Trapped

While medical students suspect that every headache is a brain tumor and that every chest pain is a heart attack, experienced physicians know diseases along a spectrum of horror—the ones they dread the most. Among these are cancer, Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes, and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). As the list continues, we come upon locked-in syndrome, a neurologic disease where a victim is awake and alert, but cannot move or communicate due to paralysis of all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. In Trapped, a Brier Hospital Series novel by Lawrence W. Gold, M.D., the reader enters the neonatal and the adult intensive care units. Medical fiction works, not only due to its intrinsic drama, but because of the crucial ethical issues that arise, especially in intensive care. Lisa Cooke is the product of a passive mother and an abusive father. She finds her way into pediatric nursing, a world filled with men in control, especially the director of the Neonatal ICU, Mike Cooper. As Mike reminds Lisa of her father, it’s no surprise that they don’t get along. Ultimately, they fall in love and have a fulfilling marriage except that she’s unable to have children. They try everything, but fail. When an automobile accident severely injures Mike, Lisa is devastated. Shortly afterward, she discovers that she’s pregnant. Mike’s injuries are life threatening, and he nearly dies on several occasions. Mike suffers from locked-in syndrome and his survival is constantly in jeopardy, as is Lisa’s pregnancy. Will he/she/they survive? About the AuthorBiography: I was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, moved to Queens, and then, as New Yorkers say, my family ascended to the Island. After graduating from Valley Stream Central High School, I went to Adelphi, a college then, a university now, and then to medical school in Chicago. The war in Vietnam interrupted my postgraduate medical training with a year in Colorado Springs and another as a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam. I spent seven months in the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry and five months in an evacuation hospital in Long Binh outside Saigon where I ran the emergency room. I returned intact in 1968 to complete my training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney, nephrology. I worked for twenty-three years in Berkeley, California in a hospital-based practice and served as Chief of Internal Medicine and Family Practice. For many years, I was an active member of the quality assurance committee. We retired in October 1995 before fate could intervene. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge for a life at sea in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Four years later, exhausted from repairing everything on board, (often many times) we sold the sailboat and within a year took the lazy man’s out; we bought a Nordic Tug trawler. We motored around Florida, the Bahamas, and the entire East Coast and Canada. I’ve written nine novels, five in the Brier Hospital Series, and one non-fiction book, I Love My Doctor, But…, a lighthearted look at the patient/doctor relationship. I write primarily to entertain, but I can’t help but pass on to readers observations and beliefs culled from years of practice, and yes, my biases, too. I strive for realism in portraying the medical scene which is gripping enough without melodrama or gimmicks. With even a minor degree of success in writing novels, comes responsibility to readers. I attempt to produce honest material that reflects my beliefs. Exposing these beliefs to the public through my writing requires courage, stupidity, or both. My fans have been generous, and although nobody enjoys criticism, I’ve learned much from that, too. The novel that expresses most clearly my candor, and my bias, is For the Love of God. The novel reflects my attitudes toward those who are willing to sacrifice the lives of their children for their personal religious beliefs. We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 16 year old Mike, a terrier mix and Bennie, an 8 year old Yorkie who just looks like he’s on steroids.