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On The Table Read, “The Best Book Reader Magazine in the UK“, Doctor Rod Tanchanco discusses his new book, First Patients: The Incredible True Stories Of Pioneer Patients, about the history of the first patients to experience a range of medical treatments.
Written by JJ Barnes
I interviewed Rod Tanchanco about his new book, First Patients: The Incredible True Stories of Pioneer Patients, what inspired him to write it, and the research that went into compiling his stories.
My name is Rod Tanchanco, author of FIRST PATIENTS: The incredible true stories of pioneer patients. I have been a physician for 30 years, currently working in clinical research. I’ve enjoyed writing since I was much younger.
I remember my brother and I creating a newspaper and magazines for the family compound. Later, I found myself writing for school newspapers, yearbooks, submitting articles to magazines.
Sometime around 2012
At about the same time, 2012.
Almost 10 years. It was mostly complete in 2014, and then it hibernated until I decided to bring it out again in 2021.
When I discovered enough stories that I found captivating enough to research and write about. I believed that if they were interesting enough for me, if I told the stories well, others would too.
Finding time (and sometimes energy) to write.
When I read the story about the first pacemaker, I thought that would be an interesting theme – finding less known stories of the people caught in the middle of important medical milestones. I looked for personal ordeals, conflicts, threats to values in the context of their time and situation.
Sources were quite varied: medical journal articles from the medieval period to the present, newspaper accounts, books, magazine articles, museums, experts, medical charts, personal biographies, interviews, correspondence with the involved characters.
It’s a collection of stories and I was initially not sure how to sequence them. Should I group them by theme? By time periods? By common links? In the end, I agreed with my editor’s advice to sequence them chronologically from oldest to most recent.
For the structure of the individual stories, I followed the familiar story arc, applied as best as possible to a creative nonfiction narrative.
Yes. I hired a professional editor who worked on the manuscript for about 3-4 months. Before it got to her, I had revised and edited it—I don’t know how many times. I wanted it to be as polished as possible even before hitting the editor’s desk. By the time the editor got it, she told me halfway through that it was “in good shape” to start with, but she still needed to be meticulously thorough.
Write it first for yourself with no expectations, but for the joy and satisfaction of completing it.
Sure. I work in clinical research so I am naturally interested in stories about human experimentation. I am also a Filipino-American and would love to write about my birth country. So, a story about a disastrous clinical trial on Philippine prisoners during the American colonial period naturally caught my attention.
Yes, I am proud. Absolutely worth the effort.
Apple Books
https://www.facebook.com/First-Patients-113152404604725
https://www.instagram.com/rtanch22/
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/rod-tanchanco?list=about
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59758361-first-patients
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