Patient: A Health (S)care Story is a quirky, humorous, and occasionally poignant romp through the American health care system. After a seemingly mild case of COVID-19, the author finds himself hospitalized with acute renal failure. The connection to COVID-19 is tenuous at best, yet he is examined from head to toe with the ruthless efficiency that only a hospital with the latest technology can accomplish. Scans and tests of every possible type are conducted, eliminating the most dire of diagnoses.
In Patient: A Health (S)care Story, the reader is grasped by the lapels and is guided through a week in the hospital interspersed with the author's travels through space (being kissed by an orangutan in Borneo and "hijacking" a plane in India) and time (a ghost story set in nineteenth-century Southern India). We meet a cast of interesting characters--doctors, nurses, and children--whose interactions with the protagonist reveal much about themselves as well as the main character.
All's well that ends well, we discover, when the author returns home to a greeting from his cats that eventually move him to tears, something that had not occurred during his earlier travails.
All in all, a delightful, charming, and engaging piece of prose.
