Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

“I would have given up while still at med school…(but) this author is made of stronger stuff than that.”

This memoir by American doctor, Kay White Drew, is a fascinating look into the early forays of ‘allowing’ women to train as doctors from the late 60s onwards in America. Starting in 1968 when the author was just seventeen, the book tracks her progress through medical school and onwards.

One of the things that becomes obvious fairly early on is just how honest the author is about her personal life. She lays bare how she felt about life after her mother died from cancer and her father’s subsequent remarriage. But she’s also very honest about her sexual relationships (and even her attraction to a female friend, at one point). The author holds nothing back albeit that this is no sleazy Mills and Boon novel. She doesn’t give us the intimate details of her love-making but she gives pretty much everything else.

There’s quite some mixed moralising here. On the one hand, the author enjoyed the fruits of sexual liberation and enjoyed having varied sexual encounters and causal relationships. On the other hand, she often quickly dips into resentment with her male partners for expressing the exact same sexual liberation. These are men who are up-front right from the beginning about what they do and don’t want and she enters into these relationships with eyes open, yet simultaneously ends up judging them for not entering into a loving committed and monogamous relationship with her. The implied accusation is that of sexism and of using her.

And, to be fair, she is writing about a time when there was plenty of that about. She writes, early on, about the various forms of sexism she encounters – from having it made clear by superiors that she was ‘taking the place of a deserving man’ on her course, to being treated as inferior by teachers, students and even patients alike. At least two of the men she sleeps with were, in my book, borderline predatory as professionals who had responsibility over her. She defends one of them but the other she sees more clearly as overstepping the line. This all makes it a little difficult to read.

From about halfway into the book we start to get more medical biography rather than merely sexual. Once the author starts placements, we start to hear of actual interesting cases and the love-life side dies down a little. Nevertheless, despite long hours and gruelling shifts (made no easier by misogynistic and oft uncaring superiors) she manages to find time to make, what increasingly looks like, poor choices for lovers.

At the same time, it becomes more obvious that Kay White Drew was no natural genius at medicine. She struggles with passing exams and struggles even more with patient care. It is to her credit that she perseveres on – I would have given up while still at med school. Given her mental health being shaky (needing therapy while studying) and coming to terms with grief, while dealing with daily prejudices, there would have come a point where I would have said enough is enough. But this author is made of stronger stuff than that.

Her honesty is possibly the strongest pull of this book. Dealing with depression, failing love life, barely staggering medical career and more – this is stuff most of us prefer to keep locked away and admitted only to a few close loved ones. She opens herself up to criticism – by people exactly like me! – but then, Kay White Drew has faced criticism all her adult life. I guess that, in a sense, is the point.

That said, I felt the closure wasn’t quite adequate. Having spent the entire book reading of her failures in love, we never get to meet the man who will eventually become her husband. This was truly disappointing. Clearly, Kay White Drew has had a long and successful marriage and notes her partner as the ‘love of my life’ in the acknowledgements at the end. It seems bizarre that he never gets a proper entry in the book. I would have liked to know just how he was different to all the ghastly lovers she’d had during her training.

Stress Test is not an informative or funny book the way Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt is. It is a gentle but intimate nostalgic look at the kind of world American women training as doctors in the 70s faced. By extension, it probably rings true for many western women working in ‘a man’s world’ from the 60s through to 80s. While it isn’t a perfect biography, Stress Test offers plenty for those interested in the personal lives of medical professionals. If nothing else, it adds to the wealth of literature that gives us insight into just how hard it is to wear one of those white coats.

My Verdict:

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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