It’s hard as an author to get bad reviews– and it’s hard to know what to do about them. Generally, I personally feel everyone’s entitled to their opinion about my work. As Elizabeth Gilbert states in Big Magic— my job is to get my work out there and everything else is not my business.
But it’s hard, particularly when a reviewer remarks about a medical inaccuracy in your novel and you are a medical expert. And since this blog is about medical accuracy in fiction, I’m hosting Dianna Benson to talk about her experience with just such a review.
Welcome back, Dianna.
A few months after my first novel, The Hidden Son, released in 2013, a reader/fan contacted me to inform me a review was posted on Amazon with incorrect medical comments. The person who wrote the review stated it’s not possible for someone who suffered brain damage from head trauma to recover and later become a police officer. Recently, an MD wrote a review on Amazon stating and explaining how that review is medically inaccurate – thank you, Robert Littleton, MD.
As an EMT for eleven years, I have firsthand medical experience and knowledge, especially with trauma, and I implement that into all my suspense novels. As Dr. Littleton stated, the human brain can heal from temporary damage (thus not all brain damage is permanent.) In The Hidden Son I briefly explained the character’s injuries and recovery, and in Persephone’s Fugitive (Book Two in the Cayman Islands Series), I wrote more detail about those injuries and recovery since that information fit with the characterization in one of the story scenes toward the end.
Like Dr. Littleton, I’m a Tar Heels fan – my son is a pre-med student at UNC Chapel Hill, headed to medical school to become either a neurologist or a pediatric oncologist. In addition to my EMS career, I have firsthand experience and knowledge with brain damage via my son – he was born with cerebral palsy, hypermobile joints, and dextrocardia situs inversus totalis with kartagener syndrome.
Due to his health issues, he easily suffered multiple concussions in high school and now struggles with chronic concussion syndrome. While his brain is healing, he’s able to succeed as a pre-med student, but it’s rough. His neurologist’s prognosis is my son will fully recover soon. A patient of my son’s neurologist was in a coma for a month from head trauma from a car accident. For several years this patient dealt with chronic concussion syndrome due to brain damage. Now, she’s a physician and fully recovered.
Unless I explicitly know something as a fact, I would never post it on the Internet (especially against another person) for the world to read. Just a friendly suggestion.
Here is the link to the page of reviews of The Hidden Son on Amazon.
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Dianna T. Benson is the award-winning and international bestselling author of The Hidden Son and Final Trimester. Persephone’s Fugitive is her third release. An EMT and a HazMat and FEMA Operative since 2005, Dianna authentically implements her medical and rescue experience and knowledge into all her suspense novels. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and their three children. www.diannatbenson.com
Redwood's Medical Edge 