John Benedict's Blog
February 22, 2019
MY GUEST BLOG from Murder is Everywhere International Crime writer's Blog
A View From Behind the Ether Screen
One day it struck me—at 2:00 am in the morning in the midst of another grueling 24-hour shift. I had just finished interviewing a nice lady with an appendix about to burst—we’ll call her Linda. I had done my best not to yawn as I went through the routine questions that an anesthesiologist is obliged to ask. She appeared nervous, which soon gave way to tears. I did my best to comfort her, took her hand, told her I would take good care of her. That I would watch over her carefully in the operating room and see her through surgery. And be there when she woke up in the recovery room. She appeared to calm down a bit. I wrapped up my pre-op assessment and asked her to sign the anesthesia consent form, while assuring her the risks would be minimal. She raised her eyebrows at this; the fearful look returned. I wondered: What the hell does minimal mean when you’re talking about life and death? More tears. She told me of her two young daughters at home that desperately needed a mommy. I felt my own throat tighten. I quickly buried my emotions, tried not to think about my wife and three sons, and focused on the task at hand as we wheeled her litter back down the hall to the OR.
After Linda, sans rotten appendix, was safely tucked in the recovery room, operation a success, anesthetic uncomplicated, I lay down in the call room to try to catch a couple of z’s before the beeper would summon me to the next emergency. My mind wandered as I lay there. Rarely, I thought, does a person willingly surrender control of their mind and body to a virtual stranger. Yet, this is exactly what happens when the person is a patient being wheeled in for surgery and the stranger is their anesthesiologist, whom they have just met minutes beforehand. Talk about an extraordinary amount of trust. This degree of trust made a distinct impression on me that night, some twenty years ago.
Now I know that this is a crime writers’ blog, not a medical one—and I promise there’s a tie-in here somewhere. Later that same night, my twisted brain (probably amped up on too much caffeine) came around to this: What if the trust Linda had exhibited earlier was ill-conceived and her doctor was actually bad? Not just incompetent or sleepy, but downright evil. I thought this chilling concept would make for a good story--I read a lot of thrillers. Too bad I wasn’t a writer, though. (Disclaimer time: I don’t want to scare people here. All the docs I have known in my 30 years of medical practice are highly competent professional people, who would never purposely hurt anyone.) But I still couldn’t shake the evil concept; it kept gnawing at me until eventually I had to put it down on paper—lack of writing experience be damned. So Adrenaline was birthed, my first medical thriller novel that explores this issue of absolute trust implicit in the anesthesiologist-patient relationship—specifically, what happens when that trust is abused and replaced by fear. Adrenaline was finally published twelve years after my encounter with Linda.
One final note about Adrenaline: As well as telling a scary tale of murder in the OR, I also wanted to tell the story from the anesthesiologist’s perspective, something I had never seen done. I wanted to give readers a taste of what really goes on in the operating room, the human drama inherent in this high-stress, high stakes environment where lives are saved and sometimes regrettably lost. Finally, I wanted to try to describe what it’s like to hold someone’s life in your hands, while providing an illuminating glimpse into the fascinating, but poorly understood realm of anesthesia.
OK, if you made it this far, I’m impressed! If you’re dozing off, well don’t be surprised. It’s what I do—remember?--put people to sleep. What follows next is the genesis behind my second medical thriller, The Edge of Death (the sequel to Adrenaline).
As a physician, I have always been intrigued with the definition of life and death, the boundaries that exist between them and the multitude of end-of-life scenarios that we all will face at some point. As an anesthesiologist, I feel I am even more intimately familiar with the fine line between life and death. In fact, each time I put one of my patients to sleep, I purposely take them down to the edge of death and then bring them back. This is what we do, for this is the very essence of anesthesia. Think about it. When you’re anesthetized, you’re not just “asleep”, enjoying a peaceful repose like you would in your own bed at night. Far from it. You’re deeply unconscious to the point that someone can slice you open with a knife and you don’t feel it or wake up. Someone is usually breathing for you. You’re not that far from being dead. Now that’s a deep sleep. (Disclaimer #2: Again, I’m not trying to scare anyone here in real life. In the hands of a competent anesthesiologist, this type of sleep, routinely induced tens of thousands of times a day across the US, is very, very safe. People typically face a larger risk driving to the hospital than in the OR.) So it’s no surprise really that several years ago while journal reading, one particular article jumped out at me.
The researchers, who were exploring cutting edge techniques in resuscitation medicine, noted that in patients who were newly declared dead, they could still demonstrate under the microscope, the presence of viable cells in various organs—sometimes even hours after death! So, cardiac muscle cells were seen to be alive, hours after death. This was a staggering revelation to me, especially since it represented real science—not the realm of fiction.
One would think that with advancing technology and the increasing sophistication of our monitors, etc., that the definition of death would have become more and more precise in the modern era. One would be wrong. In fact, the situation is less clear-cut than ever. Fifty years ago, it was simple. When your heart stopped beating, you were pronounced dead. Period. Nowadays, it’s not so simple. Witness the poor folks kept alive on breathing machines and drug infusions in the ICU. Witness the legal battles surrounding these patients as family members, doctors and lawyers wrangle over if they are really dead. They have no brain wave activity (even the definition of brain wave ‘activity’ is controversial and constantly changing with newer electronic monitors), so they’re pronounced brain dead and life saving support may now be legally withdrawn. The heart’s still beating just fine and the liver and kidneys continue to function normally. In fact, these organs are in such fine shape that they are routinely transplanted from the “dead” patient into a living patient. One wonders through all of this, where does the soul reside, assuming you believe in such a thing? In the brain? Or perhaps the heart? Or one of any number of other organs? Or is it spread out over the entire body? Does anyone actually know?
So, in light of this journal article and in the face of advancing technology, I wondered: If the definition of death is so muddled, when does the soul know it’s time to flee the body? What is the specific triggering mechanism? Brain death? Heart death? Liver death, etc? Taking it one step further, what happens to the body if it is resuscitated after the soul has left?
The Edge of Death flowed directly from these questions. The story explores what happens when the normal end-of life-scenario intersects with advances in state-of-the-art, hi-tech medical resuscitation science. In the story, Nick Chandler, a patient with a fatal viral myocarditis, hovering on the edge of death, is miraculously revived in Dr. Mueller’s experimental lab. However, in addition to losing his soul, Chandler undergoes a chilling metamorphosis into a man of superhuman strength, supernatural prescience and absolutely no remorse. The Edge of Death represents a departure from straight medical thriller fiction; it is a darker, spookier tale with supernatural overtones that is nevertheless told from an authentic medical perspective—something new and unique. It stretches the genre a bit, but hopefully, readers will find it as compelling as I found it to write. Just don’t read either of these stories the night before surgery!
John Benedict
http://johnbenedictmd.com
For the original Blogpost with cool pictures, go to:
http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.co...
One day it struck me—at 2:00 am in the morning in the midst of another grueling 24-hour shift. I had just finished interviewing a nice lady with an appendix about to burst—we’ll call her Linda. I had done my best not to yawn as I went through the routine questions that an anesthesiologist is obliged to ask. She appeared nervous, which soon gave way to tears. I did my best to comfort her, took her hand, told her I would take good care of her. That I would watch over her carefully in the operating room and see her through surgery. And be there when she woke up in the recovery room. She appeared to calm down a bit. I wrapped up my pre-op assessment and asked her to sign the anesthesia consent form, while assuring her the risks would be minimal. She raised her eyebrows at this; the fearful look returned. I wondered: What the hell does minimal mean when you’re talking about life and death? More tears. She told me of her two young daughters at home that desperately needed a mommy. I felt my own throat tighten. I quickly buried my emotions, tried not to think about my wife and three sons, and focused on the task at hand as we wheeled her litter back down the hall to the OR.
After Linda, sans rotten appendix, was safely tucked in the recovery room, operation a success, anesthetic uncomplicated, I lay down in the call room to try to catch a couple of z’s before the beeper would summon me to the next emergency. My mind wandered as I lay there. Rarely, I thought, does a person willingly surrender control of their mind and body to a virtual stranger. Yet, this is exactly what happens when the person is a patient being wheeled in for surgery and the stranger is their anesthesiologist, whom they have just met minutes beforehand. Talk about an extraordinary amount of trust. This degree of trust made a distinct impression on me that night, some twenty years ago.
Now I know that this is a crime writers’ blog, not a medical one—and I promise there’s a tie-in here somewhere. Later that same night, my twisted brain (probably amped up on too much caffeine) came around to this: What if the trust Linda had exhibited earlier was ill-conceived and her doctor was actually bad? Not just incompetent or sleepy, but downright evil. I thought this chilling concept would make for a good story--I read a lot of thrillers. Too bad I wasn’t a writer, though. (Disclaimer time: I don’t want to scare people here. All the docs I have known in my 30 years of medical practice are highly competent professional people, who would never purposely hurt anyone.) But I still couldn’t shake the evil concept; it kept gnawing at me until eventually I had to put it down on paper—lack of writing experience be damned. So Adrenaline was birthed, my first medical thriller novel that explores this issue of absolute trust implicit in the anesthesiologist-patient relationship—specifically, what happens when that trust is abused and replaced by fear. Adrenaline was finally published twelve years after my encounter with Linda.
One final note about Adrenaline: As well as telling a scary tale of murder in the OR, I also wanted to tell the story from the anesthesiologist’s perspective, something I had never seen done. I wanted to give readers a taste of what really goes on in the operating room, the human drama inherent in this high-stress, high stakes environment where lives are saved and sometimes regrettably lost. Finally, I wanted to try to describe what it’s like to hold someone’s life in your hands, while providing an illuminating glimpse into the fascinating, but poorly understood realm of anesthesia.
OK, if you made it this far, I’m impressed! If you’re dozing off, well don’t be surprised. It’s what I do—remember?--put people to sleep. What follows next is the genesis behind my second medical thriller, The Edge of Death (the sequel to Adrenaline).
As a physician, I have always been intrigued with the definition of life and death, the boundaries that exist between them and the multitude of end-of-life scenarios that we all will face at some point. As an anesthesiologist, I feel I am even more intimately familiar with the fine line between life and death. In fact, each time I put one of my patients to sleep, I purposely take them down to the edge of death and then bring them back. This is what we do, for this is the very essence of anesthesia. Think about it. When you’re anesthetized, you’re not just “asleep”, enjoying a peaceful repose like you would in your own bed at night. Far from it. You’re deeply unconscious to the point that someone can slice you open with a knife and you don’t feel it or wake up. Someone is usually breathing for you. You’re not that far from being dead. Now that’s a deep sleep. (Disclaimer #2: Again, I’m not trying to scare anyone here in real life. In the hands of a competent anesthesiologist, this type of sleep, routinely induced tens of thousands of times a day across the US, is very, very safe. People typically face a larger risk driving to the hospital than in the OR.) So it’s no surprise really that several years ago while journal reading, one particular article jumped out at me.
The researchers, who were exploring cutting edge techniques in resuscitation medicine, noted that in patients who were newly declared dead, they could still demonstrate under the microscope, the presence of viable cells in various organs—sometimes even hours after death! So, cardiac muscle cells were seen to be alive, hours after death. This was a staggering revelation to me, especially since it represented real science—not the realm of fiction.
One would think that with advancing technology and the increasing sophistication of our monitors, etc., that the definition of death would have become more and more precise in the modern era. One would be wrong. In fact, the situation is less clear-cut than ever. Fifty years ago, it was simple. When your heart stopped beating, you were pronounced dead. Period. Nowadays, it’s not so simple. Witness the poor folks kept alive on breathing machines and drug infusions in the ICU. Witness the legal battles surrounding these patients as family members, doctors and lawyers wrangle over if they are really dead. They have no brain wave activity (even the definition of brain wave ‘activity’ is controversial and constantly changing with newer electronic monitors), so they’re pronounced brain dead and life saving support may now be legally withdrawn. The heart’s still beating just fine and the liver and kidneys continue to function normally. In fact, these organs are in such fine shape that they are routinely transplanted from the “dead” patient into a living patient. One wonders through all of this, where does the soul reside, assuming you believe in such a thing? In the brain? Or perhaps the heart? Or one of any number of other organs? Or is it spread out over the entire body? Does anyone actually know?
So, in light of this journal article and in the face of advancing technology, I wondered: If the definition of death is so muddled, when does the soul know it’s time to flee the body? What is the specific triggering mechanism? Brain death? Heart death? Liver death, etc? Taking it one step further, what happens to the body if it is resuscitated after the soul has left?
The Edge of Death flowed directly from these questions. The story explores what happens when the normal end-of life-scenario intersects with advances in state-of-the-art, hi-tech medical resuscitation science. In the story, Nick Chandler, a patient with a fatal viral myocarditis, hovering on the edge of death, is miraculously revived in Dr. Mueller’s experimental lab. However, in addition to losing his soul, Chandler undergoes a chilling metamorphosis into a man of superhuman strength, supernatural prescience and absolutely no remorse. The Edge of Death represents a departure from straight medical thriller fiction; it is a darker, spookier tale with supernatural overtones that is nevertheless told from an authentic medical perspective—something new and unique. It stretches the genre a bit, but hopefully, readers will find it as compelling as I found it to write. Just don’t read either of these stories the night before surgery!
John Benedict
http://johnbenedictmd.com
For the original Blogpost with cool pictures, go to:
http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.co...
FREE ADRENALINE e-book
Adrenaline
I'm giving a FREE e-book copy of my debut medical thriller, ADRENALINE (over 200,000 copies in print) to the first 100 visitors to my new website at:
http://johnbenedictmd.com
Feel free to spread the word to all interested!
Thanks!
I'm giving a FREE e-book copy of my debut medical thriller, ADRENALINE (over 200,000 copies in print) to the first 100 visitors to my new website at:
http://johnbenedictmd.com
Feel free to spread the word to all interested!
Thanks!
May 14, 2015
COVER REVEAL and RELEASE DATE of FATAL COMPLICATIONS
May 13, 2015: Fatal Complications now has a release date of December 1st, 2015.
Here is the link to the preliminary cover design and story blurb:
http://oceanviewpub.com/books/fatal-c...
Here is the link to the preliminary cover design and story blurb:
http://oceanviewpub.com/books/fatal-c...
FATAL COMPLICATIONS PICKED UP BY MAJOR PUBLISHER
January 13, 2015: Today, I signed with Oceanview Publishing (Longboat Key, Florida) and Fatal Complications, my 3rd medical thriller, is now under contract and scheduled to be released toward the end of the year! I attribute this positive development to the unexpected success of my first two self-published medical thrillers, ADRENALINE and The Edge of Death. And the fact that the CEO and chief editor of Oceanview is Pat Gussin, who is a fellow physician and best-selling author of six medical thrillers. She read Fatal Complications and loved it. To say she understands the genre would be a gross understatement.
ADRENALINE -- OVER 400 READER REVIEWS in 2014
December 31, 2014: ADRENALINE picks up over 400 Amazon reader reviews in 2014—mostly 5-star! The Edge of Death received 99 reader reviews in 2014—again mostly 5-star! Thanks to all readers who took the time to post a review on Amazon—much appreciated.
ADRENALINE #1 AMAZON BEST SELLER medical thriller
October 28, 2014: ADRENALINE hit the #1 spot for the first time on October 10th in the paid medical thrillers category (Kindle ebook) and remained there for over 2 weeks! Once again, I attribute much of the success to BookBub, which promoted the $0.99 sale of ADRENALINE. ADRENALINE also rose as high as #42 of ALL books in the Kindle store in early October. Thanks to all who participated in the sale!!
September 11, 2014
BOOKS IN PRINT EXCEEDS 100,000!!
September 10, 2014: With the recent buying surge in August, Total Books in Print (ADRENALINE and The Edge of Death) now exceeds 100,000!!
Thanks to all readers!
Thanks to all readers!
ADRENALINE #2 AMAZON BEST-SELLER medical thriller September 2, 2014:
Sept. 6, 2014: The numbers are in for August. The Edge of Death, the ebook, was downloaded over 25,000 times in August!! Just like in March, most of these downloads occurred during the 5-day free sale on Amazon, August 10th--14th. However this time, paid sales of ADRENALINE also spiked, propelling ADRENALINE up to the #2 spot on the Amazon PAID medical thriller list!!! I again attribute much of the success of the free sale to BookBub, which promoted The Edge of Death. Thanks to all who participated in the sale!!
August 6, 2014
FREE KINDLE "THE EDGE OF DEATH"
***FREE 'The Edge of Death' Kindle ebook on AMAZON***(reg. $6.95) The sale runs Sun 8/10 through Thurs 8/14. See http://johnbenedictmd.com
June 3, 2014
FREE KINDLE ADRENALINE 6/16--6/20!!
ADRENALINE will be available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from Amazon (Kindle version) for a 5 day promotional sale from Monday 6/16 through Friday 6/20 only. This is the second such sale--the first one resulted in over 70,000 downloads! So if you missed it, here's your chance. Check it out!
