Medical books have been ruined for me.

I get the feeling that Paul Austin's book Something for the Pain: One Doctor's Account of Life and Death in the ER is actually a pretty good book. I won't be able to tell for sure, though, because I'm not going to be able to read it.

Ever since I was in the hospital last year (and that was for a scheduled surgery; not an emergency room situation) I find that anything on medical subjects has been ruined for me. I can't watch Scrubs on TV any more; commercials for ER cause nearly instantaneous nausea; just the thought of typing "webmd.com" into the Internet makes my hands start shaking. Likewise, I can no longer read books on medical subjects. This is a shame, because I used to like books like Atul Gawande's Complications Pauline Chen's Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality, and Richard Selzer's Down from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age. I have read all of Robin Cook's medical thrillers and loved them; I was never really a squeamish reader. But now? All I have to read is Austin's intro:

"Thirty minutes later, the CT technician wheeled Ms. Lowery back to her cubicle, and then walked over to the nursing station. The technician sat down next to me, and pulled her chair close. 'She's got a mass this big,' she whispered, forming a circle with her thumb and middle finger. 'It's the size of a golf ball. The radiologist's going to call you in a minute with the formal report, but the mass is pretty obvious.'

The radiologist called. I spoke with Dr. Davis, the neurosurgeon on call. He asked a few questions, and said he'd be right in. I was glad I'd be turning Ms. Lowery's care over to him. Some of the on-call doctors try to dodge admissions. They look for reasons that I should send the patient home or to another hospital--anything to keep from having to come in and deal with the admission...

I sat in the dictation booth, not looking forward to telling Ms. Lowery she had a brain tumor. But the sooner I talked with her, the sooner I could go home." (pp. 19-20.)

And...we're done here. I did read a little bit more; it's a memoir of how Austin became a doctor and how his work in the emergency room has affected him--and it is actually very good stuff. But I just can't do it. The frailty of the human body, the knowledge that any of us can go from having a headache to having a brain mass overnight, is something that I don't want to read about. Maybe someday I'll come back for it. But most likely not.

Comments

[The Laundress]

Hang in there, Citizen Reader. You survived your medical ordeal and now onward and upward! It will just keep getting sillier and better (or more absurd) -- until suddenly you are immune from it all!

There is some surreal popular film that I have totally repressed but it had vaguely to do with New Urbanism (a Jim Carey-type guy discovers his whole life was secretly a reality television show) and gave me the shivers when I first viewed it.* (see? now I can't for the life of me recall title or key actors).

Like that film, maybe they will just request that Ms. Lowery come back for annual MRIs, until nobody can remember WHY.

*uh, thanks to Google, rediscovered that the title is The Truman Show and the Jim Careyish actor is Jim Carey.

Hugs and kisses and here is to a better reality (medical and otherwise)

Love,
tl

[Citizen Reader]

Thanks Laundress,
I am very much hoping to someday be back to normal and to have all this fade into surreal; thank you for the hope for a better reality. Here's hoping you and yours can trim the visits back to annually and then even farther apart! And yes: let's hope for the best for Ms. Lowery as well.

I enjoyed "The Truman Show," but not quite as much as "The Cable Guy," I'll admit. Have you seen that one? Definitely not for the kiddies but darkly fascinating--and strangely better after a couple of viewings.

[The Laundress]

I haven't seen The Cable Guy. But when uh, the cable guy, came to fix our cable, Hansi-boy was exclaiming, "Oh, you are The Cable Guy!" and the 19-year-old cable dewd was terribly pleased. Nothing like pop culture recognition! Will check it out (on dvd, after "bedtime" for kids, critters and the husband, of course!) Thanks for the tip(s).