Reviews

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

effortlesslybookishbre_'s review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A

Five Days at Memorial attempts to tell the story of doctors and nurses who had to survive in a storm ailed hospital after Hurricane Katrina, and the levees breaking soon after. 

While this books premise is intriging and at times was captivating due to the nature of the story, this book unfortunately fails to deliver on the captivating nature of its subnopsis, Sheri Fink tells the stories of doctors and nurses who made life and death decisions for their patients while also baddling the elements of one of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Trying to follow the events of this book was difficult due to the author quickly flipping points of views to past, present, and between quotes or alleged quotes from individuals who were there as events unfolded. While usually this would be an interesting literary choice especially when you are trying to give an oral history about events, but in this context it made this book feel very jumbled and not concise once one topic is discussed it quickly shifted to a different piece of the story, or to a doctor or nurse who gives alleged facts about the event. 

This books focus is said to be on the events that had taken place before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina and how euthanasia was allegedly unethically used, but this book majorly focuses on the outside events and how the public reacted to doctors and nurses who participated in euthanasia it especially tries to in some ways rehabilitate the images of the accused doctors and nurses by quoting the public, their colleagues, and family members. Yet that same effort was not given to the deceased families, another major downfall of this book was the inability to staunchly say the failings of the response to the disaster around New Orleans but especially at Charity Hospital was due to Classism, Racism, and Ableist practices. 

While mentioned briefly it was not covered nearly enough how the failings of government agencies failed the people of New Orleans due to faulty infrastructure and Systematic Racism, politicians labeled its own citizens as looters and rioters when they were simply just trying to survive, especially in a situation where they were seemingly given up on. The book spends more time trying to paint lawyers as just money hungry vultures, who just saw an opportunity for a pay day by defending those who were seeking answers to their loved one’s death. 

The authors focus seemed to be more on the euthanizing of doctors and nurses animals versus the families emotions of learning their loved ones had died, there was also little mention and historical context behind the ableist history of and behind merciful death. The families were not nearly as much of a focus as they should have been their stories felt as if they were an afterthought. I would also have liked for the author to go into detail about how in times of crisis the most venerable are not considered and how even in times were there is a dire situation disabled/ and or individuals who need more care are not considered and their lives are seen as disposable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Ableism, Classism, Medical content, and Medical trauma

coops456's review

3.0

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans hard, but it was after the storm had passed that disaster really unfolded. The levees failed and Lake Pontchartrain flooded the city, destroying infrastructure and trapping thousands. Several hospitals were impacted, and the outcome for some patients was unexpected - and suspicious - death. From exhaustive research and interviews, Fink tells what happened at Memorial Hospital and the ensuing criminal investigations.

I found the book dragged at times, with a lot of repetition and a cast of protagonists too large to keep track of.

An important piece of investigative journalism that also raises hard questions about rationing of medical care and resources during emergencies. The epilogue covers Superstorm Sandy and makes it clear that little has been learned from Katrina. We are still shying away from the hard questions.

PS There are extensive endnotes, so the book finishes sooner than you initially anticipate. These are worth skimming for links and further reading.

shelleyrae's review

4.0

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, an investigative piece written by Sheri Fink, is a vivid portrait of tragedy that occurred in New Orleans when it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The first half of the narrative details the five days in which Memorial was battered by Hurricane Katrina and then isolated by the flood waters that destroyed much of the city. It is a gripping, day by day, often hour by hour, account Fink has created from official reports and interviews with the staff, patients and others trapped in the city hospital. Fink relates the harrowing circumstances that developed in Memorial as resources dwindled and services failed, and the thoughts, experiences and emotions of those fearing they may not survive. However this moving and powerful narrative leads to the real focus of Five Days at Memorial - the alleged actions of some of the medical staff trapped at the hospital, most notably Dr Anna Pou, accused of euthanising as many as a dozen patients, and possibly more, during the emergency.

The second half of the book recounts the legal aftermath of those allegations which resulted in Pou and two nurses being arrested for multiple accounts of second degree murder. It describes the investigation into the deaths by the the attorney general, the coroner and other medical and legal experts and raises issues related to the ethics of disaster management in a medical setting. This section is less emotive and therefore less gripping, but still thought provoking and very readable.

Sheri Fink was uniquely placed to write this book as a doctor with experience working in disaster and war zones, and extensive journalistic experience, including authoring "War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival" in 2003. Clearly Fink engaged in exhaustive research into the the events, and their aftermath, at Memorial, drawing on multiple resources, resulting in a detailed perspective of the tragedy. I don't think it is quite true that the account is written without bias though. It seems to me, by both her choice of language and some of the details she chose to focus on, that Fink formed a opinion about the events that took place inside Memorial, and her assessment seeped into the narrative.

I found Five Days at Memorial to be an engrossing, intriguing and poignant read. It is a story that needed to be told and I desperately hope that governments and bureaucrats worldwide have learned from the woeful lack of preparedness, planning, communication and resources exhibited during this disaster as a whole, and from the specific events that occurred at Memorial.