Ostensibly, Racing to Pittsburgh is the fictitious tale of transplant cardiologist Dr. Dan Ulek's struggle to find harmony between his professional and personal lives – and to face the cancer diagnosis that threatens to derail everything he holds dear. It's the story of a man whose medical savvy sometimes precludes his ability to accept the emotional reality of his son's leukemia diagnosis. It's a tenable narrative that, despite the title, emanates from Cleveland.
Pittsburgh's author is transplant nephrologist-cum-first time novelist Dr. Donald Hricik, who candidly mined personal experience to craft his honest portrayal. OhioAuthority caught up with the father of four to learn how coping with his son Kevin's leukemia diagnosis turned fact into compelling fiction.
OhioAuthority: Was the desire to write a book based on your experience born of catharsis, an effort to examine your own emotions? If so, did you come to any new realizations about the experience as a result?
Dr. Donald Hricik: I think it is literally a miracle that Kevin [Michael in the book] survived his illness, even after a relapse when the prognosis for acute myelogenous leukemia generally goes from bad to terrible. During the ordeal, I was the emotionally weak parent. My wife Lynne was a pillar of stength, drawing on her strong religious beliefs. When we went throught it all, I always said that, if Kevin survived, I would write a book about the ordeal some day. So yes, putting the story on paper was a catharsis of sorts. It allowed me to admit my emotional weakness at the time through a fictitous character - the son's father.
OA: Why did you choose to develop a fictitious account based on the real life story of your family's ordeal with Kevin's diagnosis, rather than present a first-person narrative that chronicled the true story?
DH: Writing fiction is fun. Adding the fictional component allowed me some freedom in embellishing the semi-autobiographical account of the boy's father and family; to write a book that I hope is more fun to read than just another narrative about a kid with cancer and to have some fun developing an element of mystery. Many readers, including family members who were around during the real ordeal, have told me that they are now uncertain how much of the book is fact, and how much is fiction. That was my entire intention. I also wanted to use my experience in medicine to write a novel of interest to non-medical people. I think people are excited about reading novels in which they get tidbits of information about a field they are not entirely familiar with - in this case the world of academic medicine and transplantation. Continued here...
