Stranger than fiction

Life on the list - blog
Sunday, September 5, 2010

Stranger than fiction

Most people measure their successes through conventional social barometers: a pay rise, say, or aesthetically pleasing children. Not me - no no. To define myself in such staid, traditional terms would expose me as severely lacking anyway. This is not to say I have not achieved: this week, for instance, I finished watching the entire series of "ER". It had taken me months, it has been boring at times, but on Friday, I did it. All fifteen series of it.

I would never have managed such an impressive feat had it not been for dialysis. How else would I have found twelve hours per week to devote to DVD watching? Work or socialising or other such mundane nuisances would have gotten in the way. The sadism involved in watching a hospital drama whilst in hospital has not escaped me, but there is schadenfreude in watching someone have an arm ripped off in a horrific tractor accident whilst sitting snugly in a south London NHS hospital eating Digestives; there is also an enormous amount of pleasure in watching George Clooney. Do anything at all.

"ER" afficionados - and I now include myself in this humiliating category - of course know that George is the glitzy, cliched choice for the show's foremost pin-up. The real star in terms of stone cold foxiness is Noah Wyle who played the vulnerable and compassionate John Carter and, over the course of 15 series, progressed from the lovable ingenue into capable leading man. George may have been the lustful crush that propelled me over the boarder from tweenager into hormone-addled adolescence, but Noah was my enduring love.

For one thing, we share the same birthday (June 4th) so right off the bat we have a meant-to-be-thing kind of thing going on. Carter leaves "ER" around series 13 to help the needy in Africa (he's so giving!) and cement his relationship with Thandie Newton (he likes British girls then...) but for the final series, the producers bring him back. When he returns, his arm is mysteriously bleeding and the audience is treated to a lot of quizzical looks (from other doctors) and embarrassed looks (from Carter) before, lo and behold, it is reveled that Carter is in kidney failure and on dialysis.

Out of all the characters the producers could have afflicted with the same condition that I have - and despite never having met or heard of me, my situation must surely have predicated their story arc - they chose Carter. It is obvious that Noah Wyle and I are destined for one another. However, once I had stopped obsessing over the deep chestnut hue of Noah/Carter's eyes, I found it was a distinctly odd sensation to watch my favourite character hooked up to a dialysis machine...whilst I was hooked up to a dialysis machine.

Only when you have a great deal on insight into a certain medical condition do you truly understand how many liberties television shows take with the facts in the name of entertainment and time constraints. We see Carter dialysing once, though he claims he needs to every other day, and he never seems to need to take time off work to do so; he goes on to pass out due to fluid overload and high potassium despite the fact he looks as slim and lithe (and gorgeous...grr...) as he has ever done. He has only just re-appeared in Chicago - to get on the list, he tells us - but receives the call for a transplant with in a matter of weeks. Admittedly, I have heard of this happening in "real" life, but after nineteen months on The List, obviously not for me. Maybe I should move to Chicago. Indeed, during the slow, arty shot in which we see Carter dialysing, he is seated in a large comfortable chair in a dark, peaceful ward where his fellow patients are tranquilly watching their personal TV. No more proof is needed that Bostock is definitely not Chicago.

Dialysis sometimes feels so much like my own little secret, my own private world, that to see it documented on TV is peculiar; it turns out, other people know about it, even those fancy Hollywood types. Who knew? Watching a fictional character act out the exact scenarios that constitute my own life is frankly weird, as though someone has read my diary and then made a film about it. Even more bizarre is watching dialysis happen whilst I am dialysing myself, almost as though I am reflected in the TV screen. It is entirely familiar and yet utterly alien due to the gloss required of an entertainment drama. For the reasons mentioned above, TV shows cannot do the condition justice: there are too many other characters to care about for a comprehensive exposition on exactly what a life on dialysis entails. I'm glad it was Carter who succumbed to kidney failure, however, because everyone loves Carter. If it had been a lesser character, one who garnered a smaller amount of the audiences' affection (I'm looking at you, Dr Gates) the emotional connection the viewers had with the story line might have been lost. This was kidney failure's one just chance to shine! Organ failure: cancer's understudy. We had one chance and one chance only - we couldn't blow it.

Seeing dialysis and the wait for a kidney depicted on such a successful and syndicated show as"ER" makes me feel...legitimate. It is reassuring to know I am not part of a forgotten or silent minority; perhaps just a misunderstood and under-represented one. Of course, I'm not wild about being part of a renal failure collective in the first place, but if I have to be in a transplant gang, I'm delighted that Noah Wyle is in it too.
Posted by Rosy at 6:53 PM

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