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With the exceptions of "St. Elsewhere" and "Scrubs," both of which reasonably captured the high-flying absurdities of medical training, I've rarely watched medical dramas. The aversion had been based partly on time constraints but mostly on eye-rolling inaccuracies, like when the impossibly trained Mandy Patinkin went directly from performing a heart transplant to separating conjoined twins on "Chicago Hope."
I've also had an aversion to most documentary-type medical programs—probably for the same reason that a short-order cook wouldn't watch a reality-based show called "Diner" in his downtime. Nevertheless, when a TV series calls itself the venerably hip "Hopkins," it's hard to ignore. According to the show's website, this documentary-type medical program advertises "an intimate look at the men and women who call The Johns Hopkins* Hospital their home." (At this point, I assume—rightly, it turns out—that the referenced men and women are the hospital's physicians and not its long-term inpatients.) The first of 6 episodes aired on ABC last Thursday but is also available for online viewing.
Depicting a world where health care costs and insurance matters don't exist,† the premier installment of "Hopkins" showcases the work of 3 physicians: the hospital's first female urology resident (ahem, both Duke and U Penn had their first female urology residents more than 20 years ago), a remarkable migrant farm worker turned neurosurgeon, and a cardiothoracic surgeon whose marriage is falling apart. And while the show clearly attempts to emphasize the real poignancy of their real work—which is actually made less real by the cloying use of singer-songwriter tracks‡—it inadvertently shows how boneheaded the best of us can be when attempting to connect with patients. For instance, the neurosurgeon delivers the not-so-reassuring, "There's a fine line between life and death," to a clearly anxious man who is about to undergo resection of an undefined brain tumor. And the CT surgeon attempts to apologize to a woman in the ER who just endured the pain of a chest tube with, "Are we still friends?" Her reaction, or lack of it, pretty much says the accurate, "We were never friends."
Then there's the filming of the CT surgeon's home life, or what's left of it, to add personal drama that's evidently characteristic of "ER" or Grey's Anatomy." The problem—and we've become desensitized to this fact with the proliferation of reality-based shows—is that the pain of his young children, like that of the Hopkins patients, is indeed real. Which begs the question: It's one thing to embrace the filming of your medical practice, but why on God's green would you subject your children's divorce-induced anguish to the TV camera?
* Of course, we can't forget the capitalized "The" in front of "Johns Hopkins," anymore than we can forget it in front of "New England Journal of Medicine."
† To its credit, "Hopkins" did show how a patient with a documented brain tumor had to wait several weeks for an appointment with a neurosurgeon.
‡ I'm reminded here of John Belushi smashing the guitar of the folk singer on the stairs of the Delta House.
Today's NYT features a write-up of optical, or really perceptual, illusions ("Anticipating the Future to 'See' the Present" by Benedict Carey) and refers specifically to a Flash image of a spinning dancer* created by Nobuyuki Kayahara. The popular idea behind this fascinating (and infuriating) image is that it is a kind of left-brain-right-brain personality test, which depends on how you see the image spinning. Dancer rotating clockwise? You're right-brained. Counterclockwise? You're left-brained. Whatever that means in popular culture.
As Tara Parker-Hope explained in April at the NYT Health blog, the silhouetted image doesn't have any depth cues—such as lines to indicate how her legs should overlap. For instance, notice in the still-shot thumbnail (above) that the dancer could be facing toward you with her left leg extended or away from you with her right leg extended (a la the ambiguous Necker cube). How she spins depends on this split-second decision, which is perhaps based on how your brain is wired, past experience, or both. Parker-Hope indicated that most people will see the dancer flip her rotation, if they stare at her long enough.
Thinking I'd somehow be a better person for it, I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get the dancer to flip at will. It's tough, particularly because there's some weird desire to maintain her movement that interferes with the flip. It's easiest if you scroll your PC screen so that only the dancer's lower legs are visible. Then once the flip happens, scroll back to view the entire image. There are also Wikipedia cheat views (here and here), which fill in the overlap lines to define the rotation.
BTW, I'm one hardcore right-brainer.
*Kayahara's Web site features a faster-spinning image here.
Pathetic update: Turn your head away from the monitor (either left or right), so that the dancer is in your far peripheral vision. She should appear to be some undulating blob; her movements may even resemble those of a rollerblader. Then imagine her turning clockwise or counterclockwise. Then look back directly at the image. Repeat this exercise until you can reliably flip her rotation, and then tell your friends and family members that you can do this.
If you're at a loss to understand the slogan of yesterday's anti-vaccination march on Washington, DC—led by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey—you're not alone. The costar of Witless Protection* and the star of Horton Hears a Who! evidently want to promote "cleaner" vaccines (whatever that means—more bacteriocidal Thimerosal?). But what they really want to do is alter the current CDC-recommended schedule for vaccinating children...to God only knows what.
Orac dives into the mess and provides commentary.
*You know, the vehicle for Larry the Cable Guy.
Photo: Jenny McCarthy playing with garden hose in kiddie pool.
I'm so out of it. I had no idea that popping water-bottle caps was the current rage among kids. This video demonstrates the practice and shows the tremendous force that can be generated from the flying cap. I'm sure it's always good, clean backyard fun, until somebody gets hurt—which is what happened to a 14-year-old girl whose right eye was hit by such a projectile cap, according to correspondence in this week's NEJM. The girl's injury ultimately required intervention in the form of maximal glaucoma therapy, because of increasing intraocular pressure, and anterior-chamber washout.
Photo, from NEJM, showing blood clot in anterior chamber (white arrow) and hyphema (black arrow) on day 4 after injury.
Moving through the Web at warp speed.
As Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post indicates, we're probably familiar with the antidepressant's tagline only because we're taking the drug given the state of things.
While watching "Dancing With the Stars" (yes, color me bust-ed), the Pathophilia blog came to wonder why it is that Priscilla Presley doesn't or can't smile. Is the King's ex-wife that demure by nature? Or did the woman—whose current face (and I mean this in the nicest possible way) looks like it was molded by a new hire at Madame Tussauds—actually get Botox injected into her nasolabial folds? Possible...
But further inquiry leads to medical resource TMZ (read here and here), where it is revealed that Argentinian doctor Daniel Serrano scammed a whole slew of Hollywood celebs not too long ago, including Presley, by offering them facial injections of an "all-natural" anti-wrinkle "serum" that was touted to be better than Botox.
Unfortunately none of the women, who must have been unbelievably desperate to achieve and/or maintain faux youth, bothered to determine if the doc was licensed in the United States or what the so-called serum actually was. Turns out that what Serrano (who, BTW, was never was licensed to practice in the US) injected into their faces was an industrial-grade lubricant silicone, according to the gossip website. In some cases, TMZ reports, Serrano's injections caused lumps, paralysis, and "holes."*
But even further investigation by the P blog reveals that all of this information is really old news (and may have nothing to do with how Presley's face looks now). Reports from way back in 2004 revealed that Diane Richie (then estranged wife of Lionel) was charged in November of that year with aiding and abetting Serrano, while he used her Beverly Hills home at various times from July to December of 2003 to administer costly injections of what he claimed was the European-approved collagen filler Artecoll,† but what was really (in some cases) the aforementioned silicone. Serrano was charged with 4 counts in connection with the repeated administration of these injections.
A 2006 Los Angeles CBS news report reveals that Serrano was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on charges related to the illegal injections, after he pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiracy, receipt of illegally imported merchandise, and receipt of an adulterated device in interstate commerce. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, Serrano, as part of a plea agreement, admitted to giving the illegal injections from 2001 until November 2004 and earning more than $1.6 million for his efforts, according to court papers. (TMZ writes that the guy only accepted lump sums of cold, hard cash from his gullible victims.)
Serrano's "clients" included Diane Richie, Lionel Richie, and Shawn King (Larry King's wife). King, who also hosted "injection parties" for Serrano (although she was evidently not charged like Ms. Richie), claimed that she developed a "lump" in her lip from the injections, and Beverly Hills resident Ellen Levinthal is the unfortunate woman who experienced the reported facial "holes," according to the report. Presley, very notably, was not mentioned in these contemporary news reports.
*Hey, facial lumps and paralysis I could deal with, but holes?
†Artecoll, aka ArteFill, is an 80-20 mixture of purified bovine collagen and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) microspheres (aka Plexiglass beads). ArteFill was not approved by the FDA until October 27, 2006—well after Serrano's alleged use in the United States. The product is indicated for the correction of nasolabial folds.
Photo: "Dancing With the Stars"
With a diagnostically inquiring mind, TMZ turned amateur skin doctor yesterday and asked Does Amy Winehouse really have impetigo? TMZ went on to consult several actual dermatologists about the troubled singer's facial lesions.
Somewhere between not caring enough to watch the Super Bowl ex-el-one-one and not finding the energy to pop in a DVD lies my extended viewing of “Celebrity Rehab.” A mini-marathon of VH1’s new reality show was available yesterday evening, and I watched several hours of the program like the combination TV addict and celebuwreck enabler that I am.
According to the VH1 web site, the show is “supervised” by Drew Pinsky, MD,* a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist (and as one episode reveals, a guy with very well-developed biceps), who prescribes on-camera addiction therapy for nine residents of a contestant resident, Jessica Sierra (“American Idol”), seem to be earning their present keep from reality-show appearances. (Generally, the length of the celebrities’ bios at the VH1 web site appears to correlate inversely with the quality of their contributions to the entertainment industry.)
The show itself, which incorporates what is now the traditional filming style of reality TV (including the creepy, white-eye, night-vision shots) is engaging and, yes (oh, the irony), addictive. A non-exploitative tone is set by Pinsky, who appears to genuinely care about his patients’ recovery and avoids coming across as just another celebrity-enamored physician. Thanks to Pinsky, you could actually get sucked into the idea that the program provides a realistic view of substance-abuse rehabilitation, until you remember the cameras.
And the cameras are the big objection to the show and to Pinsky’s therapy, which seems likely to fail as long as dramatic fucked-up-ness gets camera attention above and beyond sober, chain-smoking behavior. Celebrities, being first-class cravers of attention, would seem particularly vulnerable to the pull of the camera at the expense of their own substance-abuse recovery. And the more marginal the celebrity, the more desperate the craving. Case in point is the performance of Jeff Conaway, who comes off like a big, saggy, largely incoherent infant in a wheelchair. You can’t help but wonder if Conaway’s pained, over-the-top helplessness† would be just a little subtler if he knew he wasn’t being filmed. Indeed, a glimpse of the actor’s tendency to chronically pander to the camera is inadvertently revealed when Conaway, momentarily out of rehab character, jumps up in a fit of pique from his group-therapy chair, after Baldwin accuses him of bringing drugs into the facility. Ambulatory recoveries like that are rarely seen outside of televangelist performances.
But at least in Conaway's case, it does appear that he, in fact, has an active substance-abuse problem (namely alcohol and prescription opiates). In the case of other celebrities, it’s not entirely clear why they’re even in the facility. After watching several episodes, I still don’t know what Chyna’s hooked on other than the camera lens. And
Nevertheless, you think something from
Thursday’s episode is promised to provide additional details. And sadly, I’ll probably be watching—that is, if a family member doesn’t successfully flush my remote down the toilet.
*Pinsky may be best known for his longtime cohosting of the radio and MTV relationship-advice show “Loveline.”
† It’s cruel to say (write) it, but I will: Conaway was never that good of a dramatic actor.
