Distracted by the doctor
Above: Dr Mark Porter, picture by Mark Fairhurst
THERE are so many things I’m desperate to ask Dr Mark Porter…
Personal things... Things about me, I mean. Like the burning pain I sometimes get in my left leg. Does he think that’s normal? Or my possibly-undiagnosed sinus problems.
It’s the voice that does it: reassuring, familiar, friendly; normally arriving via the airwaves, discussing manic depression or irritable bowel syndrome in a way that makes you feel these are perfectly acceptable – even desirable - conditions to talk about at normal volume in the middle of a library. It’s a voice that says, “Sit down; I’ve got all the time in the world. You can tell me anything.”
And I’d really like to. The trouble is, I keep getting distracted.
For after five minutes in the Porter household, my head’s spinning. (Uh-oh.The beginnings of paroxysmal positional vertigo, maybe?) Charlotte (18) rings from sixth form college: her last exam went just fine and she’ll be home in an hour or so. Wife, Ros, is taking 17-year-old Sarah out shopping and needs the car moved. Phones ring. Messages and instructions are given and received.
“It’s lovely to have a quiet afternoon like this,” Mark Porter says, as we sit down to chat in the kitchen of his rural converted barn near Stroud.
A quizzical look on my part reveals not a trace of irony. (Doctors might do cynicism, but you can’t diagnose ironically.)
Actually, it’s the kind of happy household that’s abuzz with the usual demands of teenagers. But you can see why – busy as it is – it’s an absolute haven to Mark Porter. He never stops.
Let’s go through the list: he works part-time as a GP in an NHS practice in Wotton-under-Edge; does a day a week at the Nuffield in a private clinic (“Utopian medicine. Half an hour with a patient – ‘You can have an x-ray now; a blood test now’ - but it’s not real medicine”); and still finds the time to write for national publications on health matters, and talk reassuringly on Radio 4’s Case Notes in a way that makes you long for key-hole surgery.
How does he do it?
He laughs. There’s no great secret. “I work long hours,” he says. “The interesting thing is, I can only do one thing at a time, so I split my week up. The day I’m in surgery is sacrosanct, so I would never write an article on that day – and so on.
“It works brilliantly when everything goes smoothly, but the minute one of my patients reacts to a drug I’ve prescribed and it’s not my day for surgery, and I’m somewhere I don’t have patient records, and someone’s waiting for an article…” He trails off with a winsome grin.
As a present to himself on his 40th birthday, four years ago, he gave up being ‘on call’. (The miracle is how he did it in the first place.) He also moved from Locking Hill – the Stroud NHS surgery where he’d worked for 16 years – to work at Wotton’s Culverhay practice. He himself has been interestingly and variously informed – via a number of different sources - that his reasons for doing this include running off with a floosy; being struck off; and moving to India with Dr Dawn Harper of Embarrassing Illnesses. Although the two are friends, and have frequently worked together, the truth is rather less salacious. “At Locking Hill, I was a partner; at Wotton, I’m not. I see the patients but I don’t have anything to do with ticking boxes or administration.”
You can read this article in full in the October issue of Cotswold Life, on sale on September 27, or see our fantastic subscription offer on the home page.