Reviews tagging 'Death'

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

20 reviews

emiliamaria76's review

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Mental illness, Murder, Grief, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Dementia, Death, Medical trauma, Animal death, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Blood, Child death, Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Chronic illness

mischiefmimi's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative sad tense slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical trauma, Racism, Police brutality, Medical content, Death of parent, Grief, Chronic illness, Dementia, Terminal illness, Animal death, Addiction, Cancer, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Injury/Injury detail

tjdewald's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.75

The story is good but the story is not one of the author’s. She is simply retelling what happened. It’s a fascinating story of ethics and disaster but it is so slow. I felt the ending in the epilogue could have been better. It didn’t feel “done”. I’m glad I read the book, learned about medical procedures in relation to disasters, and was able to ponder the ethical battle of medical assisted euthanasia. I would recommend this book to people who are genuinely interested in ethics, disaster research/response, and tough medical dilemmas. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Ableism, Blood, Death, Classism, Animal cruelty, Murder, Violence, Terminal illness, Dementia, Pandemic/Epidemic, Animal death, Excrement, Fatphobia, Medical content, Cancer, Chronic illness, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Body horror, Drug use, Police brutality, Abandonment, and Body shaming

abby_can_read's review against another edition

challenging informative sad medium-paced

3.0

🎧
What happened was harrowing and heartbreaking. This book was well written. I did struggle to keep track of everyone -- patients, nurses, doctors, their families before police, lawyers and politicians who. I think this shows Fink did a lot of research. I think book afforded a good look at medical ethics and disaster preparedness. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical trauma, and Medical content

Moderate: Terminal illness, Animal death, and Ableism

bethboo's review

dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.75

This book tells the story about the 5 days that medical personnel, patients, loved ones, and refugees were trapped in Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina. Memorial lost power and then lost back up generators, was flooded, and suffered many losses of patients. The hospital wasn't fully evacuated for 5 days, and by that point, the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the hospital's most ill patients were questionable. 

I listened to the audio book. 

I love investigative journalism, especially when the story uncovers some sort of injustice. I saw the ad for the Apple TV show and since I don't have that I thought I'd read the book. I wasn't a fan of how the story was told, how long it took, and the weird extra bits at the end. It made it confusing and looping to and fro without a straight timeline. And while the situation was dire and weird shit happened with the patients I don't enjoy the author insinuating that these doctors were at fault. I wish the author would have taken a more neutral tone. Like they rushed and told an overview of the story and looped back on certain "characters" and then skipped ahead and looped back and then overview again and then a random detail from day two and then aftermath and trials and then talked for over an hour about neonatal policy at the end? Let me tell ya, this book was about 5 hours too long, I hit that middle point and just simply wanted to know what the hell happened. Not in a good way. I did not get a straight answer out of this author the whole book. 

It brought up some interesting thoughts about end of life care, and definitely inspires you to prepare for the unknown.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Excrement, Medical trauma, Medical content, and Death

quiet_reader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Death of parent, Blood, Violence, Body shaming, Death, Drug abuse, Animal cruelty, Terminal illness, Medical content, Vomit, Fatphobia, Grief, Abandonment, Animal death, Excrement, Gaslighting, Medical trauma, and Murder

Moderate: Classism

Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Chronic illness, and Police brutality

sarahweyand's review

challenging informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.5

I was alive when Katrina hit but too young to understand its impact. This book is well-researched, very detailed, and unflinching when it comes  to the accounts of the five days spent at Memorial and the fallout after the fact. The first half of the book recounts the five days during the hurricane, and the second half gives details on the aftermath and ensuing legal battle that occurred.

I really enjoyed the first half of this book and it was exactly what I expected going in. A great piece of narrative nonfiction that I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about this disaster. And then it started to drag. I figured Fink would get into some details of what happened after Katrina, but not to the extent that she did. While I do think that she does a good job of talking about the medical malpractice issues and discussing both viewpoints, it became repetitive for me and I found myself zoning out more frequently.

If you want a very full picture of what happened, this may just be the book for you, but at 550 pages, I'd recommend stopping after the fifth day at Memorial if you aren't as interested in the aftermath.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Animal death, Ableism, and Terminal illness

heatherilene's review

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Animal death, Cancer, Ableism, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Medical trauma, Chronic illness, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Racism, and Terminal illness

nursetess's review against another edition

challenging dark informative slow-paced

3.0

Reading this book while on a visit to NOLA has been eye-opening. As a nurse, espcially after covid, it is not difficult to see myself in the shoes of these people. Difficult, important read! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical trauma, Medical content, Death, Violence, and Terminal illness

shereadytoread's review

informative sad tense slow-paced

4.5

Overall the book itself is incredibly well researched, detailed and written in a way that keeps readers interested although a lot of the first 1/2 is repetitive by nature of what occurred. I think the author does well at presenting a balanced look at what the doctors were thinking as well as the feelings of the families and law enforcement. 

My biggest issue with the book is how it is organized. The first half of the book contains about 7 chapters and then the second half of the book has only 2 chapters (totaling approx 250 pages together). While they were cohesive, they should have been better divided into small sections. (For reference chapters in the first section were approximately 1-1.5 hours on the audiobook and the chapters in the second section were almost 4 hours and 5 hours each. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, and Death

Moderate: Terminal illness