Alana Is Reading

You’ll soon realize that there is little rhyme or reason to the books that I choose and that I read.  I read what looks interesting to me.  Most of what I read comes from the charity shop in town that sells all books for 75p.  This is one of those.

Life Support is about an emergency room doctor who is fighting internal hospital politics at the same time that she is trying to care for her mother who has Alzheimer’s and trying to solve the mystery of exactly what killed two of her patients. 

A patient is brought into the ER naked and suffering from confusion and he disappears before a diagnosis can be found, but not before Dr. Toby Harper had a chance to examine him enough to realize that he wasn’t a typical confused old man.  In fact, he had been fine mere weeks earlier at his last medical exam in the retirement community where he lived.  The fact that she “allowed” this patient to disappear is not making her popular with her superiors at the hospital.

Toby doesn’t get any more popular when another patient comes in with the same symptoms, and she won’t let it go.  She is convinced that there is something going on at the retirement community that is causing this, and she’s terrified that it might turn out to be contagious.

The mystery and suspense parts of this book are excellent.  I got through all 470 pages in only a few days.  It’s hard not to be sympathetic to a character who seems to be attacked unfairly from all sides.  The author is a former doctor herself, so the medical parts are very accurate, with the exception of one line in which she refers to a cystic teratoma of the ovary as “cancer”, when those are almost always benign (I’ve had two of them, so I’d know).  But aside from that, the other diseases represented are accurate.  That doesn’t mean that I think that the events of this book are likely or even necessarily possible, but they are realistic enough to make a good read.

If you like suspense and icky medical things, like I do, you’ll probably love this book.  It was worth reading, and I’ll be keeping an eye open for more Tess Gerritsen books at the charity shop.  I will probably not keep this book forever and ever or re-read it, but I’m glad I read it.  It was not deep or meaningful, but it was entertaining.