Donna Trussell

Dr. Marnie Rose on the 2002 reality show "Houston Medical"

My new post on Politics Daily / Woman Up. She Had a Job, a Boyfriend and a Brain Tumor, Back When Reality TV Was Real.

For a moment in time, she was pediatric resident Dr. Marnie Rose at Memorial Hermann in Houston. I got to know her a little during my first, tumultuous year of recovery from ovarian cancer. Dr. Rose was on TV.

Back in those days I was combing the schedule for any reality show that slithered its way to the tube. There among the dreck of the early 2000s (guilty pleasures “Mr. Personality,” et al I’m looking at you) was the lovely Ms. Rose in “Houston Medical,” an ABC show that featured doctors, patients and their families. The program, shot over the course of a year, ran for six episodes in June and July 2002.

Back then we were still in the hazy dawn of reality TV. Nobody was watching these summer replacements and obscure cable channels, and so nobody was interested in micromanaging the content. Absent were heavy-handed product placements, market-researched casting and sentimentality spreading like an oil slick at every turn.

On “Mr. Personality,” bachelorette Hayley Arp selected men based on just their personalities. You see, they were all wearing full-head masks. As if that wasn’t enough to creep you out, host Monica Lewinsky rounded out the enterprise. One very short season.

“Married by America,” too, was quickly snuffed…

Read the rest on Politics Daily. She Had a Job, a Boyfriend and a Brain Tumor, Back When Reality TV Was Real.