My Review of Terminal Care by Christopher Stookey

Terminal Care by Christopher Stookey, M.D.
Product Details

Paperback: 342 pages

Publisher: Silver Leaf Books
(June 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609750292
Book Description from book jacket
Phil Pescoe, the 37-year-old emergency physician at Deaconess Hospital in San Francisco, becomes alarmed by a dramatic increase in the number of deaths on the East Annex (the Alzheimer's Ward). The deaths coincide with the initiation of a new drug study on the annex where a team of neurologists have been administering "NAF"—an experimental and highly promising treatment for Alzheimer's disease—to half of the patients on the ward.

Mysteriously, the hospital pushes forward with the study even though six patients have died since the start of the trial. Pescoe teams up with Clara Wong—a brilliant internist with a troubled past—to investigate the situation. Their inquiries lead them unwittingly into the cutthroat world of big-business pharmaceuticals, where they are threatened to be swept up and lost before they have the opportunity to discover the truth behind the elaborate cover-up.
With the death count mounting, Pescoe and Wong race against time to save the patients on the ward and to stop the drug manufacturer from unleashing a dangerous new drug on the general populace.
My Thoughts
First let me say that Alzheimers disease is a very hard illness to deal with. My husband and I dealt with this for 5+ years when his aunt was afflicted with this heartbreaking disease. Watching a very intelligent grade school teacher over the years go from a very active retired woman to a wraith lying in the fetal position in her last days. A cure for this dreaded disease would be a godsend for patients and families who deal with this.
Terminal Care is a story about an Alzheimers wing (East Annex) of Deaconess Hospital that has started a new trial to administer "NAF"—an experimental and highly promising treatment for Alzheimer's disease where all patients on the wing are administered this experimental drug. Some get a placebo and some get the actual drug. No one is supposed to know who is getting what. Dr.Phil Pescoe, ER doctor, has been called to the wing to assist in a Code Blue  for a patient that has collapsed. He is not able to save this patient but a death on a unit such as the East Annex is not really that unusual as patients with Alzheimers do die periodically, usually from a heart attack or pneumonia. But Dr.Pescoe becomes concerned when the death count starts rising and most of the patients that died have succumbed to heart attacks.
Dr.Pescoe is called into a QA meeting in regards to this particular Code Blue. At the time of the code Dr.Pescoe had an intern assist him with compressions on the patient thinking that instead of the intern just watching he would teach him as they went along. According to the QA committee, valuable time was wasted doing this teaching. Dr.Pescoe was suspended without pay.In the meantime the death count keeps rising on East Annex and Dr.Pescoe starts doing an informal investigation on his own because things just do not add up. He meets Dr.Clara Wong who is a member on the QA committee who suspended him. This is when the story really takes off and gets suspenseful. This  story to me is very much like a Robin Cook or a Michael Palmer medical mystery. A very fast paced story with all the prerequisites for a great novel, death, greed, money and love and it sweeps the reader right along. I look forward to more medical mysteries or a sequel by Christopher Stookey.
I received this book from Pump Up Your Book and was not monetarily compensated for my review.