"We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care
by Lawrence Martin, M.D.
Table of Contents

NOTE: "We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care can be downloaded in its entirety as an e-book from 1st Books Library ($4.95). The book can also be ordered in trade paperback format for $13.50. For purchasing the e-book or print versions, please go to 1st Books Library and enter part of the book's title or the author in their search engine. Below are the first few paragraphs of THE YELLOW MAN.

Willie Duncan's body was a mess, the end result of a pint of whisky a day for God knows how many years. He was only 38 but looked 60.

When most people think of end stage alcoholics the visual image is probably one portrayed by Hollywood: a drunk stumbling down the street, or sleeping on a bar stool, or beating his wife, or abandoning her children for the bottle. The theater is also a source of impressions, for example the character of Eugene O'Neill's alcoholic mother in his autobiographical "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

Stage or screen, the portrayal is usually focused on the alcoholic's behavior: out of control, irrational, or self-destructive. But what about the body? Has Hollywood ever presented for our entertainment the physical persona of the terminal alcoholic? Hardly, and with good reason.

Maybe you'll see a closeup of a face just before the drunk slips into alcoholic stupor: grizzly beard, red lips, bloodshot eyes. And perhaps you'll hear some well rehearsed lines: "I don't care BURP! if you leave me BURP! Give me a drink BURP!" ...fade away.

Movies and television, for that matter, should not be faulted for glossing over the true clinical picture. In many cases it's too unpleasant, too gory. The kids might love it if the alcoholic was also a werewolf or vampire, but kids aren't interested in the last throes of an ordinary drunk.

You could go into any teaching hospital on any given day and find a patient like our Willie Duncan. He's yellow, head to toe; the eyeballs give it away. Normally white, Willie's eyes were a deep, obvious yellow, the result of liver failure and accumulation of yellow-tinged bile.