The Doctor Will Not See You Now: The Autobiography of a Blind Physician

Lyn Clark is an assistant editor at the Canadian Book Review Annual.

Jane Poulson (1952–2001) was the first blind medical doctor to
practise in Canada. The Doctor Will Not See You Now is the story of her
personal journey, of the people who helped her along the way, and of the
system that was altered to accommodate her disability.

Poulson was 13 when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The disease
left her with a lasting hatred for her body, a loathing for food, and a
fragile self-confidence. Melancholy and despair overcame her whenever
she recalled the words of the “wicked dietician” (“If you do not
follow the rules every day of your life, you will die”). At the age of
27, before taking her medical school exams for her degree, she became
blind: “My shame was so deeply ingrained that I could not say aloud
that I had diabetes and this disease had cost me my sight.” Twenty
years of various forms of psychotherapy did not completely erase
Poulson’s humiliation. It did, however, serve as the impetus for her
journey of self-awareness. During her forties, when she was confronted
with coronary artery disease, open heart surgery, and two mastectomy
operations for breast cancer, she learned valuable lessons from being a
patient. These lessons became the basis for articles she wrote for
medical journals, three of which are included in this book.

Poulson derived strength and inspiration from the liturgy of the
Christian religion, particularly Holy Week, which she saw as a metaphor
for the contradictions of her own life—the agony of Good Friday, the
ecstasy of Easter. Following her first bout with cancer, she arranged
for a long-term disability leave. During that leave, she spent quality
time with friends and family and traveled to places that transformed her
spiritual outlook. While touring cathedrals and churches in the
southwest of France, she felt deep depressions in the stone steps
created by generations of worshippers: “I had never felt so much one
with the stream of creation. Death no longer seemed like a monster to be
feared and avoided.”

Poulson’s autobiography, a gift of thoughtfulness and wisdom,
deserves to be widely read.