Blogging mentor Doc Searls in a world of hurt
Sixty-year-old David "Doc" Searls, a ramblingly lucid blogger who has mentored many a protégé, is recovering very slowly in a hospital near Harvard University. Doc has spent the week suffering a series of increasingly outlandish medical malfunctions that would make for a classic Doc Searls blog post if they weren't so lethal. Searls, a Santa Barbara resident who currently holds a Harvard fellowship, scared the bejeezus out of friends and followers this week by detailing his increasingly preposterous illnesses on his blog and on Twitter. As conferencegoers frantically tried to figure it all out by reading his posts in reverse, Valleywag phoned Doc in his hospital room to get the 100-word version.
Here's what Doc says: He was originally diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism — blockage of an artery. That's what could've killed him. It didn't. He's on blood thinners now. But he's had bad reactions to the process of being hospitalized for the "PE." He's got a partially collapsed lung. He's retaining water. Most painful, a fairly standard exploratory procedure gave him pancreatitis — inflammation of the pancreas. You have a pancreas, but most of the time you can't feel it. Doc can tell you all about his right now.
Prognosis? Honestly, between Doc's painkillers and our own crying into the keyboard, we lost track of all the talk about cystic lesion this and endoscopic that. But here's the takeaway: Doc is going to suffer a lot for a few more days. In theory, he'll get better. In practice, he hurts like hell. He asked that we not name his hospital or give out his contact info. If you worry, he says, just send good thoughts his way. He'll keep posting updates. One thing's sure: When he's better, he's going to have a better metaphor for Web 2.0 accidentally killing the patient that anyone's ever dreamed of.
