When I retired from the University of Illinois in 2007, we began traveling to different universities where I filled in as a "lo
cum tenans". In the vernacular, we tend to say that we "did a locum". If you go back and follow this blog from Winter 2008 you will get a pretty good idea of how much we have enjoyed the ride. An interesting part of this was that unlike the University of Illinois, where I had input into the language and concepts about imaging for veterinary students from day one, I was working with students who had been indoctrinated into medical jargon by other folks without my input. I found that over the years, I had developed teaching concepts that were really quite a bit more "different" than I had realized. As I worked with "other people's kids", I found that quite often I had to go back and explain what I meant when I said.... yadda yadda yadda.... Basically (one of my overused words); most people who teach medical principles seem to deliver what I call the "classic jargon". Many concepts are presented as they were originally described in early years and the terms have not been updated. Medical imaging people will recognize that what was originally described by the genius Dr. Ben Felson as the
silhouette sign, is slowly being replaced by "
edge effacement". I do apologize to non-imaging folks but I'm not going to go into that right now.... just an example. Ben's observation was great, but people have developed terms which are easier for students to understand and better describe the concept. However many more such terms seem to have roots and are difficult to dig up and replace with better terms that are not so difficult to understand. I realize that I use more "better" terms than most. In this regard, I preface my remarks to students and residents with "I'm against the world, but I know I'm right". The more I did this and watched the students respond, I came to the conclusion that my way WAS better. I do need to make a point here that I have found that there are some other radiologist out there who use many of the terms that I use, so I should never claim to be sole proprietor of this "knowledge". I say all of this to get to this statement. Often when students wondered why others didn't use this terminology, I would say, "If I ever write a book, it will be there". Thinking that a book would never be in the offing.
About 18 months ago, a former resident from the University of Illinois, Dr. Mike Muhlbauer contacted me from his imaging practice near St. Louis with a proposal. I will paraphrase his story and he can make any corrections he desires in the comments to this post. There has been a great little veterinary radiology book around for years and years. Dr. Jerry Owens developed "the Purina Book" which was a guide to veterinary radiology in which rather than trying to illustrate points using radiographs (X-Rays), they used "conceptual drawings". Two things gave this book great favor; first it was free to students, made available by the Purina company. Secondly in the conceptual drawings, you could actually see what they were trying to illustrate, unlike that of most radiology books of the day. In 1999, Dr. Darryl Biery joined Jerry and they published the second edition of "
Radiographic Interpretation for the Small Animal Clinician"; again free from Purina.
Fast forward to 2012 (give or take a couple of years) the facts are fuzzy to me, but Dr. Muhlbauer somehow got into the picture with the plan of doing much of the legwork to publish a 3rd edition. Over a couple of years for various reasons, both Drs. Owens and Biery felt the need to withdraw and Mike approached me with the dilemma of having a deal with the publisher and nothing to give them. "Would you ever consider being involved in publishing a book?"...... My immediate response was, "NO, HELL NO". Then as he talked, my statement to students over the past couple of years started ringing in my ears and that little voice said, "put up or shut up" (so to speak). I explained this to Mike and finally said that I would consider it, but "my" concepts would have to be used when they countered the "status quo". At some point, he said that he thought it would be good to have a "refreshing approach".. Oh, That was in January, I think (close anyway) and the Deadline was September 1. As we employed massive e-mails and numerous dumps into DropBox, interspersed with lengthy phone calls, we arrived at a format and a plan. It was interesting that as we went through the revision process, some of the concepts I felt needed "updating" were "new" to Mike. Seems either they were developed during the 20 years sinces his training or he "digressed" into the "common" jargon himself... It was an exciting trip for both of us. He learned, I learned and there were a few things we had to just let lie. We used a lot of the "old" illustrations because we felt we couldn't improve on them yet did make several new ones. The book was changed enough from the original that it became; "
Radiography of the Dog and Cat; Guide to Making and Interpreting Radiographs". Oregon State and Oklahoma State folks should be thrilled that since I did spend significant time there in massaging these concepts, their school colors were used for the book. Mike is naturally first author because he has been the "mover and shaker" from the beginning to end. It can be found at:
Radiography of the Dog and Cat
Oh, as much as we would like it to be, it's not free.
It is with joy and trepidation that we release "our baby" to the world. We already know that in the "hurry up" nature in which we put it together, there are several "mistakes" or things that didn't get caught during "editing". Although we sincerely thank the folks at Wiley for they way they worked with us, we did get a rude awakening to the "modern day publishing process". As our collegues start to peruse our work, we thoroughly expect 2 separate responses. Surely there will be those learned scholors who will say, "what in the world are they talking about?" or "I always knew .....(MCM/SKK) was full of it. Here's the proof". We also trust that there will be some who will applaud the "updated" nature of the material. Surely the statement, "there is no such thing as radiolucent" will produce some raised eyebrows, we hope folks will think it through and see it as improvement on the status quo of education.
I will end this post by thanking collegues, mentors, trainees, students, and patients for contributions to my education. It is amazing how a statement, a question, or even an individual case can impact our thinking. I often tell students that "Normal is developing in your head every day"... This is the journey we are on.
Each day, we are impacted by facts, ideas, and circumstances which filtered through our basic understanding of life form our truth for use tomorrow.
