See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor: A Graphic Memoir

With humor, heart, and simple strokes of the pen, cartoonist and physician Farris (Mom Milestones) ushers readers through the tragicomic realities of medical school. In a frame narrative, Farris arrives at Beth Israel in Boston to give birth and remarks, “This is new: I’ve never been a patient here... so infantilizing when the nurse calls me ‘Mom’!” The story then flashes back to when she’s 14 and volunteers at a hospital. As a med student at Brown, she goes through a gauntlet of rotations in different specialties (tying surgical knots reminds her of friendship bracelets). Hurdles include braving protestors to shadow an abortion provider, dealing with the challenging but endearing patients at a psychiatric facility, and the first death of a patient. In the background, she meets, dates, and marries her spouse, wryly depicting their first date as a checkup. Farris’s brightly hued art is wiggly but welcoming, with gag panels sprinkled throughout (in the language of hospital flowers, lilies mean “We hope you get better, but it seems like you might not?”). She’s blunt regarding the sexism and racism endemic in medicine, and the struggles faced by clinics that serve the poor and uninsured. But she’s also passionate about the people and ideals that made the field her calling. This candid memoir belongs on every doctor’s shelf, and it’ll have laypeople in stitches, too. Agent: Mel Flashman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)