Shira Shiloah is an anesthesiologist with Medical Anesthesia Group. She’s also a successful writer, whose first novel, a medical thriller published in September 2020 called Emergence, became a best-seller. The plot, we should add, involves a deranged surgeon in a Memphis hospital who is a serial killer. It’s got some tense and scary moments.
So, one could fairly say that Dr. Shiloah puts people to sleep by day and keeps them awake at night, turning pages. Her second novel is set to be published soon.
We talked with Shiloah about her background, the medical challenges presented by the pandemic, and the dual career roles she has taken on.
Shiloah has practiced medicine in Memphis since 2004. “I never thought I would be a lifelong Memphian,” she says, “but the city has been really good to me.” Her family emigrated here from Israel when she was three years old and she went to grade school and high school in Memphis. “And I came back here for medical school,” Shiloah adds.
She says the past two years have been stressful and yet transformative. “Early in the pandemic, before I got vaccinated in December 2020 and January 2021, we had to rethink everything,” Shiloah says. “As an anesthesiologist, I was literally managing the airways of Covid patients all day. My greatest fear at that point was bringing the disease home and exposing my family. Things we once took for granted totally changed. I would get home, take off my clothes, and head straight to the shower, before even saying hello.”
Shiloah says the vaccines were — and remain — a game-changer. “It wasn’t until my family was vaccinated,” she says, “that we could relax a little.” She has little patience for those who “spin nonsense” about life-saving drugs. “We should be grateful for these miracle drugs,” she says, adding, “Even though Omicron looks to be less dangerous at this point, we don’t know if it will have long-term effects like memory fog or fatigue, so it’s important to keep taking precautions.”
Ironically, the pandemic has also served as something of a “sanctuary” for Shiloah’s burgeoning writing career. “I had no idea the first book would do so well, but then it took off. With the pandemic, I had more time at home to write and was able to finish my second book, which is now in the process of being published.”
So how have Shiloah’s colleagues reacted to her writing career? “Sometimes, the nurses and other doctors will bring in a copy of Emergence for me to sign, which is fun. They’ve been very supportive.” She hastens to add that her novel, while set in a hospital in Memphis with a protagonist who is a female anesthesiologist, is fiction, and shouldn’t be taken too literally.
She says the best writing advice she’s gotten is to “look out the window, not in the mirror.” And she also has some advice for young people with medical careers: “Don’t give up your creative processes while enmeshed in the science. Don’t give up your creative outlets, whether it’s music, art, or writing. You don’t have to become one-dimensional. Never stop nurturing the creative person you are.”