A childhood illness inspired her career choice, but medicine always had a rival …
At the primary school I attended, there was a plinth in the foyer with a statue of an ANZAC soldier poised on top.
One day, the school was advised that there was a time capsule hidden inside and the entire school gathered around the plinth for a ceremonial unveiling to see what it contained. I remember holding my breath when the plinth was unscrewed at the base and our soldier was temporarily laid down while the box was retrieved after years of waiting in darkness.
Inside the time capsule was a piece of the Australian flag hoisted by the ANZACs in Gallipoli, a newspaper cutting and various precious items belonging to a former student who served. It was a solemn and exciting event.
The school decided to place another time capsule under the restored plinth with items that reflected the 1970s. The school yearbook was to be included, featuring a story written by one of the students. A writing competition was announced with the winner’s story to be locked into the new time capsule. I had never wanted anything with such ferocity and can still recall the elation when my short story was chosen. The thought that something I had written would be there years later, perhaps after I was no longer around, stirred something in me, and I knew then I wanted to be a writer.
Life never happens quite as expected.
In high school I missed an entire semester of school as I was in and out of hospital with rheumatic fever. I developed Sydenham’s chorea and was incapacitated for months. While autoantibodies attacked my basal ganglia, my body jerked and spasmed and I found myself with slurred speech, unable to hold a pen. That prompted me to choose medicine as a career, the first person in my family to consider a health-related profession.
It was a long, tough road of undergraduate then postgraduate study, moving more times than I care to remember. I nearly quit a few times as I struggled to support myself financially while juggling study and shift work.
After completing my fellowship and becoming a fully-fledged GP, I moved some more, married, and had three children. I worked in regional and urban practices and did some remote locums in school holidays, always taking the family with me. We even spent a year in Cork, Ireland where I worked shifts in a privately-run emergency department between travelling throughout Ireland and Europe.
Eventually, I could no longer ignore the itch to write and signed up for an online creative writing course. I absolutely loved it and continued to do further writing courses while submitting stories and articles to competitions and magazines. It was such a thrill to place or see my work published. When the invitation to sign up and write a novel in eight months landed in my inbox, I immediately signed up.
Life often throws the unexpected at you.
We were living in Brisbane and hosting a German exchange student when we decided to take her on a one-week holiday on Great Keppel Island. While we were relaxing in the tropics, my parents were involved in a horrific head-on collision. One of the staff in the emergency department remembered me and called to let me know my parents were being helicoptered to hospital.
It took two and a half days to get off the island, drive back to Brisbane and fly to Canberra where they live. The next months I flew back and forth between work and family in Brisbane and Canberra Hospital.
There is a lot of empty time when you have relatives in intensive care. I finished writing my first novel in visitor waiting rooms, corridors, and the nurses’ squat while my parents were coaxed back to life.
I went on to write three more novels but was not confident enough to submit them to a publisher. Eventually, I entered an unpublished manuscript development award and was longlisted. The following year, I came runner up with another novel. When the publisher rang to offer me a contract for my novel, The Truth about My Daughter, I was at work and wanted to run into the waiting room and tell everyone that I was now a published author.
Related
I have been asked if I am a doctor who writes or a writer who practises medicine. I cannot really answer that.
I know that since writing, I have become a more empathic doctor who listens more and is better able to see the world from a patient’s point of view. My medicine is integral to my writing as I incorporate difficult but important themes in my work: palliative care, voluntary assisted dying, IVF, domestic violence, and termination of pregnancy.
I like to think that my stories prompt discussion about topics that are sometimes regarded as taboo or challenging, as these are issues I deal with every day as a GP. It is immensely satisfying when a reader contacts me to tell me they went through IVF or cared for a loved one with terminal cancer and related to my characters who had the same struggles.
I also encourage my patients to explore creative outlets when they experience their own challenges, and a few have sent me stories they have written about their mental health journeys and other issues. I was even sent a 54,000-word manuscript, photographs included, from a patient who had a prolonged psychotic illness. He found it cathartic to write it all down and send it out. Writing and other creative pursuits are an underused therapeutic tool.
Seeing my book in print has been enormously satisfying and is a great talking point with patients. I’m not sure anything is better than knowing my first little story is waiting in a time capsule, but being published while continuing to work as a GP is pretty satisfying.
And when I do eventually hang up my stethoscope, I will continue to write. I still have many stories left to tell.
Jo Skinner is a Brisbane-based GP and distance runner. Her debut novel, The Truth about My Daughter, was published this month by Hawkeye publishing.
