A Tale of Two Doctors

Two remarkable doctors, Grandmother and Grand-daughter, tell their stories. The similarities are fascinating but the differences are brutal. Dr Sabrina Skopinska, the grandmother of Dr Monika Blackwell, was born in Warsaw and worked in deprived rural and urban communities. The greatest toll on the health of her patients was tuberculosis… for many, including children and young adults, a death sentence. In 1943, five years after she wrote this diary, she was to die in Warsaw, in a shootout with the Gestapo at her clandestine underground radio station. Dr Monika Blackwell grew up having read the diary as a child. She qualified in medicine in London and worked as an army doctor dealing with bullet wounds and trauma, then, like her grandmother before her, she took up general practice. In the last eighteen months she has continued treating patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. The stories are fascinating and the insights illuminating.