Considering a medical diagnosis to explain my protagonist’s strange behaviour
After having spent a while researching the basic construction of writing the project, I wanted to concentrate on building up a distinct profile of my protagonist Anna , particularly about determining the root cause of her unstable mental state. First evidence that something is wrong with her is subtly given away in the very first opening lines of my first chapter: ‘Raindrops; dull thumps of wet splatter my face, slithering down my cheeks in place of what should be salty liquid sorrow whilst my eyes remain dry. Unless someone licks me I’ll be fine. Fortunately sampling the tears of the bereaved isn’t exactly the done thing at funerals.’ That dry humour and the later …show more content…
Early on in the project I wanted to give her a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, to create a link between some tragic incident that resulted in the death of her parents and her own damaged mind. In order to do this first I researched the medical causes and effects of traumatic brain injury. I used trusted sources such as Headway ; a charity organisation designed to provide information and care to the families of those suffering brain damage, as well as reading one of my mother’s British Medical Journals (which she has access to as she is a doctor), to research the effects on cognitive function of mild damage. This was all useful and did give me a general idea of symptoms however what I really did want to study was actual case studies or examples to demonstrate these symptoms. After a period of watching documentary videos on YouTube about Phineas Gage ; the railroad foreman who survived the open head injury of having a metal rod forced through his brain only for it to have profuse affects on his personality, I moved on to researching more recent studies This is because I was uncertain of the reliability of the case study as the accident dated back to 1848; a time of limited medical knowledge, and I
After having spent a while researching the basic construction of writing the project, I wanted to concentrate on building up a distinct profile of my protagonist Anna , particularly about determining the root cause of her unstable mental state. First evidence that something is wrong with her is subtly given away in the very first opening lines of my first chapter: ‘Raindrops; dull thumps of wet splatter my face, slithering down my cheeks in place of what should be salty liquid sorrow whilst my eyes remain dry. Unless someone licks me I’ll be fine. Fortunately sampling the tears of the bereaved isn’t exactly the done thing at funerals.’ That dry humour and the later …show more content…
Early on in the project I wanted to give her a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, to create a link between some tragic incident that resulted in the death of her parents and her own damaged mind. In order to do this first I researched the medical causes and effects of traumatic brain injury. I used trusted sources such as Headway ; a charity organisation designed to provide information and care to the families of those suffering brain damage, as well as reading one of my mother’s British Medical Journals (which she has access to as she is a doctor), to research the effects on cognitive function of mild damage. This was all useful and did give me a general idea of symptoms however what I really did want to study was actual case studies or examples to demonstrate these symptoms. After a period of watching documentary videos on YouTube about Phineas Gage ; the railroad foreman who survived the open head injury of having a metal rod forced through his brain only for it to have profuse affects on his personality, I moved on to researching more recent studies This is because I was uncertain of the reliability of the case study as the accident dated back to 1848; a time of limited medical knowledge, and I