Terri Lynn's Reviews > Coma

I first read this in 1977 at age 18 when it first came out and was a Robin Cook fan thereafter. I decided to re-read it this month and compare what my 18 year old self thought with what my 53 year old self thinks.

Third year medical student Susan Wheeler , along with 4 male medical school classmates, are assigned to Boston Memorial Hospital to begin learning first hand about surgery and patient care.

There are some aspects of this book and about women in medicine that I really want to discuss. In 1976 and 1977, the women's movement was in full force. I was in my late teens and living in Atlanta. I was very aware of the way women had been treated unfairly for centuries and was an ardent feminist just as I am now.

A feminist, for those who don't know, is a person (female or male) who believes that women should not be treated as second class citizens and should have the same opportunities and advantages men have. There is a lot of right wing rhetoric that comes from the conservative Christian Republican Taliban types about what feminism means and who feminists are.

Susan Wheeler begins her first day at Boston Memorial with what I consider some rather insulting and demeaning thoughts put into her head by author Robin Cook. Robin Cook, while acknowledging some of the difficulties women who entered medicine at that time faced literally is not seeing the character's feelings through the eyes of a woman but through the eyes of a man presuming a woman would think the same way he does as a man.

For example, Cook has all of the students feeling almost like frauds to be seen by patients as doctors when there was no much they did not know. That is fine. We hear from medical school graduates that this is a common feeling among them. However, he has Susan Wheeler wondering if she is a "neuter" and no longer feminine because she has chosen to become a doctor. Can't you just see the male students sitting around wondering if they haven't given up their masculinity by choosing a career that involves helping people and using their brains to do so? How will they ever marry and be daddies? Will women see them as caregivers instead of men? No, I don't see those questions rolling around in the male students' heads. They aren't worried about being "neuter".

Yet here we have a woman who has been described as a brilliant scholar and dedicated and determined to become a surgeon, with ideas of discovering new diseases and coming up with new ways to save lives, actually wondering if she can still be a woman if she uses her brain, talents, and skills as a doctor. I know a lot of female doctors and they tell me no such thoughts ever crossed their minds.

Also, she is sent right away to start an IV on a patient being prepped for surgery without ever having started an IV before. I quizzed a few doctor friends about this and was told that no medical student would ever be sent to start an IV unsupervised on their first day without having been trained to do so. The first two years of medical school comes after earning a 4 year bachelor's degree and involves book study and lectures. When they get into a hospital, they still attend lectures, go on rounds, and have procedures demonstrated to them. No hospital, clinic, or doctor would send someone still in medical school to do a procedure on a patient who had never even seen a patient before and who had never seen the procedure done and practiced it under supervision.

While doing this IV, Susan actually flirts with the male patient (!) which is unethical since they actually set up a date for when he is out of the hospital. Unethical, inappropriate, and enough to get you drummed out of medical school.

This patient is having a simple outpatient procedure just as the 23 year old woman who had a D &C the day before- and both are in comas for no apparent reason. Believe it or not, on her FIRST day at the hospital, Susan then ditches the rounds, the lectures, etc to begin to research comas to find out why. She makes accusations to the head of the anesthesia department, fraudulently obtains medical records through forged requests, lies, breaks into an office to steal records, and does a plethora of unbelievable things in her first 3 days all while not attending any lectures, rounds, surgical viewing, etc that she is there to do.

What is even more unbelievable is that the resident in charge of the 5 medical students, Dr. Mark Bellows, is so dumbfounded by the gorgeous Susan's big breasts, he aids and abets her on this then invites her over for dinner and sex even thought this would get him thrown out of the residency program and lose his opportunities for a better future. She talks to him like he is beneath her. In fact, she is a big mouth bitch who acts like she is in charge of everything and not just a third year medical student.

As the bodies rack up, someone seems to commit suicide, a hit man chases her through the dead human locker, and people are killed so their body parts can be harvested, Susan never once calls the police. I mean, if someone tried to murder you, wouldn't you even call the police?!!!

I like the concept- chasing down people who would bump off healthy people so to harvest and sell their organs- but there is much here that is not believable or even offensive that I had to deduct stars for that.

Another example of Robin Cook putting male thoughts in a female character's head is when Susan is over on her date/dinner/fuck at Dr. Mark Bellows' apartment. Mark has a neat, tidy clean apartment which is cozy and he is obviously a good cook but Susan is thinking that she wishes she could have a wife who would stay at home and keep the house clean, the laundry done, and do the cooking. She then gets upset and thinks that if she married she would be expected to be the wife and thinks that is "unfair".

Huh? As women, we know that our gender has been held back and has been exploited in just that manner. We do not sit around thinking it is unfair that we have to be the wife and that we can't exploit someone else. That is a male author making a female character think like an exploitative and sexist male. Women actually think of having what I have, a husband (or a wife, in the case of lesbians) who shares the cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, and family business evenly so neither of us is exploited or if we are not in a relationship, of hiring and paying someone to do that work. Why did it never occur to Robin Cook that if two doctors were married, they could HIRE people to do that sort of work for them? Or that they can share the load? Why presume that you must do that work for free if you have a vagina?

Many of the characters are openly hostile to Susan being a woman in medicine and this is true to life. Even the patient she made a date with told her she should be a dancer instead of a doctor and she even entertained the thought!

Less than a year after this book came out and I had read it, I was looking for a part time job. I was in college and wanted extra money. At the time, I was a psychology major and thought I would become either a psychologist (4 years of college ending with a bachelor's degree, followed by 4 years of graduate school and earning a master's and a PhD which would make me a Dr. in the academic sense to be followed up by an internship) or a psychiatrist (4 years of premed, 4 years of medical school, 4 years residency/internship to become a medical doctor then additional training in psychiatry). In the end, I chose the PhD route as I finally decided that I did not need to become a medical doctor to get to my goal and it would take way too much extra time not to mention having to learn surgery, autopsies, etc.

I went on a job interview at a dermatology practice to get a job as a secretary. I was still learning about medical school and had visited Emory University's med school and studied the requirements. I was an all A student in college in all subjects just as I had been in high school and I had the academic skills to do anything I chose to do. The young male dermatologist who interviewed me was excited by this and encouraged me, saying the field needed a lot more female doctors. He was all set to hire me but said the final decision rested with the senior partner.

When I met the senior partner, I knew I would not get the job. What I didn't know is that I would get a lecture and an insult. Who did I think I was, he demanded to know, to think that I, a mere 18 year old GIRL, had any chance or reason to become a doctor like HIM? Didn't I know that god meant for me to be a wife and mother (no, not really. I am an Atheist)? We "girls" had no business being so uppity as to go to college, let along think we should go to medical school. Maybe I could be a nurse or a teacher until I found the right man. And he wasn't going to have any uppity potential doctors or potential PhDs of the female gender in his office.

When I left, I saw the shocked look on the younger doc's face. I had a feeling he would not be staying there very long. I also looked out in the waiting room, filled entirely of girls and women. His money came from females. He entered the world through a female body. Yet there was no respect for women as human beings capable of doing or being anything but a maid, cook, and vagina.

Wish I could have knocked HIM into a Coma!