Five Days at Memorial

Book 29 of my 2019 Reading Challenge

read from March 12 - 23

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

by Sheri Fink

Summary (via Goodreads)

published 2013

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.

My Opinion

4 stars

I knew that this would be tough on the heart because of the subject and because of the review from someone that has a very similar soul to me.  I started taking notes of different things, especially the frustrations with bureaucracy and miscommunication, but had to stop because I knew that typing them all out and focusing on them in a review would be too much.  As far as the people actually doing the work, I don't think I can pass judgement when I wasn't there.  I understand why people investigated it and hopefully learned for the future but I was very frustrated with the workers that left before all of the patients were gone who then talked to the media like Monday morning quarterbacks.  Cooperating with the investigation and expressing disagreement in those forums was fine but going to the press was not.  You don't want judgement for leaving?  Then you don't get to judge the actions of those who stayed.

It was engaging and readable.  It's hard when there are so many people involved, not to mention the medical jargon, but the material was presented in digestible pieces and I understood everything.

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars because the end dragged but I rounded up because the parts that were good were really, really good.

A Few Quotes from the Book

"We did everything humanly possible to save those patients. The government totally abandoned us to die, in the houses, in the streets, in the hospitals. Maybe a lot of us made mistakes, but we made the best decisions we could at the time."

"Why weren't there plans to cope with these patients when you knew a storm was coming? Sometimes the ethical - the most important ethical question sometimes is the one you ask not at the moment of crisis, but the duty you have to anticipate certain kinds of crises and avoid them."

"In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals."