As I listened to the dulcet tones of Muriel Murch talking about her knee surgery, I looked down at my shoeless right foot on the floor. Its second toe, next to the big one, has become increasingly painful for the past few days. I’ve suspected gout.

Be that as it may, Murch’s characteristically vivid, detailed description of what happened to her strained left knee, which all but incapacitated her, will restore any listener’s faith in our labyrinthine medical system. The fact that Murch was once a nurse adds credibility to her account. Murch is certainly no Polyanna, but nowhere—not in any of her radio pieces—will you find her beweeping her outcast state, or, to crib further from Shakespeare, looking upon herself and cursing her fate.

Instead, she keeps her eyes and ears wide open for gritty particulars in her essays. In “The Other Side of the Bed” the result is a terse portrait of herself as “an ‘old’ nurse, longtime wife and mother of four.” Or she gives us her thumbnail sketch of people who work in a doctor's office: “The two receptionists behind the glass counter were unflappable, rolling back and forth on their chairs as they moved us through their system.” Or else, inside what could be a nightmarish operating room, she comes up with a human being: “An OR scrub nurse hung out on the railing of my gurney. She brought calm, comfort and connection. We shared the same birthday making us both feisty.”

For my British Pounds Sterling, Murch’s prose is top-drawer. I’m interested in whatever she reports on, precisely because she makes me interested in the offbeat Ps and Qs of her experience.

After listening to this piece, I may well make an appointment to see my doctor about my toe tomorrow.