Summer Reading
Ahhh....I have just finished a new book, The Second Opinion by Michael Palmer (2009). There were a zillion things I could have been doing but this book kept calling to me. Maybe I could call it research for teaching and/or my medical transcription work? The main setting was a cutting-edge medical facility, the Sperelakis Center for Diagnostic Medicine at the Beaumont Clinic in Boston. Doctors, patients, state-of-the-art medical equipment and drugs - it had every element that keeps a medical language specialist interested. I did wince for a minute when an oncology specialist kept separate paper copies of medical records in her personal office (in this otherwise EMR facility no less), but the paper records contained key information for the plot and needed to be in this office on paper for portability. I can forgive this little quirk as the rest of the novel's medical information was plausible and kept me engaged. Asperger syndrome, locked-in syndrome, cancer, EMR, computer hacking, and medical tests galore were woven into the story surrounding physicians, some ethical, some not. It was fascinating and kept me in suspense as the main characters uncovered a medical conspiracy with many twists and turns. I don't want to give away the entire unfolding of events, but let me say that the MRI mishaps I show in my terminology class are mild compared to the MRI mishap at the Beaumont Clinic! Fortunately, this is fiction.