Didn’t Get Frazzled by David Z. Hirsch, M.D.

Seth Levine has always wanted to be a medical doctor and his first year of medical school consists of equal measurement of intimidation and being overwhelmed. Wanting to be able to share the agony, his friends are mostly medical students who can relate. Sometimes they meet at each other’s homes for parties, sometimes it’s just drinking themselves almost beyond the point of recovery, and other times it might be a really strange club with people doing really strange things. Medical school means open your mind to the future and why shouldn’t that mean the same for entertainment? Spending four years of school together leads to their lives entwining to the point that they rely on each other for support, entertainment, and if someone needs a new special friend there is always a kind student waiting to introduce their rather unattractive classmate from high school. These students’ attitude seems to be ‘work hard and play harder’, sometimes with a little more joy than commonsense.

Seth has a mischievous sense of humor. For example, naming his cadaver Homer, after the Simpsons, and then feeling he has done him a disservice and claims that he’s named after the Greek poet instead. In another instance, he helps a patient get out of the hospital by telling her to simply repeat, “I want to go home,” over and over to her doctor. Guess what? It works and with enough of it, her doctor is more than willing to send her home. There’s also the first gynecological exam, which consists of examining the instructor with three other students as witness. Eww. There is plenty of amusing tales to keep readers’ minds running in circles.

Seth’s girlfriend, April, is his buffer between school and his reality outside of medicine. She’s a bit of a quirky gal, sometimes taking herself a little too seriously, forcing Seth to adjust to these moments. They’ve been together since college, and even though he knows they’re not the perfect couple, he figures they’ll probably go on forever. Gradually, it dawns on him that his friends are not hers and that she is finding companions of her own. As his life becomes consumed by medical school, he’s not surprised when April announces she has found another man, a smarmy one who will focus only on her. They decide to ride it out for a month, due to their lease. For Seth, it can’t be over soon enough, especially since he hates her new man, Dennis, enough to daydream about punching his face in until he’s just a smear on the floor. He also finds he can barely manage to be civil, when she announces a weekend away with Dennis. He already knows that life without her will be a big challenge and, of course, there is an unattractive classmate waiting in the wings.

This book is entertaining from start to finish. Even with down moments that come with life, these people go through medical school focused on success and the shenanigans that give them just the right amount of laughter, the reader too. This is the grease to our squeaky wheels of life. There are moments that I found hilarious and I read it in two days, happy to spend my time with this book. It is more than worth your time.

And now for the stars!

• Genre and general reading age – Contemporary fiction for mature readers.
• Level of sexuality – Miniscule. After all, they’re studying a lot of anatomy in class already.
• Is there graphic language? Only in ‘medicine-ese’.
• Did I cry? No, no, no!
• Did I laugh? Long and loud!
• Level of character development – Seth can’t help but mature. He has no other choice.
• Is this part of a series? No.

I’m more than happy to give it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars!