Scrambled Leggs: A Snarky Tale of Hospital Hooey    
By Sally Franz

Sally Franz got transverse myelitis while she was chaperoning a ski trip with a church youth group.  Her experience in the emergency room was of the unfortunate and not uncommon variety.  Unfortunately for Sally, much of her experience in the hospital and throughout her rehabilitation was more than difficult.  She was paralyzed from the waist down and suffered from severe nerve pain.  She also suffered from the other typical symptoms of TM, including bowel and bladder dysfunction and spasticity.  The physical challenges would have been enough to try a person’s emotional and psychological reserves; the nature of the treatment that Sally received from the physicians and hospital staff only compounded her difficulties.  In describing and explaining the experience, Sally characterizes the many frightening and frustrating episodes with the doctors, nurses, therapists and staff with great humor and very sharp sarcasm.  This perspective on her situation came very naturally to Sally, as she is a former stand-up comic and an award winning humor writer; she describes the world as she sees the world.

As full disclosure in discussing Sally’s book, when faced with life’s obstacles, I’m the first to be laughing, even when there is almost nothing to laugh at or even smile about.  I’ve always found that my laughter is a good first defense against anxiety and fear; it always beats the heck out of screaming and crying in sheer terror.  And I consider myself something of a connoisseur of humor.  I’m pretty sure my people invented sarcasm and humor sometime between the invention of circumcision and the hora.  Humor is a wonderful way to engage in social commentary, while minimizing the risk that the czar’s army will burn down the village as a reaction to one’s insightful and brilliant observations.  Hummmm … is he a revolutionary, a union organizer or the court jester?

If you had a marvelous experience in the emergency room and you only find humor in Tom and Jerry cartoons, Sally’s characterizations of her experience might come across as a bit harsh.  If, however, your sense of humor is well developed and you are able to relate to her experiences surrounding the confusion and delay of her diagnosis and treatment, you are going to find her descriptions to be wonderfully clever, insightful and very funny.  In addition to the trials surrounding diagnosis and treatment, Sally does a meticulous job of describing the difficulties she experienced in having the nurses, doctors and medical staff pay any attention to her words or her needs or to her, in general.  Sally devotes a chapter of her book to a description of the symptoms from TM; you will so appreciate her depiction of these incredibly difficult symptoms. 

Life doesn’t make an appointment with a person to fit in a transverse myelitis attack; it happens when it happens.  Such was the case for Sally.  While she was going through the experience of getting, rehabbing from and adjusting to transverse myelitis, she found herself in financial ruin, she was losing her home, her mother passed away, she was diagnosed with cancer, a close friend died, and her husband was being unfaithful and she ended her marriage.  It is a very good thing that Sally has a sense of humor.

Humor and sarcasm are the tools Sally uses to construct a very honest and frightening characterization of her experience with getting TM, going through the rehabilitation process, and adjusting to the long-term consequences of permanent damage to the spinal cord … and all of what that means for a person and their family.  Her candor in describing her experience is both courageous and incredibly generous.  She opens up and lays it all out there about everything.  Her willingness to share the details about the whole experience can only help people who are going through or have gone through the same experiences.  What is truly interesting about Sally and her approach to telling her story is that all of this honesty, candor, humor and sarcasm are wrapped in an envelope of great spirituality and faith.

Scrambled Leggs is a funny, quick read.  For people who have TM or ADEM or NMO, you will relate to many of Sally’s experiences and appreciate her willingness to share these with you in a very personal way.  Sally’s work is also an important message, albeit packaged in a very lighthearted approach, that it is impossible to treat a person without listening to what they have to say.  The effective provision of health care requires that the patient and their family be informed participants in the decision-making process.

I encourage you to read Scrambled Leggs because I believe that you will appreciate and enjoy Sally’s book.  Sally is donating 10% of the proceeds from your purchase to The Transverse Myelitis Association, if buy it before August 8th.  Thank you, Sally.

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