Emotional Malaise Due to Fiction of Medical Compromisation

Did that title make any sense at all?  Hopefully it will when I'm done venting my angst.

Did you ever read a book or see a movie that left you feeling icky afterwards?  Over the weekend I read Tess Gerritsen's Harvest.  Throughout the day today, I would recall some aspect of the troubling plot and would suddenly feel sad.

There are some genres of literature I avoid because of the intensity of the suspense or the goriness of the story line or the graphically violent or s*xual descriptions.  This book does not really fall into any of those categories.  I would call this story a thriller of medical ethics.  It is realistic enough that the possibility of a situation similar to that described in this plot seems plausible.

I don't like stories that imply that someone into whose hands I may at some point need to lay my life might be immersed in unethical behavior.  When a person is unconscious or in a compromised condition, they ought to be able to trust those into whose care they are surrendered.  I don't like to be reminded of the human nature of caregivers.  I don't want to know about the possibility that some health care provider may make a decision for a patient's care based on things other than the patient's best interest.

Unfortunately I saw the movie, Kill Bill, at the theater with my husband.  (Yes, he likes those comic strip-ish martial arts movies, but that would be another story.)  There was a situation in that movie that left me similarly saddened and unsettled.  The heads getting chopped off didn't both me.  That part was obviously fictitious.  But the behavior of the hospital personnel was realistically heinous.  Ick Yuck.  People ought to have peace of mind that their care during times of physical compromise is above board.