Imagining a pandemic as a physician novelist [PODCAST]

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“There are some things that we are living through as a result of COVID-19 that I did not imagine in my fictional account. For example: the timeline. As we are now four full months into this pandemic in the U.S., some experts estimate that we are still early in the game. As one doctor put it, we are only at about the twenty-yard line of the football field. My imagined timeline was much shorter. Another thing I didn’t foresee was the perception of danger dividing along political lines. In fact, I imagined the opposite: that people would, in the name of self-preservation, view with suspicion any political down-playing of the danger of a global pandemic and insist on any means possible of protecting themselves. And among the most devastating consequences of this pandemic that I hadn’t imagined for my novel was the situation of people dying alone in hospitals without their loved ones. Not being able to hold the hand, give a final hug, say goodbye.

Undoubtedly, penning an imaginary pandemic is much less stressful than living through one. Living through a pandemic day by day has carried with it a chronic anxiety that I did not anticipate: not just the fear of contracting the illness, but the constant worry of pre-symptomatically transmitting it, thus second-guessing every errand, every visit to loved ones. As we all work through this unprecedented medical crisis, I hope we continue to make steady progress in treatment and prevention of this devastating illness. Stay safe.”

Teresa Fuller is a pediatrician.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Imagining a pandemic as a physician novelist.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Teresa Fuller. She’s a pediatrician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Imagining a pandemic as a physician novelist.” Teresa, welcome to the show.

Teresa Fuller: Thank you, Kevin. I’m glad to be here.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Teresa Fuller: Sure. So I can say I had a pretty traditional route to medicine. I always wanted to be a physician, and so I just went straight through school, a bit of a science nerd, so I did an MD/PhD at Howard University. Then I did a peds residency at the University of Maryland, and since finishing residency, I’ve done a couple of different things in medicine. I did acute care at first. I was really interested in peds emergency and peds hospital care, so I worked as a hospitalist. I did academic medicine for a little while, and during that time, I did some training in integrative medicine. Now I’m working as a primary care pediatrician in an office and enjoying that, enjoying the preventive care.

But all along that time, I loved reading. I always loved reading, and I tended to love medical thrillers. So I did a lot of reading of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton and Tess Gerritsen, and I loved reading their stories, but they’re all MDs. At some point, as I was reading those stories, I thought, “I really would like to write a medical thriller.” So I got into writing, and at one point, I remember reading a novel and thinking, “I’m not going to read another novel until I write one.” I think that’s what kind of primed my mind to start thinking about what kind of medical novel I would write.

Kevin Pho: So how difficult was it to write your first novel? Take me a little bit behind the writing process that you used.

Teresa Fuller: It was much more difficult than I thought, because at first, once I got the idea, I thought it wouldn’t be too hard. You know, just sit down and write. But it was a lot of starting and stopping. Of course, part of it was that I was working full time the whole time, so I was trying to figure out how to fit in the writing time. I did a lot of it during my commute. What I did was a lot of reading about the writing process, just learning about how articles, I mean, how novels are constructed. I did those types of things and kind of learned as I went. It’s been an interesting journey. I’m still learning how to write, but it took me over a year to complete the novel. I just kept chugging along and got through it.

Kevin Pho: Excellent. So let’s transition into your KevinMD article, “Imagining a pandemic as a physician novelist.” A lot of people say that the COVID-19 era that we’re going through really fits into a movie or a novel. Now, for those who haven’t read your article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Teresa Fuller: When coronavirus hit, back in February, when it was just kind of starting to become something we were thinking about, at first, we didn’t know what was coming. But then, as it started to unfold, we were seeing just how serious it was. We were seeing patients dying, we were seeing hospitals being overrun, all of those things. What happened was I started thinking back to the novel I had written, and I actually went back and reread it, because I wanted to kind of see, “Wow, how well did I anticipate this kind of stuff?” And so that’s what made me write the article. I just thought it was interesting to compare what an actual pandemic was to what I imagined it would be like.

Basically, the way I structured the article was what I got right and what I got wrong. Some things that I anticipated a pandemic would be like, and that I wrote about, were things like the hospitals being overrun, yes, that they would be full to capacity, that we would have to have satellite clinics, and that we would have to even bring in people that weren’t, you know, traditional doctors or nurses to help out. So those types of things I anticipated. I also expected the shortage of PPE and the shortage of medical supplies. I expected school closings, travel restrictions, and even the political rancor, because you always have that. So I expected that politicians would argue about how to implement some of these changes. Those types of things I addressed in the novel.

But there were some things that were so surprising to me, and that was the second part of the article, what I got wrong. For example, I didn’t foresee the citizens, the people of the U.S., reacting to this in a political way. I had assumed that if we had such a danger facing us, we would kind of band together and work towards what we could do. Of course, we see some of that, but I was surprised at how we as citizens divided along political lines. I also thought that just from the perception of danger, out of self-preservation, we would view politicians who tried to downplay it with suspicion. But I was surprised to see that there was such a strong group going in that direction, as opposed to, you know, the other side saying, “Yes, we need to wear a mask. We need to protect ourselves. We need to protect each other.” So that was one of the things that I didn’t anticipate.

I also didn’t anticipate it lasting so long. I had thought that it would be a wave, you know, a few months of really being bad, then we get used to it, then we figure it out, and then we are able to get through it. But now that we’re more than six months into this, I’m finding how surprising that is, and that we’re still really in the midst, not even having made the kind of progress I would have expected.

I also got wrong, on a more personal level, that people would be dying alone in hospitals. I did not anticipate that. I didn’t anticipate that people would not be able to see their family and that they would be dying alone, and how stressful that would be, not only on the families but also on the physicians and nurses and all the health care providers. So that’s basically what the article looks at.

Kevin Pho: Now, every good novel has a protagonist. In our real-life COVID-19 story, who would be your protagonist?

Teresa Fuller: I would say it’s the health care workers. You know, the doctors, nurses, MAs, all the ones on the front line, are certainly the protagonists.

Kevin Pho: So we are in the midst of the story. We don’t know how it’s going to end. So what do you anticipate the next few months to bring?

Teresa Fuller: I think we’re going to continue having this kind of rancor. This isn’t really going away. But I do anticipate, and I see it already happening, we’re seeing better treatments. We’re seeing that the scientific community has really banded together and worked on this. So I anticipate we’re going to see improvement in outcomes. Of course, when the vaccine is available, we’re going to see improvement also in just the course of the disease, not so severe, and hopefully a really sharp decrease in the cases. So I anticipate that’s going to happen, but I still think it’s a little ways further away than I would hope.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Teresa Fuller. She is a pediatrician and a novelist, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Imagining a pandemic as a physician novelist.” Teresa, I talked to a lot of physicians on the show, and a lot of them love to write. Now, you’ve actually published a novel. What would you say is your number one tip for those physicians who are interested in taking that next step and perhaps writing a novel themselves?

Teresa Fuller: Definitely learning about the publishing process. With this book, even though I wrote it in 2007, I didn’t publish it back then, because at the time, I was trying to navigate the publishing process. The traditional route is writing a query letter and sending it out to literary agents, and that process is very demanding. Basically, I lost steam trying to do that, because, you know, I was practicing full time.

What I ended up doing, when this pandemic hit, is that’s when I went back to it and I actually published it, but the way I did it was through self-publishing. So I would tell a physician to just be aware of the different options, that you don’t have to go that traditional route if you don’t have the time or energy to look for your publisher and all of that. There is the self-publishing route. You make it as good as you can, you get a good editor to make sure it’s in good shape, and then you can self-publish it and do your marketing yourself.

Kevin Pho: And my final question, Teresa: What is your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Teresa Fuller: I think the take-home message is, of course, a lot of physicians are dealing with burnout. So I think it’s important that we find that passion and go ahead and pursue it, because in the midst of how hard we work, we tend to get really bogged down with that, and we put our other passions to the side. I think that’s a mistake. So find that time, if it’s writing or if it’s something else, to do it and to go for it, because that really reduces, it helps me with burnout. I think it would really reduce the stress, because you have something that keeps you excited.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing your insight and time, and thanks again for being on the show.

Teresa Fuller: Thank you, Kevin.

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