I do a lot of writing for University of Colorado Hospital, in particular for a publication called UCH Insider, which goes out to… well, guess. Biweekly, via e-mail.
Amazing stories happen in this academic medical center. What I like is that the stories generally involve people. When I write for Compliance Week, which I also do (though unless you pony up the $1,200 a year annual subscription, you can’t get in to read the stuff — I can’t get in to read my own stuff, as a matter of fact) or CleanEnergy.com (pretty much every word on the site at this point came via this keyboad), that’s not always the case. I think that’s a big issue with energy issues in particular. The stories, besides those involving families who can set their tap water on fire or who live near places where mountaintops are being decapitated for the coal inside, are about companies, economics environmental degradation and a lot of money, mainly.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve done a couple of interesting pieces for the hospital. One was about BASE jumper/surgeon Omer Mei-Dan, who leaps off radio towers and operates on hips (though not at the same time). The second turned into two pieces, a news story and an accompanying opinion piece I felt compelled to write late at night, about someone struggling to strengthen his body after receiving a new heart.
I wasn’t having a particularly bad day when I walked into the Anschutz Inpatient Pavilion that morning, but I wasn’t having a resoundingly good day either. A few seconds in the presence of James Lilly in the hospital’s surgical intensive care unit put things in perspective. The man couldn’t breathe on his own. Yet he was about to be put through physical rehab, right there at his ICU bed, tubes be damned. He blew me away, as did the physical therapists working with him.
These are the kinds of pieces where you’re compelled to push yourself as a writer — the material’s too good to rip through, no matter how busy you are. And it doesn’t matter that the audience is tiny. The stories are great, the subjects are worthy, and they deserve your best shot.
