In 'Real Life' I'm an eye doctor. In a complete quirk of irony, I also have some visual impairments--night blindness and side vision loss. Those problems hadn't been too big of an issue until about a year ago when the retinal doc finally said 'no night driving'. While this sucked, I knew it was coming, so it wasn't a real surprise. Anyway, knowing that the vision is kind of going downhill along with annoying arthritis problems (mostly knees) made me look at alternatives to practicing optometry. Since I enjoy writing, I started working on that a couple years back, and last summer I picked up a lot more writing gigs in anticipation of being off work last fall for a knee replacement. I figured I could write an article here and there while I was recovering, even if I couldn't work. I've written quite a bit of website content for Real People (I think I'm up to about 200 articles now), but hadn't had research articles published in the past.
Anyway, I started working with an ophthalmologist on one project, and he asked me to co-author a research article. It was just published!
If you're interested in technical medical eye stuff, it's here: http://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/362113
I'm the Beth Carlock part of the group. :)