Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Meet and Greet: GUTGAA Contest by Deana Barnhart

by Dr. Margaret Aranda

Well for intro, yes I'm a real doctor.  I'm only here because some lady was reaching over for Chinese food and pressed the gas instead of the brakes...no really it's true...and left me bed-ridden for well...6 years...no kidding again..how could any one make this up?  So I had nothing but time and my MacBook Pro on my hands so here I was with an iv Drip Drip Hum Drum  for it's true...3 1/2 years.

I graduated High School at 16, went to Cosmetology School then Real Estate School, the went Pre-Med.  Graduated USC Keck School of Medicine, graduated Stanford Anesthesiology and Stanford Critical Care, then off to the University of Pennsylvania for my first job.  My son was 9 months old when I started Pre-med, and he was 17 when I got my first job... Really? You know the answer to that one.

So my latest ~ I'm heading back into the work force in Preventive Medicine.  Age Management Medicine, to be specific; I'm now a Cenegenics Institute Physician and loving it!  Thank you Dr. Jeffrey Leake and James Powell and Robert Willix, MD!  Nothing like helping someone stay healthy, especially postmenopausal women who never had "The Second Talk" about hormones.  Woosh!

So GUTGAA is Gearing Up To Get An Agent, and we are asked to answer these questions, or make up a question if we don't like it....but I like them all, so here goes...




-Where do you write?  In a canopy bed.  I spent 6 years in bed after a car accident, so no surprise there.  I couldn't get up to go any where else, so I'm just used to it now.  Feels comfortable.  Maybe one day this will change...


-Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see? I see a huge bottle of Perrier.  Cold.  Lemon.  Yum.      It replaces the iv I used to be on, for 3 1/2 years.  Ahhh.  I just love the sparkle.


-Favorite time to write?  Definitely when the lights are out and everyone on this side of the globe is asleep. 



-Drink of choice while writing?   You guessed.  Perrier Lemon, on the rocks. 

-When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence? No music, only the night time and the crickets and the airplanes that are punching holes in the clouds. 






-What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it? Stepping from the Edge is my latest...inspiration came from standing on the edge of life, over and over again... and viewing that scene from Australia, where that little indigenous boy is chased by the herd of buffalo.  He turns around, listening to the voice of his Grandfather, and halts as he is trapped at cliff's edge.  He faces the herd, poses in a stance, and eyes them head-on.  Yeah.  That's what I'm talking about!




-What's your most valuable writing tip?  Just put your fingers on the keys.  I like to pretend that I'm on an old-fashioned typewriter.   No editing.  Just write.  


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Dr. Margaret Aranda's Books:
BUY IT NOW: www.drmargaretaranda.tateauthor.com/other-works/

No More Tears en Espanol
Face Book Page: Stepping from the Edge
Little Missy Two-Shoes Likes to go to School
From Menarche to Menopause: A Journey through Time






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Monday, September 3, 2012

So How Did it All Start, Anyway?


Great question.  I was leaving a visit with Grandpa, driving with my then 3-year old daughter tightly snuggled in the back seat of my Ford Expedition.  The chocolate lab, Ella was only 3 months old and I had fastened her in behind the driver's seat, flush on the floor in a crate.





We drove from Calabasas through Malibu Canyon, and had just begun to smell the ocean salt in the air.  Ahh.  I could breathe.

It was around 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon.  There was no warning, no screeching of brakes.  Only a huge >Crash< and suddenly, we were facing oncoming traffic.  I braced myself to be smashed between oncoming traffic and the traffic behind me.  My arms tightened on the steering wheel.  I instantly heard another >Crash< behind me.  I thought we would be crushed.




But nothing happened.  Nothing.

In fact, the drivers kept on driving.  The cars in front of me parted through the waters of my truck, and the cars behind me drove blankly forward, simply moving over so they could forge on through.   Their faces were blank.  No eyes, no noses, no mouths.  Only a forehead and a chin.  No one stopped.  No one cared.



The light changed and I ran out of my truck to check on the baby.  Cars were whooshing past.  The light changed again, and cars came at me again.  One lovely man stepped out of his truck to help.  By this time, three cars were damaged, I could see.  I whipped the back door opened and my daughter looked up at me with those big brown eyes.  "Are you okay?" I asked.  She looked up from her little toy in her hand.  "Yes, Mama."

The door slammed on my right arm, leaving a bruise.  I had swung it opened too hard so that it had bounced back at me.  "I'd better get out of here," I thought, "She is safe."

Really, I was in a stupor.  Seven Police and Sheriffs cars, and two fire engines later, I was sitting on the grassy hills of Pepperdine University.  The grass and the sun, the sea gulls and the wind.  It was only the way it was, and nothing cared about what happened.  That was the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it, and the beginning of a completely different life.  I had no idea.



Later, Denise Dador from Channel 7 KABC Los Angeles interviewed me in my Cardiologist's office.



In retrospect, I can look at what I have written here and I know several things.  I know it all happened for a reason.  It happened so that I could meet thousands of people, and so that I could be a  physician in a hospital bed on a Cardiology floor with only gray-haired people.  It happened so that I would know what it felt like to be a patient.  And so that I would know what it felt like to be a physician in a patient's body.  Or was I a patient in a physician's body?   The lines were blurred.

There weren't any rules.  No one had forged the way.  The line between physician and patient was blurred forever more.  The physician had become a patient and now I was up for the final conquest,

.


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Dr. Margaret Aranda's Books:

No More Tears en Espanol
Face Book Page: Stepping from the Edge
Little Missy Two-Shoes Likes to go to School
From Menarche to Menopause: A Journey through Time



To Order Dr. Aranda's books, please click here:
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