Not one of the best but still a good read... old persons with funny diseases set Dr Toby on the trail of a loony medical researcher. diferent real relatable characters. ( )

Life Support is the very definition of a page turner. The story begins with a surgeon going seemingly beserk and hacking a patient to death on the operating table. Next an old man is brought into the ER confused and naked, seemingly unaware where he is and what's going on and fixated on where his pyjamas are. Shortly thereafter he goes missing.

From here the story brings us to a suspect nursing home where everything seems a bit too good to be true, and introduces us to the life of Dr Toby Harper who seems to be struggling with the numerous crisis around her - the missing patient, her mothers alzheimers continuing to progress and her home care nurse suddenly quitting, then there's a patient that dies under a cloud of suspicion with a attending doctor who doesn't seem to want to look to hard into the cause of death.

It's quite the intertwined web of events that's both gripping and interesting, you can definitely tell it was written by someone with medical experience (Gerritsen being a retired physician) lending it an aura of realism that some similiar books lack.

Would recommend if you enjoy Robin Cook or Michael Palmer books. ( )

Toby Harper, night shift supervisor of Springer Hospital's emergency room, comes under administration's intense scrutiny and is called onto the carpet in front of a hospital board inquiry after a patient suffering from tremors and confusion walks out of the hospital and disappears. When the home health care aide who is taking care of her ailing elderly mother resigns and a colleague seeks to use the missing patient incident as a reason to dismiss Harper, stress turns Harper's job in a big city hospital into a daily battle for survival. As a second patient presents with the same symptoms and dies in the frantic chaos of a crash "Code Blue", Harper's investigation turns stress into full-blown crisis as she uncovers a conspiracy related to an illicit hormone therapy program at an upscale home for the aged.

"Life Support" has interesting medical aspects without getting too dry or detailed. It also benefits from realistic characters and dialogue, and a good dose of creepiness that heightens the suspense. The story's end is a bit disappointing as it dips into the improbable, but the book is nonetheless a definite must-read. ( )

I had the two cassette audio version of Life Support by Tess Gerritsen. I looked and looked and could not find where it said abridged on the box for it. It did not say but it must have been you cannot read 400 pages in two hours.

I was very disappointed. The story began confusingly and abruptly. I could not figure out what was going on. It is almost as if there was a discussion about whether the taping had started. After that, Dr. Toby Harper is the night shift doctor at a hospital and is on the verge of losing her job. One of her patients walked off while waiting for a scan. Also, her mother is suffering from dementia and her sister refuses to help her because she has a family. She uncovers a criminal scheme that involves the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Oddly enough, I knew about the disease.

There is freaky ending that just came too soon. I felt for Toby as being an unsuspecting victim in this mess.

I do not think I can judge the story because this was abridged. I would definitely not recommend listening to the audio tape version of this book. It is choppy and disappointing. ( )

This is my second taste of Tess Gerritsen's medical thrillers, and although it didn't live up to Bloodstream I still really enjoyed it. I think part of my disappointment stemmed from the poor blurbing, to be honest. It was made out to be a kind of bio-weapon imminent-epidemic novel (at least, that's how I read it) whereas it's actually far more contained and subtle than that. It's more about medical ethics and the pursuit of youth than anything. That said, it was still veeeery creepy in parts, outright shocking in others, I liked the characters, and it definitely kept me glued to the pages enough that I finished all 460-ish of them within a couple of days. Tentatively recommended. ( )