Questions and Answers by Lynn Price
Q. What was the inspiration behind Donovan’s Paradigm?
A. The impetus behind my writing the Donovan Series is the belief that illness, or dis-ease requires whole-body participation. By this, I mean that the body doesn’t simply grow a tumor in the abdomen without the mind and spirit being in cahoots. This became the catalyst for Kim Donovan who, as a surgeon, incorporates science and non-medical alternatives into her medical practice. Since the medical world is slowly catching on to the idea of whole body medicine, I saw this as an idea whose time had come.
Q. Why not write a nonfiction book about it instead?
A. Because there are far better people to do this who have far more experience than I. Healing Hands author Julie Motz presented an exciting view of her experiences inside the operating room. Dr. Mehmet Oz, esteemed cardio surgeon, wrote a fascinating book, Healing From the Heart, and details his personal journey with the holistic movement and how it affected his patient success rate. Others like Dean Ornish, William Arntz, Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente, the co-directors of What The Bleep Do We Know, all are far more adept at presenting the realities, data, and benefits of complementary alternative medicine.
While I feel their works are extremely viable and go a long way to presenting a persuasive argument regarding alternative medicine, it will only reach the audience who seeks out this information. Fiction, on the other hand, can appeal to an otherwise skeptical audience. If you take an important concept that affects virtually every living being and wrap it up with appealing characters, conflict, and a solid plot, suddenly your readers are subliminally considering its merits. I look at fiction as an effective tool to opening up the mind and broadening one’s horizons in a non-threatening manner.
Q. What exactly is Complementary Alternative Medicine/CAM?
A. I’ll break this down a bit. Complementary, or integrative, simply means the combining of alternative modalities, like hypnotherapy or acupuncture, with conventional treatments, such as chemotherapy or medication, for a maximum healing effect.
Alternative means that, all things being equally effective, there’s a choice - where one modality is an alternative to another.
In short, CAM is a marriage of conventional medicine and the use of alternatives. I want to be very clear about this: CAM isn’t a rejection of conventional medicine, but an inclusion.
Q. How did your background prepare you for such a novel and did it help you in organizing your story?
A. My degree in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine trained me to analyze prevailing trends that influence the various paradigms of Western society.
Our health care was a growing interest to me because of the vast changes it has undergone in the past twenty years. For example, the advent of managed care insured that more people received health care, but was it necessarily quality treatment? Factors such as financial burdens, restraints on prescribing tests and medicines were aspects that I wanted to highlight in Donovan’s Paradigm. Rarely does the public see the impact the insurance companies have forced upon the doctors because they aren’t a necessarily sympathetic lot. The general public sees the medical community as rich and arrogant, and this simply isn’t the norm.
Q. Your characters of Kim Donovan and Erik Behler seem to jump off the page. What makes them come to life?
It’s their passion for their profession and the emotional baggage they carry. Both of these surgeons are highly trained and highly competitive. I sought to give them real life issues that aren’t exclusive to a book, but hitting-the-intersection type problems that everyone experiences. Creating a sympathetic bond between character and reader is what keeps a reader turning the pages.
Q. How much of your personal beliefs play into Donovan’s Paradigm?
A. A great deal. It wasn’t my goal to advocate a particular conviction but to offer differing points of view. In order to do that, I had to ride the fence a great deal and continually play the Devil’s advocate in order to effectively write both characters. At times it felt a bit schizophrenic.
In order to have an effective story, you need to believe it – that’s how the passion comes through. In order to make that belief come to life, you need to create conflict. What better conflict to have than pitting one doctor’s beliefs against another? Otherwise it becomes a lopsided story that preaches an agenda rather than a thought-provoking story.
Q. The relationships and challenges that define your main characters make this story come to life, but your overall theme surrounds changing the health paradigm. Was this your goal?
A. Yes. It is my opinion that America has the most sophisticated health care in the world. Yet in spite of all our money and research, cancer and other diseases are at an all time high. While many are treated effectively, many aren’t. What do we tell these people?
A good friend of mine died from lung cancer. After two years of battling, the doctors sent her home to die - they’d done all they could. I raged at the inequity of this diagnosis because it offered no choice except to die. There simply had to be more to offer.
Her death was the catalyst that led me to research and talk to people who had been given last rites. Their stories of their last ditch efforts into holistic medicine and eventual wellness intrigued me to the point where it became my overlying theme to Donovan’s Paradigm. Kim’s determination to include alternative medicine in the changing shift in medical beliefs and overall wellness became my personal battle cry.
I’m not saying my friend still wouldn’t have died. But she would have died taking an active participatory role in her fight to survive. To be given choices can literally mean the difference between life and death.
Q. You have a great deal of medical detail in Donovan’s Paradigm. Do you have a medical background?
A. No, though I’ve been accused of it by a number of people, mainly doctors. To fool a doctor is the ultimate compliment. Ultimately, I have to tip my hat to the wonderful real life doctors who were willing to answer my ceaseless questions and keep me on the medical straight and narrow.
Q. You introduce an intriguing idea of medical doctors and alternative healers practicing under one roof. What kind of research did you have to do to?
A. Actually, the idea isn’t as revolutionary as it once was. I spent an instructive week in Washington D.C. with Dr. John Pan’s Center for Integrative Medicine. They’re a wonderful clinic that is connected to George Washington University Hospital. Dr. Pan’s thirty-year career as a respected OB/GYN gave his clinic a great deal of respect.
Dr. Pan allowed me to poke my head in and bother every one of his practitioners, who encompassed a hypnotherapist, Reiki Master, acupuncturist, massage therapist, chiropractor, and a doctor of neuropathic medicine. Dr. Pan also allowed me to talk to a number of his patients. Hearing patient feedback is the best kind of validation that something is working.
Q. Do you see the medical paradigm shifting? If so, who is going to initiate the push? Patients or doctors?
It’s tough to call, but I’d say it’s patients who will be the catalysts for change because they’re the ones who are doing the research. The adage that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it no longer holds true. The medical community sees patients asking for more options, and they’re rushing to catch up. There is a real divisiveness going on in the medical community right now and patients are at the mercy of their doctor’s belief system. There are some docs who are ardent detractors of the alternative care movement. It isn’t dangerous, per se, but I feel that it’s limiting.
As it stands, millions of Americans are spending millions of dollars outside their medical plans to pay for what they feel medicine can’t provide. Traditional medicine only treats the affliction. Holistic medicine treats at the mental, spiritual and physical levels. It makes perfect sense to research the vast data that’s been collected and bring complementary alternative medicine into the hospitals where patients can obtain whole care, and doctors can monitor its use.
Q. The characters of Kim Donovan and Erik Behler are very lifelike, as is their story. Is there more in store for them?
A. Yes, I have outlined three more stories for them. As their characters develop, their lives evolve and change. It’s my vision to write about them for years. And why not? They’re likeable people whom readers genuinely care about.
Q. What do you say to those who believe as your character, Erik Behler? Do their opinions offend you or strike you as being narrow minded?
A. Not at all. Like Kim, I’ve run up against many who consider alternative medicine akin to howling at the moon while wearing palm fronds. It’s their right to think that way, and I have no problem with it. Many who have read Donovan’s Paradigm feel as Erik does. The trick was to write Kim as an appealing, honest, forthright and ballsy woman so, whether people agreed with her or not, they still found her likeable as hell.
Q. Some of the cases where Kim utilizes alternative means seem unrealistic, and I almost rolled my eyes like Erik Behler. How much reality comes into play in Donovan’s Paradigm?
A. Ah, that’s the rub. It’s all real. Everything that Kim did, whether in surgery or in a patient’s room, really happened. I was very disciplined in only writing about actual cases because, while this is fiction, it isn’t science fiction. It has to be steeped in reality to maintain that believable edge.
