The surgeons at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital have seen just about everything you can think of, and if you're anything like me, there is a pretty good chance that you've wondered how the writers of Grey's Anatomy come up with the bizarre medical stories from episode to episode for the last 16 seasons.
Here are the real stories behind some of the most remarkable surgeries from the show, according to the executive producer of the show, Zoanne Clack, via Entertainment Weekly.
"So that’s what we came up with because it would be such a funny-looking X-ray."
This is one episode that still haunts me to this day!
"That was absolutely fabricated," Zoanne revealed. "We usually have one big impalement a season, and this was obviously one of the first and the biggest. We had to figure out the trajectory of the pole, how they would still be talking, how we would move them, etc."
"They sat together and I could see where the pole could go and what organs it would go through and how it could affect them but still have them talking. There was a lot of modeling that went along with that. It was fun to figure out."
“That was definitely from an article,” Zoanne admitted. "We heard about the case and the writer immediately latched onto it, and we were just trying to figure out how far we could go with this girl, thinking of all the different possibilities of how she would get injured. Making her this fearless person definitely helped with what was going on in the episode, story-arc-wise.”
“This one was very, very complex, and it was very much about having to do that big of a surgery for love,” she explained.
“It was also all about us wanting to use a bunch of surgeons all at once. We wanted it to be complex and we wanted it to inform on the love triangle [Derek-Mark-Addison]".
“We couldn’t make that up!," Zoanne exclaimed.
“It happens; the fish will follow the stream of urine into the penis. This was a case we read about in season 1 or 2 and literally tried to put it in three or four episodes. It would always fall out because it wasn’t grounded enough, or we had too many stories and we had to let go of one. We finally accomplished it!"
"It was in so many episodes before the one it ended up in, it was hilarious.”
“Like penis fish, tree hands was in the ether for a long time, and [executive producer] Mark Wilding was the one that pulled it off,” Zoanne said. “It was based on a real case. A little boy actually had this disease and went to go and get it treated in India or somewhere, and then they grew back again."
"It was really interesting because I really didn’t even understand how warts turn into that."
"So we had to base our premise on the character’s reclusive backstory, and then we were able to pull it up and use it."
"That came from the mind of [series creator] Shonda Rhimes," Zoanne revealed. "That was one that actually took a long time to research because it doesn’t really happen. We were trying to figure out the effect of cement on the body from smaller cases, where it’s happened on arms or legs or whatever. The main point of that was to get all of our characters together.
"I was really excited about that one," Zoanne said. "One of the big learning curves I had to make on early seasons was trying to open up my mind and not say no to writers' suggestions all the time."
"Then we thought to have him do a pregnancy test with his wife who is actually pregnant, and if it’s positive he can truly believe that he’s pregnant."
Let us know what your favorite patient story was from Grey's Anatomy in the comments below!
