A few nights ago we watched Firewall, a Harrison Ford movie where Indiana Jones reincarnates and kicks butt. Okay, not quite Indiana Jones, but Ford, who looks older and more wizened that his 65 years, still was able to beat the crap out of athletic bad guys half his age—-even though he was supposed to be a three piece suit type who sits in a bank and doesn’t get out much.

I did like the movie, despite the need to suspend the imagination, but I don’t know why Hollywood has given up on its own imagination. Like so many movies which have come out recently, this film had to include a silly and somewhat unbelievable medical crisis that is of course instantaneously resolved.

Firewall, in brief, is about a family held hostage with the threat of death, if the father (Ford) doesn’t do what the bad guys want. Of course, there is a child who has a life threatening allergy to peanuts, and this theme is really getting tiresome. I don’t know how many movies have come out recently that have the “child in peril.” You know right from the start, as soon as they mention the asthma, diabetes, allergy, etc, that the kid is going to have an attack and that is going to alter plans, get the parents to give in to demands, or have the bad-guy-with-the-conscience intervene. It is like, so boring already.

Anyway, in this film, the 12 year old boy has a severe allergy to peanuts. So of course, you know that sooner or later, he’s going to have a reaction. One of the bad guys gives the kid a snack and swears there are no peanuts. So the kid eats it. This scene alone challenges the intelligence—if you were a kid with a severe peanut allergy that you knew could kill you, and the chief bad guy with a big gun who has invaded your home and is threatening your family offers you a snack, would you eat it? This kid must have the IQ of a donut hole, and his lack of fear was also a little annoying.

But anyway, he goes into the movie version of anaphylactic shock. He becomes unconscious, looking nice and pink and healthy. While you can lose consciousness, generally, a severe reaction will cause trouble breathing as the throat swells–ie, lots of wheezing and gasping for air, and yes, the person will turn pale and blue. You can get a rash, vomit, moan and groan in pain—it is pretty rare that someone will eat the offending item and plop down into a sweet and peaceful coma.

Okay, so mom and pop are in a frenzy, screaming and crying and trying to revive their kid. Not sure how shaking him is going to revive him, and then it turns out that the bad guy has stolen the kid’s epinephrine. Ford pleads for it, so finally bad guy relents. They give him the shot, and the kid pops back to life like a jack in the box. He’s wide awake in an instant, no residual effects, nothing.

This scene really has to be added to the annals of idiotic celluloid medical escapades. In fact, beyond idiotic, and there really wasn’t any reason to make this scene so far removed from reality. Wouldn’t having the kid wheeze and gasp be more dramatic?

But the bottom line is that the kid in peril was totally unnecessary for the movie. It added nothing, and in fact, took away from the realism. These tired cliches really dumb down movies and TV shows, and just waste our time.

One of those medi-pop TV shows was playing on someone’s television recently, and since I am hopelessly naive when it comes to these things, my educated guess is that it was Grey’s Anatomy. One of the characters looked familiar–in fact, now that I think about it, he was on the cover of Seattle Magazine for their “Best Doctors in Seattle.” I’m sure that the real docs in Seattle were thrilled about that, but that’s another story.

Anyway, I have no idea what the episode was about, but a group of medical students or residents were all sitting around a table. It was a nice politically correct assortment that included both genders and a variety of colors and ethnicities. I doubt that most hospitals have such a nice ratio, and that residents tend to coordinate the gender/ethnic ratio when they all hang out together. You know, if there’s too many white guys one of them has to leave the table and they grab a Chinese woman to replace him.

But aside from the political correctness, all were young and good looking. While most residents probably are in their late 20s, some are noticeably older. A growing number of people are opting for medicine as a second career, or heading into medical school after completing a master’s degree in another subject. So by the time they reach their residency, they may well be heading towards age 40.

The good looking part, is really ridiculous. I know that TV people tend to be more attractive than the random population, but after working in a hospital, I can assure you that most residents are not good looking. Most are well, average. They look like everyone else—not better or worse. And none of these fine residents looked like they ever did a night of call in their life, and looked remarkably well rested and refreshed. Bright eyed and rosy cheeked, hair clean and styled, make-up perfect…. Yeah, and this is the same hospital where physicians change bedpans and personally discharge patients, even wheeling them down to the front door.

Aren’t they cute?

I have added a new category to my repertoire called celluloid healers, which will highlight the blunders, idiocy and occasional reality that pops up on both the small and big screen. Celluloid medicine, celluloid doctors, celluloid nurses. I have mentioned this in passing in other posts, but I think it’s a fun topic and that deserves some attention–considering that many people tend to think of medical themed television as quasi-documentaries.

This is a great article on the subject that appeared in Slate, and that was written by two doctors. In this article, they mention an old TV show called The Nurses, that was ultimately a flop. The article says that… “Its producer, Herbert Brodkin, refused to hire AMA vetters, instead employing a nurse to ensure medical accuracy. The Nurses flopped.”

I am curious why the show was a flop. It apparently ran from 1962 to 1963 and then the name was changed to The Doctors and Nurses. This is a description of the show from the IMDB:

The story takes place in a large hospital and revolves around two nurses, Liz Thorpe (Shirl Conway), the older head nurse, and Gail Lucas, the naive student nurse. The two nurses were joined by doctors in 1964 and these doctors tried to help the nurses resolve moral and ethical problems.

Were the nurses not all that interesting on their own, without the support of the handsome TV doc to solve all problems? Although, in 1962, nursing had far more limitations on it than it does now, and most vital decisions would have been deferred to the physician. Also, in 1962, nursing was a low paying job that many women entered because older professions were closed off to them, or difficult to enter because they were female. Since nursing education at the time was largely via a hospital which usually supplied room and board and even a stipend, it was a cheap way to get trained and enter the job market. Finally, many women did become nurses in hopes of meeting the doctor-husband who would raise their status in the world, and allow them to quit nursing!

So maybe the public didn’t find a show about nurses all that intriguing, due to attitudes and perceptions of the time period of women in general, and nurses.