Sometimes it’s the case.
Sometimes it’s the circumstances – a child dying despite everything possible being done to save them.
But often, it’s the people.
For me, it’s the patients who taught me something about life. About resilience. About what people are capable of enduring – and surviving.
Medicine exposes you to the very best and the very worst of humanity.
And to people you might never otherwise meet. People who haven’t just read about history. They’ve lived through it.
Anniversaries of world events, documentaries and even movies trigger memories of some the patients who brought that history to life. When I recently watched the film, Nuremberg, I was reminded of a number of patients from my years in general practice. Once was a woman with uncontrolled hypertension. She was a Polish immigrant, with children and grandchildren born in Australia. Quiet, polite and reserved.
Despite being on multiple medications, her blood pressure remained dangerously high. I decided to check it in both arms. She hesitated then slowly rolled up her other sleeve. That’s when I saw it. A tattoo. Numbers. This wasn’t something from a textbook.
This was a woman who had survived a concentration camp.
I gently asked if she was taking her medications. She lowered her head in silence. Then I asked if she trusted doctors. Her pulse raced.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
We began to talk. I told her I understood why she might not trust medical professionals – or authority more broadly. She had lived through a horrific time when doctors had not healed but caused immeasurable harm.
She explained that she came to appointments because it was expected and didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She took the prescriptions, but never the medications. It was a way of appearing compliant, which meant staying safe.
Until that day, no one outside her family knew what she had been through. And the trust between us slowly developed.
Another patient had been a pilot in the Second World War. He had survived his plane being shot down more than once. He spoke about standing on a tarmac, waiting to be presented with a medal. The man arriving to present it was Hermann Göring.
What this pilot remembered most wasn’t the ceremony.
It was the man. He described Göring stepping off the plane wearing a fur coat, with crude makeup – rouge, he said – and something else. “The coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. I was looking into the face of evil.”
That was the detail that stayed with him. And, in turn, stayed with me.
Sometimes, it’s not even a patient. It’s the colleagues you meet along the way.
In 1989, I was staying with a German medical student friend.
It was the time of the Berlin Wall protests – what would become one of the most celebrated moments in modern history.
People I knew were planning to go to Berlin. To be part of it. To witness history.
He warned me not to go. He had just completed national service and saw things from a different angle.
He told me hospitals and government buildings were being set up as make-shift hospitals, blood supplies organised, doctors and staff on standby.
They were prepared for a massacre.
From the outside, and to family back in Australia, it looked like a movement gathering momentum. Something hopeful. Inevitable that the wall would come down.
But from inside the system – through medical channels – the expectation was very different.
My host believed that without intervention, it would end in violence. That large numbers of people would be injured or killed.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. The wall came down.
History remembers it as a moment of unity and triumph. But it may not have been as inevitable as it now seems.
Medicine often gives you a different perspective. Personal glimpses behind the public version of events. And knowledge about how much both sides suffer in wars and brutal regimes.
A quieter, more sobering reality.
And then there was the man who had survived polio as a child during WW II when many of his friends and cousins had died during an outbreak in England.
He was warm, funny and full of life living with one good hand and leg.
Decades later, he developed weakness and muscle wasting in his functional leg and hand. This was post-polio syndrome – a condition that can cause more damage to muscles long after the original infection.
His message was simple. He begged me – genuinely begged me – to vaccinate children against polio and prevent any more outbreaks.
He wasn’t speaking academically, or with any other agenda. He spoke from lived experience.
Medicine doesn’t just teach you about disease.
It’s a privilege to be introduced to people – and the extraordinary lives they’ve lived, often quietly, often unseen. We remember the diagnoses. But it’s the stories – and the people behind them – that stay with us.
Dr Kathryn Fox is an Australian medical doctor and bestselling crime writer, best known for her forensic thrillers featuring pathologist Dr Anya Crichton. Drawing on her medical expertise, she crafts gripping, authentic crime fiction and is also a passionate advocate for forensic medicine education and public engagement.