A Secret Vice

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I have come to realize that, in lieu of overwrought sex scenes, my writing vice is overwrought medical scenes.* Which makes some sense when I write Doctors! sci-fi, but it’s probably a bit harder to justify in an old-timey Standard Fantasyland.

I apologize for nothing, though. For one thing, it’s got the extremely fun side effect of letting me cruise through medical databases with complete fascination. Dang, I love the internet.


*And either of these scenes immediately invalidates an author’s claim that their characters are like their children. If I had to name two of the things at the very top of my—and, I’m guessing, everyone else’s—list of Things Parents Should Not Inflict Upon Their Children, I would come up with sex and traumatic injuries.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I kinda like EMedicine's database for Actual Doctors. I prefer doctor ones to the patronizing ones written for patients, since most of them wind up saying "Get to a doctor" right when it's about to get interesting.

I've also got a ridiculous book about trauma for writers by a doctor who fancies himself a writer, which is more entertainment value than real help. He tries to make it legitimately For Writers by adding in advice about how you could use what he's telling you to make interesting characters, but the advice falls pretty flat. He'd be a terrible writer. I was a bit bummed out that it doesn't go into more detail, but it does have a great illustrtion of how a bullet can ricochet through a body. I'd be surprised if that illustration hadn't shown up as a CSI graphic at some point.

What about your own databases?

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

I typed in EMedicine and it brought up Medscape Reference, which I have used a fair amount. Yes, I prefer doctor ones, too. The patient ones are not only patronizing, but dumbed down a lot. Yes, I know 'there are treatments available', I want to know what the treatments are and what the side effects of the treatments are etc. For instance, I had a hell of a time finding out what actually *happens* to a person who gets a renal transplant. Yes, I know 'You will feel improvement'. Kinda figured that out.

I don't really have any databases; when I want something I have to really search. Occasionally I'll go wander through the archive of The New England Journal and look at the case history things. Those are fun. News.Medicalnet is sometimes interesting. The problem is, most sites want you to either pay to get in or be a doctor- or both. Poo.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Emedicine/Medscape recently got awesome, though I really don't know what the whole story is. I did register at their site and just put "Other" when it asked what my medical occupation was. I AM A WRITER, DAMMIT. THIS IS RESEARCH.

I suppose the sites for patients always go back around to "ask a doctor" for legal reasons, but they sure don't seem to trust anyone without a medical degree to even know which end of their body is supposed to point up. The doctor sites share the same view of patients, too--the "patient education" sections are always rather hilarious. (You can sense a vast background of experience there dealing with total morons. "Well, the fishook in my eye wasn't coming out when I yanked it, so I put some bacon grease on it to loosen it a little, but that still didn't work so I set fire to it ...") But me, I really want to know more than "your doctor will give you a shot to make it all better, and then you can have a lollipop."

By the way, you may also enjoy Gene Weingarten's The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. It's not exactly a professional medical reference, but it is a tour de force of all the fascinatingly horribly crazy shit that can happen to your body, and it is also bloody hilarious. (Weingarten is a newspaper editor, and his claim to expertise in this book is that he is the world's lead practicing hypochondriac.) Not much help for writer, either, but by god if you're an armchair medical geek it's great.