Past Medical History by Don Stewart Review, Excerpt, Guest Post and Trailer

Title: Past Medical History
Author: Don Stewart
Publisher: DSArt, LLC
Pages: 221
Language: English
Genre: Autobiography
Format: Paperback
Purchase at AMAZON

Past Medical History is a compilation of short stories chronicling the life of Dr. Don Stewart, who grew up with the singular goal of becoming a physician, then quit the day he earned his medical license to make a life and a living as an artist. It’s The Devil Wears Prada meets The House of God, with a character who sees his own career circling the drain, pronounces it DOA, and turfs himself to an art studio for treatment. It’s Patch Adams, with an attitude; The Things They Carried, dressed up in scrubs and a white lab coat.

This series of stories draws a clear picture of a doctor who recognized the pitfalls of his chosen profession, discharged himself from the hospital, then took his life in a more creative, and far healthier direction.

BOOK EXCERPT:

The man had nine tubes running into and out of his body the day he died.

Two IVs directed fluids and medications, drugs flowing into one arm to keep his blood pressure up, in the other to coax it back down, with antibiotics, anti-emetics, acid blockers, blood products and pain killers piggy-backed onto Y-shaped access ports, or pumped in measured doses through blue computerized boxes clamped to metal IV poles.

A third line penetrated deep into the man’s chest, entering above the his collar bone, coursing through the great thoracic vessels and the right-side chambers of his heart, its round balloon tip resting snugly in the terminal arteries of his lungs. Above, a thin yellow feeding tube emerged spaghetti-like from his nose, while down below a thick red rubber catheter drained the man’s bladder into a bag hooked onto the side of his bed. Another did what it could to channel the volumes of liquid feces that had plagued this patient for too many days, and took up far too much of the intensive care nurses’ valuable time in sanitary maintenance, skin care and linen changes.

Clear plastic tubes the size of small garden hoses exited either side of the patient’s chest, each connected to a low-suction vacuum canister that functioned to keep his fragile lungs inflated – lungs that had already popped like loose bubble-wrap from the air forced into them through a similar tube that traversed the length of his throat. This was the tube he had hoped to avoid. The one that just one week earlier he had made me promise, promise not to let anyone put into him…

About the Author:

Don Stewart has a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Art, with honors, from Birmingham-Southern College, and an MD from the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He also served a year-long surgical internship at the Mayo Clinic, where he published some of his first composite drawings, and won awards for poetry and short fiction.

Dr. Stewart’s short stories have since been published in Pulse--voices from the heart of medicine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Placebo Journal, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results, where he is listed as honorary Art Editor. For four years he served as Contributing Editor to Informal Rounds, the newsletter of the University of Alabama Medical Alumni Association.

For the past quarter century he has made his living as a self-styled Visual Humorist, hammering words and pictures together at the DS Art Studio Gallery in Birmingham: www.DSArt.com.  You can also find him at www.PastMedicalHistoryBook.com.

His latest book is the autobiography, Past Medical History.

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Guest Post from the Author:

Art as Writing, Writing Art

In my day job, I’m a full time artist, not a writer. (I know. Neither one is supposed to be a real job. I think they call that irony.)

That’s what my book Past Medical History is all about: the trail of circumstances, opportunities, disappointments and decisions that led to my leaving a promising medical career behind, and becoming an artist.

Now I’ve never been one of those artists who gets inspired, grabs a paintbrush and starts splashing color around on a canvas. That’s okay, it’s just not what I do. In fact, I don't often paint at all. Mostly I draw, using the same kind of ballpoint pen I used in my doctor days to fill out patient charts and write illegible prescriptions.

My drawings are complex, highly structured, verbally-based, and intellectually humorous – which is a fancy way of saying I draw complicated puns. With at least a month of planning, sketching and detailed inkwork invested in every picture, they represent the longest route possible a comic can take to reach a punch line.

The process of creating one of my pictures is anything but funny. (More irony.) It has been described as similar to writing a term paper, or a Master’s thesis: Research, refine, edit, and meticulously execute.

That’s right. I draw the way I write, and vice versa. Or so I found out, when I decided to start writing for real.

Back in 2003 I took on a dare. My friend Dave, an expat English teacher who lives in China, challenged me one day to move beyond our clever e-mail banter and get serious with my writing.

I reminded him that I had already sent him the couple of short stories I’d penned over the years, which was just about all I ever planned to write. Weren’t they enough to prove I could hammer sentences together?  Besides, I was plenty busy keeping up with two kids, and trying to run a full time art business. Heck, I had enough trouble finding time to draw. When did he think I was going towrite?

Nothing like just plunging in and doing it, he said. And he had the perfect plan: We would make a friendly competition out of it, just the two of us – along with a hundred thousand other people scattered all around the world.

That’s when he introduced me to NaNoWriMo, a writer’s dare on a global scale. National Novel Writers Month challenges wannabe wordsmiths to shut up and put up, devoting the entire month of November to a single, impossible goal: slamming 60,000 words onto a page in thirty days.

Dave felt like he could do it. Why didn't I give it a try, too?

That dare turned into a long story. Two of them, in fact, since we both completed the process, with time to spare. The novels weren’t very good, but we managed to prove to ourselves that we could do it.

I learned that the way I do it is exactly the way I create my drawings: Start with an interesting idea. Do the research. Take notes. Flesh out the concept. Throw out the parts that don't really add anything meaningful to the final product. Then sit down and work through the process day by day, uncovering, discovering, creating from whole cloth the tiny details that will pull an image or a story together, and give it a life of its own.

It’s an unbeatable mix of persistence, focus, and fun.

The last part is essential. If it’s not enjoyable, I’ll find something else to do. I proved that a long time ago, when I walked away from my real job.

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My Review:

This was a really good look into the lives of doctors. I liked that this was a set of short stories because it seemed to walk me through Don's life. It also really gave me an insight to how hard it is to become a doctor. There were times I laughed, and times that I wanted to cry. This author says it all, and I wonder how many people will wish they said the same things that the author did. This was a great autobiography and it was told in such a way that it was like a story, and not like a history book. I am giving this book a 4/5. I was given a copy to review, however all opinions are my own.