Book Club. Five Days at Memorial

[balancedlife]

This will be mostly about CQ's first point, so some folks may not want to read this either.

CQ & Moosi,it is infuriating that the families and the LifeCare staff were sent away. Both because that meant that those patients were left without any familiar people to comfort and care for them and because, to me, that meant it became very easy for euthanasia to seem a reasonable option. I think I remember that some of the family members were actually helping with medical treatment as much as they were capable of doing anyway. No surprise that, with all those extra and loving hands gone, the patients went downhill fast. And I am not even considering the fact that no treatment was given to the patients for, what?, 24 hours? Of course, they would be in bad shape.

I do think that it was a matter of inject and move on because it is in my head that they went back to check on patients already injected and one of them was still alive and they injected more.

Moosi, my heart goes out to you. The passing of your mom and your dad must have been so difficult for you and your family, but it does sound like you all eased the way for your parents. You were a blessing to them both.

I do hope that Charity became a prototype for an excellent way to approach handling disasters in the medical field. What an amazing and dedicated group of people!

Early on, I tried so hard to be evenhanded about Pou and her cohorts, but I really do hate her and I hate that she benefited from that disaster.

[ural]

Well I finally finished this book. I really do not have a lot to add to the discussion. I think the entire epilogue could have been eliminated. It was as though the author didn't know when to stop and the cited emergencies really did not add to the Memorial saga. I really thought the entire book needed a good editor. I really felt sorry for the nurses in the book. It is my understanding that they are taught not to question the doctor. As a Christian I could never knowingly bring harm to anyone and I feel the system really failed the families of the deceased patients.

I cannot say I enjoyed this book because there was no joy about it. There were just so many things that went wrong and no one seemed to be in charge. As I said earlier, I just cannot understand why a major hospital, in a flood prone, hurricane ally would not have an emergency plan.

On a completely different front, I know some of the Katrina evacuees came to our area and when FEMA gave them checks for their expenses, the checks were cashed for Coach Handbags and Gucci scarves among other expensive luxury items.

[mary~m]

I was late in starting and finishing this book, but have really enjoyed this discussion.

I had no idea what had happened at Memorial before reading this book.  I was angry and judgmental as I read, but I kept coming back to not knowing how I would cope in a crisis with no/little sleep and no idea what form, if any, help would take. 

My two positive takeaways were how Charity coped, and the story about the doctor in India.  I thought there were great crisis lessons there.

I agree that the epilogue really rambled on.  If I wasn't crazy stubborn about (nearly) always finishing a book, I would have given up.

I will be ready in a more timely fashion for the Ove discussion.