Grey’s Episode Hits Close to Home for Writer

Each week, after the lastest epsiode of Grey’s Anatomy airs, the writer or writers responsible for the episode are required by show runner Shonda Rhimes to go online to www.greyswriters.com and write about the story behind the story. What was going on while shooting? What the inspiration by the characters actions? Behind the scenes stuff…the stuff I personally love.

After the emotionally charged “Six Days: (Parts 1&2) I was anxious to read the back story. I had no idea how deeply personal this particular episode was to its writer Krista Vernoff. Read an excerpt below. I think I may have cried more reading the blog entry than during the show last night…and that’s saying a lot.

Krista Vernoff on life, death, and “Six Days, Part 2”

The card at the end of this hour of TV that read “In memory of Bob Verne” was a tribute to my father. He died six years ago at the age of 56 after a very short battle with esophageal cancer. He called me one day at my office at Charmed and told me he thought he had the flu. A week after that he had surgery on a massive tumor at the base of his esophagus. Before the surgery he was laughing and celebrating with family. He had a profoundly positive attitude. After the surgery, he had a massive scar down his belly and was intubated and pale, and upon seeing him, I, who thought of myself as quite strong and educated and capable of handling that moment, started to shake and then hyperventilate and had to be helped out of the room.

During the week we waited for him to recover, we learned that kidney function was of the utmost importance and I became obsessed, absolutely obsessed with his urine output. I checked that urine bag like 50 times a day.

At one point, the doctors gathered the family to tell us that my Dad had a kink in his breathing tube and that they might not be able to get a new one in. They told us we needed to prepare ourselves for the possibility that this was it. We stood out in the hallway and waited, holding our breath, terrified. There was another family there in the hallway, the family of a 16 year old boy who’d been shot on the street on his way home from work in what was feared to be gang related violence, though his family insisted that he was a good kid, that he wasn’t in any gang. They were as scared as we were as they waited for news of condition. We talked to them for awhile, made small talk, then fell silent. And after a long, pregnant pause, one of the teenagers of the family looked over at a member of my family with a very disturbed look on his face. And then he said “Dang. Somebody just farted. And I think it’s this old white guy right here.” My family laughed harder than we have ever laughed in our lives. And my dad lived through the reintubation.

He lived for three more days.

Continue reading Krista’s story….

And if you need more of a kick to the heart, listen to Krista talking about the episode during this week’s Grey’s Anatomy podcast here