Sunday Television Review: HARROW

Scott found this on HULU and saved it to watch after all the usual stuff we watch had finished this spring. Once that happened, we started working through some of our backlog and this show was one of them. We were quickly hooked and blasted through Season One over about three days. Season Two is coming and can be seen in some places, but for now, HULU does not have the new season yet. 

Ioan Gruffudd stars as Harrow, a forensic pathologist, living in Australia. Divorced with a daughter, he solves cases while also trying to keep secret something he did. He lives on a boat, does not suffer fools well, and has a bit of a snarky sense of humor. That is at least partly illustrated by the fact that he plays the occasional practical joke on a fellow pathologist who has a major air of self-importance and zero sense of humor.

Season One contained ten episodes and were all good ones. We like it a lot and very much recommend it.

On HULU at https://www.hulu.com/series/harrow-0f00a4f0-37da-4fb5-a9ae-71995b6c575d and other streaming platforms and vendors.

Hulu Synopsis:

Daniel Harrow is a brilliant forensic pathologist who solves the cases others can't. When a secret from his past threatens his career and his family, he'll need all his wit and forensic genius to keep a crime buried forever.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Dead in the Dog by Bernard Knight

This first Monday in July brings us another new review by Aubrey Hamilton. This week she reviews Dead in the Dog by Bernard Knight. Make sure you check out her other reviews on these pages as she is putting together quite an interesting reading list.

Dead in the Dog by Bernard Knight (Severn House, 2012) is the first and so far the only book featuring Dr. Tom Howden, a recently qualified pathologist who has joined Her Majesty’s military forces battling Communist insurgents in 1950s Malaya. Knight is better known for his Crowner John series, 15 titles featuring Sir John de Wolfe, an early coroner, in 12th century Devon. Another trilogy features a private forensics practice in 1950s England. Given the same focus on pathology in all three series, I was not surprised to learn that Dr. Knight was a full-time forensic pathologist before he took up writing mysteries.

The book opens with Howden’s arrival in Perak State, where he quickly becomes acquainted with the other medical personnel and hears all about the neighborhood personalities, including the director of the hospital whose behavior becomes increasingly bizarre. When the home of an obnoxious local planter is fired on and then he’s found dead a few days later, it’s hard to know whether to blame the insurgents or one of the many in the British community that he’s offended. Howden is called on to perform his very first autopsy in the mortuary of the field hospital, using instruments that are decades out of date.

The book capitalizes on the author’s tour as an Army medical officer in Malaya, describing the oppressive heat, the jungle, and the rubber plantations in graphic detail. The Dog of the title is the local officers’ drinking establishment, where much of the action plays out. He captures the endless gossip of a closed community perfectly, in which people are so bored that the smallest action or word from another person gives rise to comment and speculation.

This is the first mystery I’ve encountered set in this remote part of Southeast Asia and the first mention I can remember of this particular war. A quick check on the Internet reveals a complicated political history of independent states uniting and then disbanding, along with Japanese occupation and British colonization. The Federation of Malaya was formed in 1948 and achieved independence from Britain in 1957. During this time the Malaya communist party decided to try to overrun the fragile government, giving rise to what is known as the Malayan Emergency. Britain was not willing to relinquish its grasp on the world’s primary source of tin and rubber and deployed its military to the area for about 10 years. In many ways it mirrors the U.S. conflict in Vietnam that followed soon after. This book conveys the general instability of the region clearly.  A well-written story, a so-so mystery with a rushed ending, and an intriguing time and place.

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Severn House Publishers; World ed. edition (July 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0727881612
• ISBN-13: 978-0727881618

Aubrey Hamilton © 2017
 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Still NO Word

No results on the biopsies still. We are still on hold for chemo until it gets back to the doctor.

Finally Back Home

Things were running behind today and then I had to feed everyone here so this is coming up later than I would like.

Sandi's cumidin remains too high but has come down to 3.1. We are to continue avoiding all greens because of the parasite risk reported in the media as well as the fact they don't want her to do anything diet wise that could cause it to swing one way or the other. Later this week they want her to take some of the medicine so they can check her again on Friday.

Oxygen wise she seems to be doing a little better. Because of that they are going to start slowly tapering the steroids off and see what happens.

All other bloodwork shows some improvement.

Pathology results are back on the lung samples and there are definitely no signs of any cancer.  The samples have been evaluated by a couple of different parties and they are absolutely sure there is no cancer. The cultures have still not grown anything and should have done so if she had a virus or bacterial infection. this seems to confirm the diagnosis of pneumonitis. Based on what they are seeing at this point, they now believe it is at least somewhat reversible. Whether or not she can ever  become free of the oxygen assistance in some form will take longer to determine, but they think the pneumonitis has started to reverse.

So, all in all, we got the best possible news we could have gotten at this point.

I'm exhausted and flopping on the floor to rest. E-mails will have to wait till a later time as I am hurting really bad and very tired.

Sandi Update

The procedure is done and she has cleared recovery and is alert and awaiting lunch in her room. The lung doc did NOT see the black spots that appeared on the images. He did take a couple of samples of different areas for pathology. She should be coming home later today after she eats and the paperwork is done.

Sandi Tuesday Evening--Eight Days In The Hospital

Tonight marks Sandi's eighth night in the hospital and she is a very unhappy and frustrated patient. She desperately wants to come home and might get her wish tomorrow. The news is most definitely mixed at this point.

On the good news front--they stopped the additional antibiotics this morning and have removed her IV line. She is off the oxygen totally for short stretches of time and at others she is on a reduced flow. When off, as long as she does not get up and move around and stays seated in the chair, she maintains around 93 on their sensors for as long as an hour at a time. This is a huge improvement. It also appears that the fluid has thinned out and dissipated from her lungs.

On the bad news front---there are at least six and quite possibly more dark spots in the back of both lungs. A doctor specializing in "advanced lung cancer and infectious diseases" has been brought in to take samples from her lungs of these black spots. Tomorrow morning, around 10 am, they intend to have her fully sedated and then he will run some sort of gizmo down her throat and into each lung. Once in the lung he will take samples of  several of these dark spots. In addition to testing them for cancer, they will be tested for various infectious diseases and other things. He does not believe they are cancerous from looking at her previous scans and x-rays, but feels these things are a significant concern and have to be checked out. Once the samples are obtained it will be several days, at the earliest, before we have any idea what the results are.

And, yes, stem cell transplant patients are at risk of lung cancer and with her history she is at far higher risk than other stem cell transplant patients from what we have been told in the past. However, this is not something we should have had to worry about now as this was more of an issue, in theory, one year and more out from the transplant date. She should not be developing lung cancer now and the idea that this could have happened is too hideous to contemplate.

Sandi is taking the news very well. She is convinced these spots will turn out to be nothing and she will be just fine. She is taking it far, far better than I am tonight.  I am stunned beyond belief and very upset. All I can do is hope that she didn't go through everything she has gone through these past months only to have cancer come roaring back in a new form already.