I get paid $40 a page--a lump sum at the end of the assignment. The chapters are anything from 60 to 220 pages, depending on the subject matter. You set your own deadlines, which is good. If you complete it quickly you can get a lot of money. But, I mean, I like to goof off some days. You know, if I just don't feel like working that hard (laughs). So it's nice. But I don't make that much money. I don't have health benefits. I'm not really doing well financially. But I love my job, and that, to me, is worth the tradeoff.

Each time, when you need a new assignment, they give you a list of topics to choose from; nerve injuries, skull fractures, knee dislocations--whatever makes you tingle inside (laughs). And so you choose the one that sounds the most interesting. I specialize in traumatic injuries, things where your skin is ripped open and your bones are smashed into a zillion pieces.

At first I used to get really nauseated, physically sick, looking at a lot of the pictures, because you're looking at a gaping flap hanging out of your arm and stuff. I mean, it's not your arm, but you can feel it like it's your arm. You know, like a picture of a guy who got his hand caught in a meat grinding machine. And it's just so interesting. The human wrist with veins, adipose tissue, blood vessels, shattered, splintered bones just hanging out there. It's just like, "Oh, that could happen to me." In the case I'm talking about, they actually got the guy's hand and reattached it. You know, he doesn't have a good grip, but he has some function.

I spend about a third of my work time at the NYU School of Medicine Medical Library. I'm not supposed to be allowed in there, I mean, I'm not student or a doctor, so I shouldn't be allowed in. But I have a stethoscope, and I kind of hang it around my neck and walk in, just like a doctor or a med student. It's startlingly easy. It's also a great way to pick up a guy. But anyway, I spend long days there at the library. And I do that for as long as the research takes, you know. It can be a couple of weeks to a month doing the research. And then I come home and I do the writing. I take notes long hand and I come home and just put it all together. And there isn't a phase of what I do that I don't love. Like the one I just completed, the editing phase. Perfecting the writing, the sentence structure, it's really a challenge. I mean, it's a challenge to figure out, you know, how to say "de-vitalized tissue" in a more interesting way than what you normally hear. You know, because you're looking at technical material, and you can't be too verbose. And you can't be too flowery. You can't be too creative. But still you always try to be creative. You know, even in the most elemental kind of a sentence. So, yeah, I love my job.

The other great thing about it, unlike, you know, say mechanics or electronics, which I'm sure could be interesting, is that it's something that's so relevant to everybody. It's your body. It's all this stuff inside your body moving around. Working with the human body is really a very impersonal kind of a thing. You know, like doctors have to be impersonal when they're cutting people open or fixing people up. And you just sort of develop that.

I like to move all around the body. I've done a lot of stuff below the waist. You know, in the lower extremities. And I really want to do more in the wrists and the hands. I've done brain injuries and vascular injuries, which was nice because it covered every area of the body. I've also done other things, like occupational lung disease.

I always take the opportunity to learn what I can. You know, when I'm looking for my topic which is, like, skull fractures and stuff, I might accidentally come across an article about all kinds of stuff that gay guys put up their butts that they have to go to the emergency room to take out. And I mean, that's, like, fascinating reading. You know, I have a butt; maybe some day I'll want to put something up it. And now I have some ideas (laughs). The funny thing in this article--I mean, I really found this the other day--is that when these guys go to the emergency room they always say it was an accident. The best one was a guy that had a light bulb. It's so dangerous. And because it created a suction, they couldn't just pull it out. So they had to, like, break it. And it, like, lacerated all inside his rectum and stuff. So, there's always stuff like that you come across.

I had to write a short chapter on something called Bruerger's Disease. What it is is a "necrotizing disease." It kills the tissue, like, right at the tips of the fingers and the tips of the toes and then moves up progressively. It's caused by smoking cigarettes. There are other risk factors, but the main thing is cigarette smoking. So a guy will go in, you know, and he's having pain at the tips of his fingers. And the doctor will say, well, you've got Bruerger's Disease, and the only way to cure it is to cut it off at the point of healthy tissue. And they say to the people if you stop smoking you will no longer have the disease. But many times, the people are so hooked on cigarettes they'll keep smoking. So then they go back and they get more things chopped off. To the point where I saw this great picture of a guy sitting in a hospital bed--no legs! And all he had was a little stump of a left arm. The right arm was gone. And he had an apparatus hooked up on that stump so he could still smoke. That's cool (laughs). I'm a heavy smoker, but like, I would stop the minute I lost that first tip of my finger (laughs). I just loved that chapter (laughs).

I'm not being hyperbolic, but I used to have a real existential dilemma about the body, our bodies. I mean, it really used to freak me out that the body that our mind is encased in is so fragile. You know, it can be thinking the greatest thing in the world, and a car will hit us and we're gone. You know, it's why I don't believe in God. It's so inadequate, this housing. All of the horrible things that can happen. A car crash. Or a piano falls on your head. Or a tornado or a plane crash. But it's amazing, the things that doctors can do to put you back together. So now I'm much less, like, freaked out by life. Life used to be like a real, freakie-deakie thing (laughs). But this kind of gives you something like faith or confidence or something--you don't feel so vulnerable. You feel that whatever might happen can be handled medically. And I think it probably transfers over, you know, in a psychological way too. That things are not irrevocably broken. They can be put back together. The human body is really capable of a lot of interesting ways of regenerating itself. It's a good lesson.

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