Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome:  Written during my residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. https://www.oooojournal.net/article/0030-4220(86)90197-0/abstract 

 

About DOUBLE BLIND 

In the spring of 1985, I was in the home stretch of a four-year hospital residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery, assigned to a one-month rotation at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Florida. During the day, I scrubbed in to observe surgery by one of the pioneers in jaw reconstruction. At night, I treated facial trauma patients in what was the fourth busiest ER in the country at the time. Even for a fit thirty-one-year-old, the days were long and taxing, yet highly educational and worthwhile. My wife, our infant son, and I stayed in Lauderdale Lakes with my grandmother, and I borrowed her car to commute to Miami. One night, I was returning home at about 1 a.m. when I heard music on the radio that was so beautiful I wept. I parked at a pay phone, and dialed the radio station to ask what the song was. The DJ told me it was “Dreams of Children” by Shadowfax: (G. E. Stinson, Chuck Greenberg, Phil Maggini, Stuart Nevitt, Jamii Szmadzinski, David C. Lewis, et al), and Greenshadow Music.

I bought the album (vinyl, really). Listening to the songs, I created the storyline and developed characters, which ultimately became Double Blind. Originally, it was a screenplay (see if you can tell what songs correspond to which scenes in the story). However, on the advice of a professional, as well as my local writer’s group, I began an extended study of novel writing.

Though it is informed by my experiences as a resident in a Philadelphia teaching hospital, it’s important to note that I had never encountered any dishonesty concerning clinical trials. They are vital to the evolution of medicine. Historically, such things have happened at some time, in some institutions (see: “The Price of Deception: How a Duke Patient was Harmed in Potti’s Fraudulent Trials”, The Cancer Letter, May 22, 2015). However, I am not aware of any such occurrences at my alma mater. Personality clashes and petty politics certainly, but never fraud.

Herein, I thank the people and organizations along the way who helped me through encouragement, education, and feedback:
Various courses like Robert McKee’s STORY and many from groups such as Writer’s Digest and International Thriller Writers; North Carolina Writers Network and its subsidiary Neuse River Writers; the several critique groups I’ve had the pleasure to participate in (looking at you, Tau Thrillertique Group); writers, editors, and countless others sharing their wealth of knowledge at meetings and on the web; my editors, Betsy Thorpe (Betsy Thorpe Literary Services) and Kristin McTiernan (The Nonsense-Free Editor); my first writer-critique group, who grew into dear friends Elisabete Doggett, Mary Eberwein (RIP), and Kathleen Schmieder (RIP). Lastly, and definitely not least, my muse, my soul, my wife, May Rachel Markoff, R.N.

I’ve hesitated to publish this because I didn’t want to do for clinical trials what Jaws did for shore community businesses. Like Jaws, this story is fictional—very fictional—with a factual basis. Certainly, many doctors, other medical personnel, and patients reading this will say, “That’s not how this is done in my institution,” or, “It hasn’t been done that way in decades.” Like I said, fictional. Yet herein lie core ideas that sadly never seem to change: Hospital hierarchies and petty rivalries do little to benefit patient care. Too often, hospital corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies—a trinity I refer to as the medical-industrial complex—profit on one side while the patients and their families suffer on the other. It’s little wonder that the healthcare professionals, their early idealism worn down by the system, risk high rates of apathy, depression, drug dependence, divorce, and, sadly, suicide.

Today, the medical-industrial complex casts an imposing shadow like Goliath in the Valley of Elah, more than willing and able to crush those who are noncompliant. And into that same valley we find our unassuming, reluctant, and extremely unique ‘David’, or in this case, Michael David Morse, M.D.

 

 

“Three more months. Dr. Michael Morse only has to survive three more months of residency until he becomes a full-fledged internist. Not that modern medicine’s everything he’d imagined. You know, patients before prestige, pride, or profit. All he has to do is keep his head down and mouth shut.

Then there’s his terrible sense of loss. And guilt. Will he even last three more months?

As if it’s not enough, God, the universe, or whoever must have laughed when sticking him with an ability to see people’s cancers. Well, maybe he could steer patients’ treatments, quietly, subtly, under the hospital’s radar. A big maybe. But…THREE MORE MONTHS.

As his ability grows, it puts him in the crosshairs of the shady chief of oncology, risking his future, his freedom, and even his life.

What does one do to save others? How far does one go?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome:  Written during my residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. https://www.oooojournal.net/article/0030-4220(86)90197-0/abstract 

 

About DOUBLE BLIND 

In the spring of 1985, I was in the home stretch of a four-year hospital residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery, assigned to a one-month rotation at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Florida. During the day, I scrubbed in to observe surgery by one of the pioneers in jaw reconstruction. At night, I treated facial trauma patients in what was the fourth busiest ER in the country at the time. Even for a fit thirty-one-year-old, the days were long and taxing, yet highly educational and worthwhile. My wife, our infant son, and I stayed in Lauderdale Lakes with my grandmother, and I borrowed her car to commute to Miami. One night, I was returning home at about 1 a.m. when I heard music on the radio that was so beautiful I wept. I parked at a pay phone, and dialed the radio station to ask what the song was. The DJ told me it was “Dreams of Children” by Shadowfax: (G. E. Stinson, Chuck Greenberg, Phil Maggini, Stuart Nevitt, Jamii Szmadzinski, David C. Lewis, et al), and Greenshadow Music.

I bought the album (vinyl, really). Listening to the songs, I created the storyline and developed characters, which ultimately became Double Blind. Originally, it was a screenplay (see if you can tell what songs correspond to which scenes in the story). However, on the advice of a professional, as well as my local writer’s group, I began an extended study of novel writing.

Though it is informed by my experiences as a resident in a Philadelphia teaching hospital, it’s important to note that I had never encountered any dishonesty concerning clinical trials. They are vital to the evolution of medicine. Historically, such things have happened at some time, in some institutions (see: “The Price of Deception: How a Duke Patient was Harmed in Potti’s Fraudulent Trials”, The Cancer Letter, May 22, 2015). However, I am not aware of any such occurrences at my alma mater. Personality clashes and petty politics certainly, but never fraud.

Herein, I thank the people and organizations along the way who helped me through encouragement, education, and feedback:
Various courses like Robert McKee’s STORY and many from groups such as Writer’s Digest and International Thriller Writers; North Carolina Writers Network and its subsidiary Neuse River Writers; the several critique groups I’ve had the pleasure to participate in (looking at you, Tau Thrillertique Group); writers, editors, and countless others sharing their wealth of knowledge at meetings and on the web; my editors, Betsy Thorpe (Betsy Thorpe Literary Services) and Kristin McTiernan (The Nonsense-Free Editor); my first writer-critique group, who grew into dear friends Elisabete Doggett, Mary Eberwein (RIP), and Kathleen Schmieder (RIP). Lastly, and definitely not least, my muse, my soul, my wife, May Rachel Markoff, R.N.

I’ve hesitated to publish this because I didn’t want to do for clinical trials what Jaws did for shore community businesses. Like Jaws, this story is fictional—very fictional—with a factual basis. Certainly, many doctors, other medical personnel, and patients reading this will say, “That’s not how this is done in my institution,” or, “It hasn’t been done that way in decades.” Like I said, fictional. Yet herein lie core ideas that sadly never seem to change: Hospital hierarchies and petty rivalries do little to benefit patient care. Too often, hospital corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies—a trinity I refer to as the medical-industrial complex—profit on one side while the patients and their families suffer on the other. It’s little wonder that the healthcare professionals, their early idealism worn down by the system, risk high rates of apathy, depression, drug dependence, divorce, and, sadly, suicide.

Today, the medical-industrial complex casts an imposing shadow like Goliath in the Valley of Elah, more than willing and able to crush those whom are noncompliant. And into that same valley we find our unassuming, reluctant, and extremely unique ‘David’, or in this case, Michael David Morse, M.D.