Sarah Burnett-Moore

Sarah Burnett-Moore is a consultant radiologist in London

Telling people they’re fat won’t help

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 11th August 2010 10:16 am

One of the non-paying jobs on Planet Sarah is that I do some broadcasting.

Most often this takes the form of a rather arid phone-in where I tend to say “obviously I can’t make a diagnosis over the phone, go and see your GP, blah dee blah…”.

The only amusing side of this kind of show is that someone will often ring in wanting help on a rash, which makes for terrible radio. The funniest call I ever got was from a woman, who wanted advice about whether a specific type of martial art would be good for her daughter. Apparently the local dojo offered something called ‘gangbang’. But I digress.

Occasionally I get to take part in a two hour phone-in, where we debate the hot topics of the week. I usually do something political, a piece on a celebrity buffoon like Cheryl Needy (thank you, Curtis Walker - stealing material works both ways mate!), and a medical story.

Enter the figure of ‘top GP’ Professor Steve Field, who has urged us to be more blunt with our patients when discussing their unhealthy lifestyles.

Aside from the fact that most ‘top doctors’ have precious little time for real patients, a quick google image search revealed that Prof Field could do with taking a bit of his own advice.

I imagined a typical encounter in Prof Field’s surgery.

Patient: “Hello doc.”

Prof: “Good morning you giant lard-arse, I see your gluttonous kids have waddled in behind you. I’m reporting you to social services for eating a packet of crisps in front of them. That’s child abuse that is.”

Patient, shocked: “Well, doc, do you have any advice?”

Prof: “Yes, M&S are now doing a plus size range for toddlers.”

It’s a battle for hearts and minds as Tony B Liar always used to say, and I’m not sure that insulting your patients works any better than it does with Afghans. The studio debate soon turned to whether obese was a less offensive term than fat. Doctor in the studio - obese more rude, stand-up comedian - less rude, which probably tells you something about the different way we use language.

One caller rang in to say that she didn’t think we should shame our patients, but she didn’t believe in sugar-coating. Her words, which is good as I know that sugar coating makes you fat.

There’s a price to pay for self-employment

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 26th July 2010 11:29 am

There was no blog for the last couple of weeks as I was off sunning myself in the south of France. Eagle-eyed readers will be amused to know that I got royally bitten to pieces by mosquitoes. But enough of that.

I couldn’t get worked up about anything while bathed in the glorious sunshine and smell of lavender so I didn’t post a blog. I didn’t even buy a copy of the Daily Mail to annoy myself with. My holiday mood soon evaporated on my return. Not just because I had missed the announcement that Wills and Kate are finally officially engaged. Work.

Never mind the huge pile of post (credit card bills mostly) jamming the front door shut, I came home to a massive list of MRI’s to report. The problem of being self-employed, is that if you go on holiday for two weeks in one month, two months down the line you’re broke. The credit card bills looked at me even more accusingly. So on Sunday morning I got up at 7.45 - am, that is - possibly the earliest I have ever got up on a Sunday when I haven’t had to work or travel - and started on the personal admin stuff. Two hours, and six cups of silver tip white tea later, I had decimated the paperwork. Actually I hadn’t, it means reduce by 90% (I wonder how many tabloid journalists know that it was a Roman punishment, where soldiers were divided into groups of ten, and one lucky bugger got to kill nine of his comrades?) and I’d made a tiny dent in the pile.

I began to wonder whether my self-imposed ban on caffeine was wise. Everything I read about caffeine suggests that in moderation it does make you more productive, makes it easier to lose weight, and all manner of other fantastic health benefits. I peered grimly into my silver tip, very nearly four months caffeine-clean, was I going to crack? I left my bills (x5), French tax letters (x4), backlog of medico-legal cases (x3), things to return to Amazon (x1), list of people to ring (x7), photography mag (x1), knitting mag (x1), and I put the copy of Clinical Radiology straight in the bin - well, not straight, I got Troy to take the plastic jacket off it first so it could go in the recycling.

Then I started on the MRI scans. The more I reported and turned them blue in the list, the more a fresh yellow one would drop in to take their place. It was like playing Bejeweled, but far less compelling. I took a brief respite to buy sandwiches for the family Sunday lunch - bad, bad Mummy - and returned to the grindstone. Sixty MRI’s later, I emerged from the office/currently bedroom, blinking in the evening light, like a disorientated mole.

By 11.00 am today, Monday, I merely have one medico-legal case left to do, and have reported 13 MRI’s.

I have been home just over 36 hours, and already I need a holiday.

Malaria’s the latest must-have accessory

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 8th July 2010 5:53 pm

I’ve coined a new word - malarious. It’s what I think of the fact that Cheryl Weedy has been struck down by the plasmodes. I’m no big fan of the Geordie pugilist, not least because I can vouch for the fact that Cashley was a genuinely nice bloke before she got her acrylics into him.

It’s a lovely example of how the über rich think that life’s normal rules don’t apply. Just like the priapic Tiger using the moral compass of an alley cat, although the apparent realisation of his humanity has seriously screwed his golf ‘tekkers’.

So Cheryl and ‘new hunk’ Derek Hough jetted off to malaria-ridden Tanzania. It was a surprise arranged by him. Well it turned out to be a hell of a surprise. Cherrek probably think that Pro Phil Axis teaches tennis. Africa is not a continent it is wise to go to on a last minute whim. Him indoors and I are going to Namibia next year for a charity project (more of which in due course) and we’ve already started our planning.

She collapsed during a photoshoot. No doubt the ugly mosquito bites will be airbrushed out. Ultimate proof that airbrushing is only skin deep.

No doubt the new people’s princess will become an ambassador for malaria awareness. I hope she goes further, and donates some of her vast fortune, as one child in Africa dies every 30 seconds of malaria, that’s over a million a year. It’s relatively cheap and easy to prevent, so she could make a real difference.

We shall see, probably malaria will become the latest must-have celebrity accessory. ‘During Sunday afternoon, Cheryl went downhill quickly. She was sweating and shaking and in a bad way.’ The same friend told the Mail. Well it’s a damn sight cheaper than the way Kate Moss has achieved the same effect.

I hear that Jordan has already rung Harrods to see if she can get Malaria in pink.

I wish the miniature pronounciation-mangler a speedy recovery, despite what she did to Ashley. Apparently she spent two whole hours in intensive care, which is longer than most SpRs.

But maybe she knows more about malaria than I do.

According to the Mail Online: ‘A friend last night told the Daily Mail: “Cheryl hadn’t been feeling herself for about a week.”’ And here’s me thinking you caught it from infected mosquitos.

It’s tough being the England coach

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 1st July 2010 8:33 am

Apologies for the lack of blog activity over the last couple of weeks, but I’ve been on England duty. My role within the England set-up was a little clearer than David Beckham’s (a suit, on the bench? Bah!) My World Cup campaign started with a good luck exchange of texts with the training ground at Royal Bafokeng (true, I swear), and the purchase of a vuvuzela. I also downloaded the vuvuzela app, in case of urgent need.

As assistant coach, my duties were manifold. Troy, my husband, was the actual coach, along with thousands of portly beer swillers sporting England shirts.

I had to check the iCal for fixtures, ensuring that no social activity, and as little work as possible, was scheduled to clash. I had to cancel my plans to go for a romantic weekend in Bruges, and arrange our anniversary dinner at a restaurant where we could watch a match. Last year, Troy had the best anniversary present ever, when Terry Venables turned up at the restaurant, and presented him with an autograph. I had to arrange our squad of GoGo Crazy Bones to mirror the starting eleven, which is no mean feat as Fabio wasn’t giving me much notice. At least this year I didn’t have a bloody wall chart to update.

But most of all, I had to keep down the male angst levels. A recent study showed that watching England play generated the same amount of anxiety as going through a divorce, or moving house. On the night of our first match we were at a wedding. Troy was so stressed about not watching, that he absconded - with the band, mind you - to the pub. That evening, the London Ambulance service recorded 40% more calls than normal, generally to deal with drunk supporters.

Domestic violence soars during the World Cup. The logical conclusion therefore is that women and NHS staff should be delighted once England get sent home, but I suspect that’s not true.

So, the GoGo’s went to charity and the vuvuzela mysteriously disappeared. As I hadn’t got round to putting flags on my G-Wiz, I was spared the emotional trauma of removing them. A final sheepish commiserative text to Rustenborg for a safe journey home, and my World Cup was over.

I am currently considering my future role in the squad.

Going to be guilt free by Five Year Clear Party

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 14th June 2010 9:19 am

I had my routine follow up appointment on Monday. It’s now just over four-and-a-half years since I was diagnosed with multi-focal breast cancer, but going for check ups just doesn’t seem to get any easier. I am a jangling bag of nerves for the week preceding it.

I did a radio interview about breast cancer last Friday, and the presenter asked if he could be invited to my ‘Five Year Clear Party’. Obviously I said “of course” in a suitably chirpy voice, but cracked as soon as I came off air. I simply don’t know how I would cope if I had to have all that surgery and treatment for a second time. I can’t bear the thought of putting my family through it again, either. Worse than the thought of a second primary would be to find I have metastatic disease, obviously. But, strangely, being perfectly fit and well, which I am - thank you - still bears an odd psychological curse. My best friend’s sister-in-law died of breast cancer on New Year’s Eve, leaving a husband, and a nine-year-old daughter. There’s a bit of me going: “How awful, that could have been me”, then the part that goes “thank god it isn’t me”, then I feel bad for being OK.

I didn’t have a name for this until yesterday. I texted a friend who had her mastectomy on the same day as me, and we met when we were having chemo at the same three weekly intervals. She’d had her check up on Tuesday, and I wanted to make sure that she was all right. I got this as a response: “Hi. Yeh, all good. My aunty has only a few weeks max to live and I have had the worst survivor guilt you can imagine then this morning read about that little girl who sang for Simon Cowell on Saturday and died yesterday of brain tumour. I spent an hour in starbucks this morning in floods of tears and have struggled to hold it together all day! F**king pathetic.” Lyn didn’t use the asterisks.

Survivor guilt, so that’s what it’s called. I rang Lyn. “Look, we’ve had our shit, and just because our shit’s not been as bad as other people’s shit, doesn’t mean it wasn’t shit for us, so we can’t feel shit about still being here.”

“It was shit wasn’t it?” she replied.

So we are going to hold a joint party in November. I know that the five years clear thing doesn’t really hold true for breast cancer, but stuff it. Any excuse for a party, and we’ll raise a glass to those who didn’t make it.

Intrepid reporter receives first iPad injury

By Sarah Burnett Moore - 3rd June 2010 11:00 am

I believe I may have Britain’s first iPad injury. It’s not that I dropped it on my big toe, it’s due to isolation.

I shall explain. We are having a half-term break in the middle of nowhere. Not Timbuctoo, or Ulan Bator, although, to be honest, they could be bustling metropolises for all I know. We are in Cornwall, somewhere called Herodsfoot is the nearest town. It’s the kind of place where the closest convenience store is a five-mile drive to Pelynt, and the Cornish cornershop doesn’t stock cornichons. Ironically, it does have every sort of mobile phone SIM card you can imagine. I say this is ironic because there is no mobile signal anywhere. Yesterday lunchtime we went to a pub called the The Punch Bowl, famed for being haunted by a demonic black cock. It was the sort of pub where the landlady has post-axial hexadactyly, and girls bother to put on false eyelashes for dinner with their brother. I asked where the nearest place to get signal was. “Troy the village green,” came the reply. “It’s where ee locarls go to get them there signal.” Apparently it even had a bench. It did, but no 02 or Vodafone connection.

Now, in principle, having a holiday away from all that technology and stress, staying in a log cabin (with ensuites, it’s a step up from a caravan), sounds ideal. No phone messages, no emails. Just beautiful forest, millpond and ducks, and sunbathing on the verandah. Except, as you drive to the bright lights of - ensuite jokes on a picture postcard please - Looe, intermittent signal pushes emails and answerphone messages through. By the time you stop the car, you’ve got a pile of urgent mail messages about delicate financial matters, and answerphone calls about arranging to scan a VIP - OK a Norwich player, but they are back in the Championship next season - at the weekend. Needless to say, wherever you’ve stopped, there’s no bleeding signal again.

This makes for a frustrating game of telephone and/or email tag, where trying to achieve anything is about as easy as reporting an MRI by pigeon post. So much for work. Yes, I do understand it’s a holiday, but I get bored if I don’t work on holiday. With the option of working removed, I have to find something else to do. Cue the knitting and the books. I had taken the precaution of downloading a few detective novels onto the iPad. Classic serial killer stuff. Yesterday I ploughed through a whole tome, flicking the pages across the screen with my thumb. This morning I woke up with terrible synovitis in the CMC joint of my thumb. IPad injury number one. A few doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol later, I have decided to cut out the relaxing crap for the day, and write my blog anyway.

I’ve perched the iPad dock on top of an upturned waste bin, as it’s the only way I can get close enough to a socket to write at a comfortable-ish level. No doubt this will produce some new injury for tomorrow.

Tonight, your intrepid South West correspondent is going to drive all the way to Polperro to file her copy. I can’t wait to get back to London.

Sent from my iPad!

(Complete a Hospital Dr survey to win a new iPad - Ed.)

Sitting on my arse for 14-hours a day

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 21st May 2010 8:51 am

The sun was shining in Battersea this morning when I returned from dropping my daughter off at school, so I decided to take advantage of the weather and sit, reading the paper, in my front yard. For the record, this is about one by five metres of weed-ridden concrete, with a couple of ceramic stools and a table. 

They have survived purely because they are far too heavy for anything but the most determined old lag to nick. But I digress. Just as I got comfortable, with a mug of silver tip jasmine, I opened the paper to discover that I was becoming part of an alarming British statistic. 

A survey of 3,000 people, conducted by Weight Watchers as part of their get active campaign, shows that we spend more than 14 hours a day sitting down. If you add on seven hours sleeping, that’s a frankly pathetic three hours a day actually standing up, let alone moving about. 

I thought about my average day…you might remember that we are currently kipping in the office, so the temptation to fall out of bed, and boot the computer on with my big toe, is fairly overwhelming. I start dictating in my dressing gown, while my adorable husband fags me endless cups of poncy tea. I then walk to the bathroom, get ready for work, and drive to work. 

I do stand up for the odd ultrasound, but my day is pretty much spent on my bum. I do get a walk at lunchtime, usually to Waitrose to buy supper. I drive home, I work more, I cook, I watch TV. The most exercise I get in a normal day is walking to the pub and back.

I do go to the gym, but not all that often. I venture nervously out on my bike, but not all that often either. So I need to build more activity into each day. I looked at the lazy excuses in the paper, having to work harder because of the recession, too busy with the kids, too tired after work, etc. They all sounded pretty familiar. 

I made one of my resolutions, never mind time spent on proper exercise, I need to get out more. But the sun was all too tempting, so I sat reading, and enhancing my wrinkles, until the ceramic stool got too hot for my lycra-clad derriere. Then it was back to the computer to report all day. The only reason I’ll have moved about at all today is because I have a ballroom dance class tonight.

Crap. I don’t want to be yet another statistic. Apparently I should be using the stairs not the lift, parking further away from work, and walking for 30 minutes at lunchtime. Further suggestions for Sedentary Sarah on virtual postcards please… 

We’re now being governed by Cleggons

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 13th May 2010 2:02 pm

We are now being governed by Cleggons. It just goes to show that the rest of the electorate was just as confused as I. When I went to cast my vote, I was intrigued by the fact that the parliamentary voting paper was yellow, and the local one blue, was that some sort of subliminal message? 

Then I woke up on Friday morning, and bingo! Sod all has changed. After the 1997 Blair landslide, I was driving home at around 4am, and it was the most beautiful dawn I had seen over London for years. Last Friday, London was still cold and grey. Until Tuesday the most entertaining political coverage was provided by the Adam Boulton meltdown at Alastair Campbell. 

If you haven’t seen it, find it on You-Tube, and for you ‘Thick of It’ fans, there is one split second where Ali looks EXACTLY like Malcolm Tucker.

 Then on Tuesday, after much to-ing and fro-ing, something remarkable happened. Cameron and Clegg sorted out the pre-nuptial, and hopped into bed together (BTW Rory Bremner’s stuffed isn’t he, how is he going to distinguish between the two? Maybe he will impersonate them simultaneously). They then kicked Gordon out from under the duvet.  Was it just me who felt irrationally emotional at his leaving speech? Sarah looked relieved that she was no longer having to watch her husband crumble before her eyes. Gordy and family head off so say tutty bye to the Queen, then back to HQ to thank Peter Mandelson, who reportedly held the firing gun to his head. Mandelson in turn, wished Dave and Nick good luck.

As Cameron was heading to Buck House, a bizarre ray of sunshine split the grey London skies. The next thing we saw was Queenie looking utterly delighted. Maybe she remembers him in the bunny outfit at the school play. As Cameron’s car left for Downing Street, a rainbow came out over the Palace. Extraordinary stuff. I was impressed by Cameron, both for going around the car to open the door for Samantha, (did you spot her shoes? How did she manage to wear them when pregnant?), and also by his assertion that Britain is a better place than it was 13 years ago. He’s wrong of course, but how lovely of him to say that.

Yesterday the political Ant and Dec arrived on the steps of Number 10 and did a double act. I am cautiously optimistic about this era of post-modern politics, except if everyone is going to be so nice to each other, what the heck am I going to write about? 

Well, there is one burning remaining political question. Now we’ve got Campo and Clegg, who is going to be Foggy?

See you all under the new regime…

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 6th May 2010 10:37 am

I’ve never seen myself as a political blogger in the conventional sense, but on the day of the longest overdue election in a lifetime, I am tempted to write something about it. This may in part be because I have not been allowed to say anything political on the radio since the election was announced. 

I don’t know about you, but we’ve been sent bog all literature by anyone. And the only people to pitch up on the doorstep were a pair of Jehovah’s witnesses last week, unless the Lib Dems have started to hand out The Watchtower. We live in a highly marginal seat, only 163 votes divided the two top candidates five years ago, so it seems a little odd to neglect me.

Maybe I could pick my candidate from the logo’s, a toddler-scrawled tree, a leafy world, a decontructed bird - is it a pigeon? - or a red rose, no the last reminds me of the rugger buggers at Med School. What about what the candidates look like? Clearly no-one is going to chose Gordon Brown or Nick Griffin in a beauty contest, and that green, sorry Green, woman has the most forgettable face in the world. 

In all honesty I have trouble telling David Clegg and Nick Cameron apart, and they sound identical.

There’s only one thing for it, I’ll have to read the health bits of the manifestos. Whoa, that was a mistake, now I’m really confused. Shall I précis my understanding of them? Lib Dems, scrap central targets, sack bureaucrats, and let local committees run hospitals. Blah, blah, blah…all hot air and no mention of how. The BNP (whose website is frankly libellous) are going to sack 100,000 NHS beaurocrats, and replace them with doctors and nurses. Methinks Griffin has not thought this through. Where are we going to get them from without further immigration? I’d tell you more, but I couldn’t bear to keep the webpage open any longer. 

The Green Party policy roughly goes - let’s make everything free, cut independent sector providers, and seemingly, remove patient choice. But I might have read that last bit wrong. The Tories are going to cut bureaucracy (yawn), make all drugs freely available, more blah, blah. There is a high point on the Tory health manifesto page, a video of their proposals. Well it would be a high point, if it wasn’t Andrew Lansley talking. 

And Labour, what are they going to do? Three guesses, preventative medicine, and forgive me if I’ve read this wrong too, but more targets.

Bring back The Monster Raving Loony Party, at least they gave us an honest laugh.

See you all under the new regime… 

Just too happy to write anything meaningful

By Sarah Burnett-Moore - 26th April 2010 10:37 am

Blog day is normally Wednesday, but I woke up, the sun was shining and I’d lost three pounds.

So far so good, nothing to get annoyed about. There’s an election on, a debate looming, and still I can’t think of anything to say, apart from the fact that Andy Burnham seems to have disappeared, and that can only be a good thing.

I spent the previous weekend on an advanced hypnosis course. Obviously this means practicing on each other, so we spent three days going in and out of trances, with presuppositions of extreme calm and happiness. Can it have worked?

The last time I was rendered speechless was when Gordon Ramsay fingered the tattoo at the top of my spine. But that’s another story. To be fair, I’m not speechless, I just don’t have anything nasty to say about anyone which, for a writer, is not a good thing.

I can’t get myself worked up about anything. Even the problem with the deep crimson Mirror making The Sun look turquoise was easily solved by not buying it. Incidentally this saves me 45p a day, which will pay for my Olympic contribution, and gives me 210 minutes of my life a week back by not reading it.

The children ransack their bedrooms - I calmly explain what needs tidying. Arsenal don’t beat Manchester City at home - well we weren’t going to win the league anyway. While we’re on the topic of those two clubs, have you spotted the similarity, and possibly the reason why Mark Hughes was sacked? Arsenal manager - Arsène; newish Man City manager - Man Cinni. Husband doesn’t want me to buy the latest underwater video camera. Never mind.

I wonder how long this state of wellbeing will last? For your sake, I hope it’s not long.