{"id":228348,"date":"2026-01-05T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/228348\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T10:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T10:30:09","slug":"palliative-care-consultant-rachel-clarke-you-dont-lose-your-sense-of-humour-just-because-youre-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/228348\/","title":{"rendered":"Palliative care consultant Rachel Clarke: You don\u2019t lose your sense of humour just because you\u2019re dying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nJust saying\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Rachel Clarke has been a doctor for 15 years. Photo: David Levenson\/Getty\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SF Rachel Clarke 3.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Rachel Clarke has been a doctor for 15 years. Photo: David Levenson\/Getty<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and former television journalist. \u2018The Story of a Heart\u2019, the story of a heart transplant between two children, Keira and Max, was the winner of 2025\u2019s Women\u2019s Prize for non-fiction. Her memoir \u2018Breathtaking\u2019 was adapted into a TV series for ITV. She has two children. <\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I was one of those kids who loved science and art at school. I also had a dad who was a doctor, a mum who was a nurse. It wasn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t want to do medicine, it\u2019s just that I almost felt pushed into it, by school mainly, and what I really loved as a kid was writing. I loved being a journalist in many ways, loved the contact with people, and the creativity involved in making films, but really struggled with the toughness required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just saying Rachel Clarke has been a doctor for 15 years. Photo: David Levenson\/Getty Dr Rachel Clarke is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6992],"class_list":["post-228348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-people-culture-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}