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medical conversations
When I lived in Ann Arbor, I had a good friend who happened to be a physician who specialized in infectious disease. Her husband was a surgeon. He was also an avid hunter and trapper. These were great friends to have while I was writing Into the Wilderness.
Me: Jim, I need to shoot somebody with a rifle. He's in the bush. Here's the thing: he's got to survive, and without immediate medical attention.
Jim: Shoot him in the buttock.
Me: Jim, this is the good guy. His dignity has to remain intact.
Jim: Okay, go for a lung shot then. Right lung, about here. (Finger prod) That will avoid all major organs. If he's in good shape and the rifle isn't loaded for bear, he's got a decent chance.
Thus was Nathaniel's injury conceived.
I've fallen out of touch with these friends, but I have other medical consultants. It seems doctors (at least, the ones I know) are happy to talk about fictional diseases and injuries. I'm guessing it's more fun to be cornered at a party to talk about a fictional patient that it is to be cornered by the friend of a friend with an odd wart.
My Neighbor Bob and his wife Sheila had a party on Saturday, and at that party were my doctor and her husband, also a doctor. These are people I know outside of their professional capacities. Meg is a great person to talk to about books and kids and almost anything, and so I zeroed right in on the two of them to corral them into a fictional consultation.
Me: I've got to kill somebody.
Dick: (eyes lighting up) Need some ideas?
Me: Always. But this particular time, I know approximately what kills the guy.
Meg and Dick lower their heads to listen. My mother-in-law, who is also a physician, gets this look on her face whenever you ask her a medical question. The professional, serious look. In her case there's a sound that goes along with it. You give her a symptom, she makes a low, confirming, supportive sound in her throat. The sounds says: I'm listening. I'm not giving anything away. Go on.
So Meg and Dick* are listening. I tell them I need to kill off a healthy, active 30 year old. What can I give him that will put him on the heart transplant list? He needs to die waiting for a transplant. At home.
An interesting discussion follows, in which many words of six or more syllables are bandied about. Meg and Dick consult, and offer me cardiomyopathy following from viral myocarditis.
This is just what I need, I tell them. Or rather, it's just what the character needs. Poor guy.
Meg and Dick promise me a list of medications and symptoms, but of course I have to do some of this work myself. I settle down with Google. The most common infectious agents for myocarditis are:
• Viral (e.g., Coxsackie virus)
• Poliomyelitis
• Diphtheria
• Toxoplasmosis
• Trichinosis
• Trypanosomiasis
• Acute rheumatic fever
At this point I remember NYPD Blue, and the way the writers killed off Bobby Simone with viral cardiomyopathy. A quick google brings up the four stages of heart failure, and I remember Bobby going through all of them. I remember my father going through them too, because he died of congenital heart failure.
But this is research that has to be done. I push ahead on google. An hour later I'm in a vague sweat and I'm having some trouble breathing. Did I mention that heart failure was what killed my father and six of his brothers and sisters? If this weren't the perfect way to knock the character off, I'd be backpedaling by now. In fact, I do backpedal, in a way. I look up hypochondria. I look up cyberchrondria:
Hypochondria, the excessive fear of illness, has now been overtaken by cyberchondria—the same fear made much worse, fuelled by volumes of easily-accessible material available on the Internet.Such are the dangers of researching fictional death. You are forced to look at the possibility of your own. You also spend hours and find that at the end of them, in addition to higher blood pressure and a racing pulse, you've got a blank manuscript page. It's the curse of an active imagination, and a fast internet connection.
[Daily Record, May 2001]
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*I was sure that I had posted on the story of the bat, the husband-without-a-bicycle-helmet, Dick, and the rabies shots, but a search brings up nothing. Sometime I will have to tell that story here.
September 19, 2005 01:58 PM
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Comments
Would make me want to look up "how to write a legal will." But I'm a cyberchondriac, as well as a hypocardriac. That's where I think every new or strange sound my car makes is a symptom of a much worse and developing mechanical problem. Strange when you know that I work for the auto club. Something about availability of info and awareness of what can go wrong being a dangerous mix.
Posted by: Pam at September 19, 2005 05:21 PM
In my experience, researching on the net is like looking up a word in the dictionary. 3 hours later you realise it's 3 hours since you went to look something up (and you did), but now you can't for the life of you remember what it was because some other peripheral thing caught your eye, which led to some other thing catching your eye and I'm sure you know the rest.
Bat story please. Soon.
Posted by: Alison at September 19, 2005 06:44 PM
I think the bat story is in the comments on one of the posts where we were discussing how Nicholas Wilde's wife died in Fire Along the Sky. One with questions from someone about hidden themes in your work... maybe three weeks ago?
Posted by: Rachel at September 19, 2005 09:12 PM
Ooh, today's discovery via Cassandra: a Real Doctor comments on TV medicine (and comic book medicine, and... so on)
Posted by: robyn at September 21, 2005 06:39 AM