Making a story out of a bad personal experience
I make a very bad patient. I tend to ignore everything about my own body, the very things
I ask others to seek immediate help for. Last Saturday, my operation wound swelled up
and turned red, but I ignored it because I thought it was part of the normal healing process.
Today, I have an really huge abscess that is suppurating out of 3 holes in my wound. No
wonder it couldn't heal.
The doctor today: "Why didn't come as soon as you knew it was red and tender?"
Me (sheepishly): "I thought it was part of the normal healing process. You see, I've never had
surgery before.
Doctor: "You've forgotten everything you learnt in medical school. Go look up your anatomy
again.
So as it is, I have an infected wound abscess compounded on my facial nerve problem. I think I was so focused on the facial nerve problem (I can't close my right eye or smile on my right side and I have to sleep with an eye pad on), wondering when it would get better the way everyone said it would (Dr said 2 weeks, most patients say 3 - 6 months) that I forgot everything I knew about wound healing.
Sigh.
So, I'm thinking of making this experience the first chapter of a new book (already commissioned after I finish a couple of projects) called "So, you want to be a doctor." This one is targeted at everyone who's curious to know what's it like to go through medical school (in this country) and to work as a doctor in a government hospital. Yes, it's a humorous collection of hospital anecdotes.
I even know how to end this first chapter. "I only wish I had gone through all this before I became a doctor because it would have made me a better and more compassionate one."
So, if you have had a bad personal experience, you can store it, internalize it and then write about it the way actors are asked to reproduce an emotional moment by reminiscing about something they have been through. You also have to disassociate from it a
little.
Then again, I'm getting an itch to write about strange beings that come out of suppurating abscesses to invade the world.
6 comments:
Gee Lynette, I didn't noticed anything wrong with your face when I was close up and personal with you the other day. What actually happened? Ya, you should write about this in your new book. Shall we call it, "All the Dramas and the Traumas"?! heeheheheh
When I saw you, Ilene, that was 2 days before the surgery. After that....splat :)
Xeus, now didn't I hear someone say that doctors make the worst patients :) Seriously though I hope you'll recover quickly. No wonder it's so quiet around here. Write a story about it for DC 2. Take care.
Thanks Lydia. When is your next press appearance? You're gonna get really famous soon. BTW MPH 1 Utama ordered 60 copies of your book, 10 more than they did mine at first order :) But it still wasn't there last time I checked.
Xeus, wah, you've still got time to check out the bookstores in your condition? You're one resilient woman. Even I didn't know about the One-U order. Now the book's out in the stores already. I'm supposed to be out in Feb issue of Cleo. Yesterday The Sun featured my book launch in The Reading Room. Famous ah, cannot beat both the Yvonnes :)
Can still walk, Lydia. Now's the time to capitalise on the most sales, while the book's still hot. Don't forget to ask for good space with all the bookstores, yes? But being a MPH book, I'm sure they will give it good frontage.
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