Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

This was not an ARC (advanced reader's copy) but I thought this book was quite good so I today decided this blog would not be exclusively for ARC's only.

Review for Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

synopsis from Goodreads website:

" In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.

After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.

Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis."

 

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My review:

I just finished this book about an hour or two ago.  I was torn wanting to give it a 3.5. Three wasn't high enough and 4 felt too high but since there isn't a 3.5, 4 won out. I enjoyed this book a lot and learned a deeper perspective about the Hurricane Katrina disaster that you don't see much in the media, or at least its been too long and I don't remember seeing much from this perspective back then. The bigger focus was on the Superdome conditions at the time is what I most remember. The first half of the book is so skillfully described you feel like you're there. The second half dealt with the legal battles that occurred after Katrina. The author did try her best to give both sides of the argument but seemed to be slightly weighted more against Anna Pou. She had to make some tough decisions made in third world conditions (electric out, no running water or working bathrooms, lack of supplies, limited communication etc.) about how to treat patients that were suffering and not likely to survive being transported out of there, and made the decision to give them palliative care to make them as comfortable as possible and ease their suffering. I take both sides with a grain of salt, as I was not there ( I have also been on the Anna Pou website and they have scathing things to say about this book) but I felt the author did her best to be fair overall and let the facts lead where they may. I did not feel like the author was trying to lead me in one way or the other much. I certainly would not have wanted to be in the position the Drs. and nurses were forced to be in and have to make those heart rending decisions about who lives and who dies.