Just the Facts

When I began writing the manuscript I worried a great deal of writing something that might come back to haunt me as being "inaccurate." The last thing I wanted to do was get something technically incorrect.

As the writing process progressed I slowly strayed away from being a slave to technical details. No one really cares what Left Ventricular Outflow Tract pressure is - and even if they did it is something that is likely read and quickly forgotten.

Focussing on facts and the technology would have created a book that would have been as interesting as reading an IKEA instruction booklet. With this in mind, I tried to focus more on the story rather than technical details. Yes, there is plenty of technical information in the book but only components that help the reader understand the story. I did considerable re-work to ensure the story came through.

I also started to include more text that discussed our perceptions and assumptions. Components of our story that we experienced that I would never have an empirical method of proving.  You can't fake feelings.  Whether you are right or wrong - you cannot underestimate the importance of emotions. Sometimes our feelings betray us and lead us astray. Regardless of the "facts" emotions are very real and do a lot to shape our story.

There were circumstances surrounding us that we didn't completely understand which lead to us making assumptions.  Some of those assumptions were correct and some were wrong. That is the unfortunate reality of the patient experience.  Many times we make decisions based on supposition, innuendo, and in some cases our own prejudices. 

I had a rather humourous experience when one of my beta-readers read an early draft of the manuscript. There was one nurse who I wrote about - and I wasn't very kind in my description of this particular nurse. We had a minor run-in - as she seemed a little too eager to raise alarm bells with us. At the time we wrote her off as an inexperienced rookie. Months later we realized that she was very justified in her actions. In this early draft - I did not vindicate this nurse. The beta-reader who read this early draft chastised me for not following up on this incident. After some thought - I did relent and added a passage that brought closure to this negative incident - a lesson for us - not to prejudge someone based on the appearance, or age. A lesson that comes through in several instances in this book.

Situations like this made me very thankful to some of the kind people who spent time reading some of my earlier drafts. It taught me to be somewhat flexible and to accept criticism. It also forced me to ask myself some hard questions about the content. What parts of the story were non-negotiable and which components could be removed as did not add anything to the story.  That was the hard part - I have many anecdotal stories that did not make it into the book. I found myself learning to be careful about going off on tangents that really didn't go anywhere.  Those anecdotal stories are still good and when I removed them - I did not delete them.  They are archived - and they might make an appearance - someday - or in another project.