published by Gill Books, priced at €14.99.
The doctor’s surgery, it’s a place of confidence, of private discussions and emotions. We don’t want anybody to know what we’re in for, but as you wait your turn in the waiting room, there is an air of curiosity about what the person beside you will discuss with the doctor. In her new book, All in a Doctor’s Day Dr Lucia Gannon has well and truly opened the door to her surgery in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, a rural GP practice that she and her husband Liam have run for 23 years.
“Everyone can calm down, I’m not giving away private health details of my patients,” she laughs. Not that juicy she assures us. “I have amended stories and names, and written about themes that have come up year after year in our GP practice.
“I suppose one of my reasons for writing this book was to break that taboo surrounding the visit to the GP. By taking you into the doctor’s surgery, it is taking the mystery out of it. And as you work through it, readers begin to realise that really, we are all the same. So many of us have the same concerns, worries, thoughts and fears.”
Baby steps
Sitting across from Dr Gannon, it’s easy to see that she is a GP that puts her patients at ease and says it was that relationship with young people and children that really assured her she was in the right role. Not surprising given that Lucia was raised in a family of 12.
“I was the fourth child and my biological mother died when I was just seven-months-old. My father married again and the woman who I call my mother is actually my stepmother. She raised us four and another eight children, so you can imagine it was a very busy house with kids falling and scraped knees and crying and coming and going. So when it came to being a doctor, I had no fear of little babies.”
In fact, little babies were always on the agenda for Lucia herself, even though her mother wanted her to pursue a career in teaching.
“Our three children were small when we set up the doctor’s surgery in Killenaule but with our house right beside the practice, it ended up being a family-friendly career. We were always close to home, always around when the kids were growing up.”
The practice is positioned on the side of the road just outside the village with the Gannon house just up the hill but from day one both Lucia and Liam agreed that there would be no gates separating the two.
“It’s a small community and while obviously there are out of hours and we need a good work-life balance, we never wanted it to be the case that if there was an emergency in the village that we weren’t contactable. If someone collapsed on the street, we wanted people to know that they could run up to the house to get us. Of course, things are a little different now with mobile phones but the gate, or lack thereof, is still symbolic.”
Mental health
Emergencies are rare however. The themes that come up in All in a Doctor’s Day are more indicative of what Dr Gannon deals with on a daily basis, themes that she introduces through characters that many can identify with.
One such character is Philip O’Shea who arrived into her surgery revealing that he was so down following the death of his wife that the week before he found himself at the train station, millimetres away from the edge of the platform, ready to jump. After a talk with the doctor and a referral to a bereavement counsellor, the chapter ends with him looking at life a lot more positively.
“I suppose the story, and others in the book are indicative of how mental health has progressed in the 23 years that Liam and I are running the practice. Now people, and especially young people will come to me and say, I am feeling really anxious or I think I am depressed.
“In the past, there was no language for those sort of feelings. If you were angry, you had a bad temper. If you were sad, you were in a bad mood. It was kind of a snap-out-of-it situation. Now people are a lot more attuned to their feelings and facing it in time, it doesn’t spiral out of control. Very often, it is dealt with within the surgery. Only if it’s very severe does a person progress onto secondary care. I have even seen a big difference in serious mental illness. A diagnosis now isn’t what it used to be, people are functioning much better.”
From one extreme to another
The book also deals with the extremes of visiting the doctor. Kitty O’Dwyer is a character that Dr Gannon was very familiar with, a lady that could call with a different ailment every week.
“It can be easy to dismiss a person like that but that story was one of my biggest learning curves. These people may not have a definable disease but they do have a distress, specifically about their health. They worry about their health all the time and that is an illness, so it is our job to protect them from too many investigations and diagnosis, re-assure them and manage that in a timely manner while at the same time being consistently thorough.”
When it comes to men’s health though, sometimes there can be a reluctance to visit the doctor. “A quick pulse check and blood pressure check once a year can be very beneficial. There is often no need for a big check. Where a visit is required is when there are symptoms such as headaches, tiredness, weight loss and loss of appetite.
“A tension can arise when a man won’t go to the doctor and other family members are concerned. You can’t bully someone or force someone, they have to live their own life. But for the person in question, even a quick trip to the doctor can help relieve worry and anxiety.”
The book doesn’t just focus on life inside the surgery but also life outside. “It did take myself and Liam a good few years to settle into the community, it was probably when the kids started going to school and we were standing on the side of the GAA pitch that we were seen as people, rather than the village doctors.”
Does that mean people don’t ask questions when they are out socialising? “Ah, I have a good line,” she laughs. “I say, if you really want me to answer that, it will be €50.” That usually puts an end to it, and we can just get back to enjoying our drink with everybody else.
All in a Doctor’s Day by Lucia Gannon is published by Gill Books, priced at €14.99.
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