Get Well Soon! My (Un)Brilliant Career as a Nurse

Author: Kristy Chambers

AUD $ 24.95

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If you thought TV’s Nurse Jackie told it like it was, then Get Well Soon! is one hell of a revelation.

Falling into the nursing profession, Kristy Chambers has spent almost a decade working as a nurse, with patients ranging from drug addicts through cancer patients to those in Emergency. Along the way she met some wonderfully brave people. As for others, well, you’ll need to read her book to really believe it.

Chambers is a new and idiosyncratic voice in memoir writing. Her tone is dark, her humour black, but there is honesty, heart and compassion in Get Well Soon! She shows us more than ever the incredible work done by nurses and the challenges they face.

‘My quest for a career started early, when I was four years old and gave myself a haircut to see if I liked that sort of thing. I liked it plenty, but my mother did not. Much later in life, after moonlighting as a maid and enduring myriad other unsatisfying positions, I fell into nursing, the way one may fall into a pile of sheep shit at two in the morning (which I have also done).

Aged thirty, I was spat out of university with a degree in nursing and a sense of bewilderment. I was dumb with wonder: I wondered why on earth I hadn’t studied something else, like furniture design. I like chairs.

My baptism of fire in nursing was harsh, but a pointed reminder that buried beneath my foul mouth was a kind heart, and I had been given an opportunity to use it on a daily basis. I like chairs and sick people. Nursing has been both a hellride and a joyride, but brutally educational most of all.’

‘One of the most distressingly funny books I have ever read.’ Benjamin Law

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Reviews

‘The funniest book I've possibly ever read is a debut memoir by Kristy Chambers about her nursing experiences called Get Well Soon! (UQP). It is disgustingly, roaringly funny.’ author Benjamin Law

‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Augusten Burroughs’ author Rebecca Sparrow

‘If David Sedaris had been an Australian nurse he probably would have written this.’ Catherine Deveney

‘An unsettling account of nursing that is devoid of dramatisation, characterised by cynicism, and delivered in the darkly comic style of Judith Lucy.’ Bookseller Publisher

Certain jobs need gallows humour for sheer protection.’ Sunday Age

‘It's an engaging book and highlights the sense of ridiculousness nurses need to maintain to stay sane.’ Courier Mail

‘An intriguing book. Light-hearted and insightful reading.’ Daily Telegraph

‘An entertaining, largely cynical, unglamorous, frequently repulsive ticket on the "hell ride and joy ride" of nursing.’ Sunday Mail

‘An exciting debut from a confident new voice.’ Who

‘Dark, humourous, honest and compassionate.’ Mary Ryan’s Good Book Guide

‘Told in a frank, matter-of-fact manner, these anecdotes highlight the darkly comic side of medicine.’ Cosmopolitan

‘Chambers' account of the (rare) highs and all-too-frequent lows of her undervalued profession is hilarious, razor-sharp, poignant – and fun, creative swearing and all. An exciting debut from a confident new voice.’ Who Weekly

‘Chambers is a natural comic, and while the humour is often dark or in-your-face, there are moments of poignancy.’ SMH and Saturday Age ‘Pick of the Week’

‘Get Well Soon! delivers clever moments of convulsive amusement and an insider's view of hospital life.’ Weekend Australian

‘Like most good memoirs, Get Well Soon will have you laughing and crying in equal measure … and sometimes both at the same time.’ Sunday Mail ‘Book of the Week’

‘A memoir filled with humour and distressing incidents … laugh-out-loud funny, raw, confronting and shocking.’ Good Reading

‘…Thigh-slappingly hilarious.’ Sydney Sun-Herald

‘Blunt [and] darkly humourous.’ Australian Women’s Health

‘A boldly honest journal of Kristy Chambers experiences as a nurse. I laughed, cringed, winced and laughed some more.’ Book’d Out Blog