CBC, Chem 5 and Tacky Cardies

How I qualified as an armchair diagnostician by watching medical dramas

The evil billionaire tech bro has escaped justice. Despite his medical devices killing a beloved former doctor and nearly killing young Henry, he has paid off Henry's impoverished mother with a large cheque covering their medical bills for life, minutes before she was due to reveal all on national news. He knows that everyone has their price, and that those he buys off are indebted to him. He knows secrets, and he'll reveal them. Those that threaten to speak out against him are hunted down. Accidents occur. He is untouchable. And yet…

No spoilers here for those who are yet to discover The Resident. We're on season two in our household. It's seen us through dark days, days when we could not bear to watch the news. We eschewed the inauguration of the Tango-tanned tyrant, and instead binged on three episodes, which gave a satisfying conclusion to the evil billionaire tech bro story, around the time that a real-life equivalent was saluting the crowd in a dubious manner. If only the writers of The Resident were in charge of that story.

Alex Kingston, later Dr Elizabeth Corday in ER, in my school photo, 1976. Alex also played River Song in Doctor Who

I've been a fan of medical dramas for most of my life. I vaguely remember the comforting Dr. Finlay's Casebook, but the first I became hooked on was General Hospital. In all probability it was pretty dire stuff, and I remember very little of it except that it was on just after I got home from school, and I used to rush home to watch it. That ended for me when I became involved in rehearsals for school plays, and later got a job after school in Woolworths.

There was a period when I didn’t have a television, and when radio and listening to music formed my entertainment. TV was a group-watch experience for those that remember the TV lounge in the Students' Union where crowds gathered for Not the Nine o'clock News. But the likelihood of a consensus on watching a medical drama was small. I guess my medical drama diet was confined to the occasional screening of Carry On Nurse or Carry On Doctor. ‘Ooh, Matron!’

And then came my children. Saturday nights were no longer for watching live bands or gathering round a pub table with friends. A year after my second child was born, we were introduced to the team at Holby City in Casualty. It always began with an incident, an accident, then on to the Casualty department run by Ewart Plimmer and Charlie Fairhead, who I chiefly remember as being unable to decide what to do with his hands, which shifted in and out of his pockets.

Casualty saw me through and beyond my first marriage as something comforting on a Saturday night. I always made sure I was sitting with a cup of camomile tea as the opening credits came up. A regular problem was someone being ‘tachicardi’, which I interpreted as tacky cardie. It was something I watched alone as my daughters grew older and spent Saturday nights out with friends. It wasn't until I was on holiday with a friend, and insisted we watch that season's opening episode, that I realised quite how awful it was. ‘Why do you watch this?’ my friend said. Because I had nothing else to do, no one to be with. I needed, in short, to get a life. I went cold turkey, and cured myself of Casualty.

Doctors arrived on our lunchtime screens around the time my oldest was at college. She only had to go in when she had classes, and we started watching Doctors together on the days she was at home. It featured the lives and loves of the doctors, nurses and patients at The Mill Health Centre, starring Christopher Timothy as Mac, formerly James Herriot in All Creatures, Great and Small, and later Diane Keen, formerly of Crossroads, as his ex-wife receptionist, Julia.

Older daughter moved on to university and younger daughter took her place next to me on the sofa to watch Doctors. When she, too, went to university, we continued to chat about the goings on at The Mill, later joined by a sister surgery, The Campus. In Doctors, patients were given instant appointments on walking into the surgery. They were seen several times in one day. The doctors made home visits, just because they were concerned, or had a sudden realisation of a diagnosis. It was through watching an episode of Doctors that I realised my debilitating illness, misdiagnosed for two years, might be Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I was proved right.

I got my second husband into watching Doctors, though I have to say he rather spoiled the magic by shouting, ‘They wouldn't do that!’, or ‘That's ridiculous’. I much preferred my daughters’ companionship, and our shared ability to suspend our disbelief.

When my youngest was hospitalised on several occasions during a difficult pregnancy, I would bring her up to date, on visits, with the latest on Mrs. Tembe, the receptionist at The Mill, and Dr. Zara Carmichael. My daughter was bereft when the programme ended last year. She continued to watch on catch-up, never missing an episode.

My favourite of all time is ER, which my youngest renamed ‘The Hot Doctors Hospital’. I have watched every episode four times. Four times I've been through the demise of Dr Mark Greene, his death from a brain tumour, and that episode with Eva Cassidy's Fields of Barley playing never fails to bring me to tears. Though I have never discovered what ‘CBC, Chem 5’ means, which seemed to be the call at every trauma where a team of up to seven would be working on the one person, often with one sitting astride the patient, pumping their chest.

The irony is that I'm squeamish about blood. When I worked in a medical library, the photos in journal articles and medical books would make me heave. Faced with a real life trauma, I'd run a mile. Maybe I’m able to cope with TV blood and gore by recalling my mother's words when we were watching worrying scenes on TV: ‘It's not real, you know.’

So what have I learned from medical dramas? Well, I've become an armchair diagnostician. I can spot a pneumothorax, hypothyroidism, Lyme Disease, and many other conditions. I often diagnose them before the fictional medical team reaches the same conclusion, at which point I punch the air and shout ‘Yes!’

This piece could be a lot longer. I've neglected St Elsewhere and Chicago Hope, not to mention the student nurses featured in the 1970s’ series Angels. Then there are Grey's Anatomy and New Amsterdam, in which the supposedly overworked doctors and nurses have time for socialising and complicated love lives, quite unlike the reality described by Adam Kay in This Is Going to Hurt. New Amsterdam is run by the wonderful Max Goodwin – catchphrase, ‘How can I help?’ – who thinks up good ideas, funds and implements them in the space of one episode.

Leonie Elliott, Nurse Lucille, taking a break from filming Call the Midwife

Just as I thought I'd finished this post, how could I have forgotten Call the Midwife, featuring the nuns and midwives of Nonnatus House, Poplar? The first series began in the late 1950s, around the time I was born, and has now reached 1970. It’s filmed at Chatham Historic Dockyard, a couple of miles up the road from where I live. I haven't joined a Call the Midwife tour, but we do have season tickets to the Dockyard, and take our granddaughter there several times a year. A couple of years ago, we were there on a day when Call the Midwife was filming. Lines of washing were hanging between the buildings, and old fashioned prams and bicycles positioned here and there. Extras were queuing up at a catering van just over the barrier from where we stood. And there was Nurse Lucille (Leonie Elliott) incongruously learning her lines from a MacBook Air while in costume. I explained to my granddaughter who she was, and what the programme was about. ‘Midwives help ladies when they have their babies,’ was all I offered. Lucille smiled at us and asked if we would like a selfie. Yes please.

That’s not my only brush with a star of a medical drama. Alex Kingston, Dr Elizabeth Corday in ER, was at my school. OK, I didn’t know her, but we are both in the whole-school photo of 1976. And that’s close enough for me. My granddaughter is a little young for medical dramas. She is more impressed that River Song, from Doctor Who, was at my school.

Let's reserve my favourite medical drama as the Mitchell and Webb sketch where the writers can't be bothered with all that research nonsense.