1) Brain Surgery  - When Chicken Soup is Not Enough - the webumentary

2) A copy of the proposal for the sister radio doc (which has been commissioned by Ideas).

3) Why this will work even better on the web than on radio.

4) Who am I?

Brain Surgery  - When Chicken Soup is Not Enough -  "The Spec"

What it isn't:  a simple web page accompanying a radio documentary (no disrespect, these things are useful too).

What it is:  a stand-alone documentary existing on the internet, based on highly internet friendly
subject matter that will attract an audience and media attention in its own right.  It will share a
certain amount of content with the radio documentary and, sure, it will link to the Ideas and other CBC web sites.

What it also is:  a multilayered, informative hypernarrative story - the degree of sophistication and detail is chosen by the audience/participant.

Target Audience:

International
People interested in factual entertainment.  People with good internet connections  looking for
interesting sites to explore,  particularly those sub-satisfied with, for example, the short film sites.
People interested in neurology, brain tumours, Cushing's disease, unexplained medical conditions.
People who actually have tumours, Cushing's, unexplained medical conditions.
Adults of all ages who don't just want sophomoronic amusement on the web, but still like to be entertained.

Local
People with an interest in provincial health systems.
People who have encountered Erella Vent, Steven Davey, Extend Media, et al.
Members of several online discussion groups, hypernarrative circles, BBSs etc.
Fans of CBC online.
People who are in e-mail contact with any of the above, since that's how it works.

Target Modem Speed:
2 versions - one slow (28k) simpler edition and one faster ( >300k DSL/Cable) comprehensive site.

Content Format:

Faster Version to include:

Text - hypernarrative rendition of story in form appropriate to web, i.e. not bound by traditional media timeline.
Note: traditional "once upon a time" version will also be available for those who prefer it.
Graphics -  relatively easily downloadable vector based picture book style, representing events  and characters.
Either Flash or animated Gif; fundamentally static with simple rollovers.
Here's an example of the style proposed, taken from one of Erella's booklets.
Documentation - scanned excerpts from Erella's graphic daily journal, menus, articles by involved parties, etc.
3-D composite of brain scan giving you a 3-D view of the actual tumour that was inside her head.
Audio - Genuine sound effects and/or atmos.  A few key excerpts of dialogue or interview if apt.
Hyperlink glossary - taking the viewer/participant as deep as they wish to delve, with simple graphics if necessary.
Additional Resources - Helpful links and further opportunities for interaction if practical.

Once upon a time there was a highly successful social butterfly, living in a fairy tale house, with a gifted daughter, a bicycle covered in flowers and a high-tech top trendy dot-com job.

Then her eyesight started to go funny, she developed "ice cream" headaches, her face started bleeding at the slightest provocation, and she began to expand...

She'll admit that she was never a very skinny young woman, a la Kate Moss (but who in their right mind would want to be), however she was rather glamorous - she had been photographed for magazines and even a book cover, she had a touch of the Sofia Loren about her.

But as this mysterious illness progressed she got heavier and heavier, and tireder and tireder. And to think, she used to have energy - 5 hours sleep a night was usually enough to fuel her busy working life and extremely active social life - if there was a gallery opening, a party or a significant band in town, she'd be there - but not any more.

Nobody knew what was wrong.

She had a high-tech design job in a potentially stressful environment. Her supervisor admitted they tend to work a "binge purge" cycle, her colleagues would laugh at "nine to fivers".

Stress .... age... stress .... age ... stress.
Always the same two answers. You press one button it says stress, the other says age. She was only in her thirties.

She went for tests, she phoned her friends, she went for more tests... no conclusive answers.

On her way to the doctors once, she fainted. Big lady flat on the sidewalk - must be a heart attack.  Her mum was at the hospital - "What are you doing to my daughter?  She came here in an ambulance, are you going to send her out in a hearse?"

Still no answers.  She spent every spare moment on the web, searching for her symptoms, scanning lists of side-effects, analysing allergens, telling doctors what she'd found.

Eventually she had a CAT scan which revealed a "macro adenoma at the base of the hypothalamus".
You can read all about the extraordinary scenario that followed this revelation in the radio proposal - then come back here.

Shortcut: Net result is that she had a tumour at the base of her hypothalamus, growing on the pituitary gland. The tumour was created from pituitary gland tissue and it was secreting hormonal messages as if it were a giant gland - resulting in the creation of too many of certain hormones for a normal body. The condition is called Cushing's disease and is fatal or severely damaging if not treated. the only solution is to dig out the tumour. For that you need a brain surgeon.

We could tell Erella's story on the web using a traditional timeline, but it's not necessarily the best use of a medium, which is not bound by linear time.
We do have eight different viewpoints and it would be interesting to look at the situation through each of these people's eyes.  There would be crossover between the characters and the audience/participant would be able to choose when to move across.  There'd be glossary links as above so that you could read it at whatever level you were comfortable with. We'd have graphics, drawn by Erella, illustrating major incidents and each of the main characters.

The Characters

There's  Steven, the arty restaurant critic and ex Toronto pop star, who has an intelligent, poignant and witty take on the whole affair. He hardly recognised her in the street, she had grown so much and her face had changed (it becomes moon shaped and the hair and skin loose their sheen). He took her out to dinner for one of his reviews (we have the article) and as she wiped the sauce from a prawn spring roll off her cheek, her face started bleeding - her skin had become so thin. He pretended not to notice but he was actually dumbstruck.

There's Laura the amazingly positive sixty-something lady that Erella met online in a women's conference BBS (bulletin board). Erella would share her daily news on the BBS and members would chip in with suggestions and encouragement. Laura ended up becoming her unofficial chauffeur  - actually it was Laura's sister who drove, Laura accompanied - to doctors appointments and hospital appointments, once Erella's eyesight was too bad to drive.  They even took her to the final operation.  The members of the BBS had also organised a rota of people to see to all her needs after the op... cooking, gardening, fetching, shopping... every time the operation date was changed they had to rearrange the schedule.

There's Erella's little sister Monique, the manager of the legendary Horseshoe Tavern and music venue on Toronto's trendy Queen St West.  She was in Mexico on an extended holiday on a tiny island with only one known phone when news came through of the tumour.

There's her mother, who was in Paris when the news came through, who couldn't get her flight changed and who burst into tears in a shop when she realised she couldn't do anything about it. Apparently she's never liked Erella's hair. When she found out they were going in through the nose and not through the skull she said "Does that mean they won't be cutting your hair either?"

There are her multimedia work colleagues, Perry, Liz and Yvonne, who saw that something was wrong but thought that she was struggling to keep up - it was only with hindsight that they were able to re-evaluate the symptoms to which they were witness, the grabbing at the head, the frantic eye rubbing, the falling asleep at the desk.... they also reflect on the stresses involved and on the new role which Erella had at ExtendMedia, a downshift for a better life.

There's Richard, who lives in California, who in some ways was Erella's closest confidant during the crisis - since her mum was in Paris, her sister in Mexico, her dad in Argentina, her best friend on some remote island, Richard in LA was relatively near, at the end of a phone line, on the flip-side of an e-mail.

There's the Brain Surgeon, Dr Harley Smyth, one of North America's leading pituitary specialists. He almost became an Anglican minister and had been tempted by the lure of aeronautical engineering. But at 14, head firmly out of the clouds, he decided to become a brain surgeon. 20 years later, after 16 years of training in Canada and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he qualified. Even he wasn't sure, until the tumour was out, that the tumour was responsible for the symptoms - on analysis the tumour proved to be high in hormone producing chemicals. He can tell us exactly how the tumour is scraped out - I thought it would be with lasers and computers - but no, it's all done with tiny blades and tubes up the nose and shafts of halogen light and miniature hockey sticks and golf clubs and an amazing display of manual dexterity.

And there's Gaynor, a graphic designer from North Wales, all leather and vinyl and ever-changing hair, who was pumping away on her exerciser when she heard a CBC interview with an MRI technologist from Buffalo, New York. She rang Erella immediately - the result was that her wait for a scan was reduced from 5 months to 2 days.  Gaynor also arranged a party to show Erella they were all behind her. At this party everyone took on a responsibility, for the daughter, for food, for the garden, the shopping (you'll notice a slight overlap with the BBS ladies).  It was her duty to cook the first night Erella was out of hospital - she made a very spicy curry in the knowledge that Erella loved hot food, indeed competed with Steve the foodie in spice-munching contests, in the knowledge that Erella loved hot food but in ignorance of the fact that two days earlier she'd had a brain surgeon, lights, blades, hockey sticks & golf clubs up her nose.  It almost blew her head off.

The Architecture

It's serious, it's funny, it's a story of science, of technology, of inefficiency, of intrigue, of despair and of hope in a maxed-out multimedia world.

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