Category: Writing

Scalpels to Stage Plays: Autopsies, Case Studies, and Blogging Adventures

Long ago I lost count of the number of blogs I have posted in the last nine years. My best estimate would be that it has been about 700 times that I have asked you to spend a few moments with me. But before I became a blogger, writing for pleasure (mine, if not yours,) I wrote a few articles published in medical journals–not enough articles for me to be considered an academic, but enough to have multiple mentions in Index Medicus, the Yellow Pages of medical articles in reputable journals.

What was I writing about? Much like my current blogs, every scientific paper was different from the last, with a different focus and frequently intended for a different audience. My earliest papers were predominantly case studies, reporting interesting and/or previously undescribed phenomena I encountered while doing my first 100 autopsies as a pathology resident. One of the papers integrated in-utero radiographic findings with autopsy findings in a condition known as polysplenia1. A second case 2 involved detective work à la Quincy, as a colleague and I traced a patient’s history to determine the source of a triangular portion of plastic in their stomach that had caused fatal blood loss. Our investigation and publication earned us our hospital’s Resident Research of the Year award–scant consolation to the family of the deceased.

While still in my residency, my next published paper dealt with the use of frozen sections on needle biopsies of the breast for the diagnosis of breast cancer 3. My paper, based on a series of cases at my hospital, took a position against this practice. This was significant in an era when a malignant diagnosis on a frozen section of a breast biopsy was frequently followed by a modified radical mastectomy. After the paper’s publication a nationally known pathologist asked me to contribute a chapter to his forthcoming book on breast pathology. In a major career faux pas, I passed on the opportunity.

As my residency closed, I was asked to contribute a thought piece to another national journal, discussing the future of pathology 4. 45 years later I don’t remember what I saw in my crystal ball, although I know I failed to predict the world of genomics, digitization, and artificial intelligence, all of which have revolutionized pathology.

Once in my career as a community hospital jack-of-all-trades pathologist, my paper writing tapered off significantly. A short piece on urine cultures 5 (fun stuff) was followed many years later by a detailed description of a simple inking technique to prevent mix-ups of biopsy specimens in the lab 6. Significant in its time, that method is now out-moded with the easy availability of bar-coding and DNA analysis to confirm specimen identity.

Throughout my career, the laboratory data I have provided has been used in countless conference presentations, abstracts, and journal publications. While my name appears on many of those, I don’t feel much personal connection with them. My hands weren’t on the keyboard or posterboard.

In retirement, my medical writing days are past–almost. My as-yet-unproduced play does have a medical aspect. As the saying goes, write what you know, and know what you write. So far, it has worked for me.

For those of you who are curious:

  • 1 Arch Pathol Lab Med. 107:202-203, 1983
  • 2 Southern Medical Journal. 74:900-901, 1981
  • 3 Breast. 8:11-13, 1982
  • 4 Pathologist. 37:1983
  • 5 Laboratory Medicine.1985
  • 6 Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2009;133:295-297

From Pixels To Print: A Revelation

My writing is ethereal. I don’t mean heavenly, I mean that instead of existing in reality, it exists on laptops and flat-screen monitors, Google phones and iPads. Pixels on screens bringing my words to you. So it has been, and so it continues to be.

Until now. Responding to some requests, I have emailed the text of my (as of yet unproduced) play to friends and relatives. I send the copies as PDFs, with the assumption that those kind enough to read the play will peruse it on whatever screen is at the nearest at whatever time is convenient.

But one friend pushed that little print icon on her screen (intentionally, I hope) and was soon swamped by 90 pages of my words, or rather the words of the half-dozen characters in my prison-life drama. She read and enjoyed and told me so.

I wasn’t home when she brought the pages to our house yesterday, so she left them with a request that I sign the cover page and return it to her. And I plan to do that. But not until I have spent time enjoying the pleasure of seeing my work in print.

I know I could have printed a copy at any time, just as I could have printed out any of my blogs. But I never have. I never saw the need to. But now seeing my work in print–even in this informal copy–changes my outlook on the play and on myself. It compares to when I was introduced to someone in the neighborhood and she said “I know your name, you’re the writer.”

If I can get this far I can go further. It may be with the current play, it may be with something else that I choose to write, or publish, or produce. I’ve got lots of time ahead of me, and a keyboard that calls to me.

And this time around, I may use the printer, too!

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From Critic to Critiqued: A Long Plays Journey Out Of Sight

As a connoisseur of critical reviews, I savor media critics who dare to slice and dice a popular restaurant, give a “thumbs down” to a blockbuster movie, or advise us to tune out the latest Walking Dead sequel. More than 10 years after it was published I still relish Pete Wells’s New York Times bloody evisceration of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, Guy Fieri’s Times Square outpost.

But now the glistening kitchen knife is pointed my way. My schadenfreude has been repaid with a critique of my first, unpublished, play, White Collar. The post-mortem.

Writing a full-length theater piece has been simultaneously challenging and exhilarating. Under the tutelage of my dramaturge, the work underwent seventeen revisions. It expanded and contracted like Weird Al’s accordion, going from one act to an act-and-a-half, back down to one, and finally a full two acts with a prologue and epilogue tossed in for good measure. Characters were added, subtracted, and redefined, while scenes were melded together using (almost) seamless segues. Only the final twist remained unmanipulated.

When the manuscript reached the ideal number of 90 pages, my dramaturge scrubbed out the obvious gaffes and cliches and submitted the work to his friend, a local theater producer. The producer didn’t like the play. At all.

In a very detailed email, he explained why. He saw dramatic inconsistencies, stilted dialogue, and characters who added nothing and had no arc. If the prologue was bad, the epilogue was worse. And too many witty retorts.

I could quibble with a few of his thoughts and comments–I could quibble with more than a few. But I will take this as a positive learning experience. I normally express myself in 500-word blogs, so completing a work of this length was immensely satisfying, even if it is nowhere near professional quality.

My next step? My cognoscenti included some suggestions. He even tossed in a compliment or two. I may use that insight to tear the play down and rebuild it in a few new ways—versions 18 through 30. But on my honor, no more witty retorts.

And from now on, Guy Fieri, I stand with you!

photo by phot.ai