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The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir

Steffanie Strathdee,

Thomas Patterson

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Aug 06, 2022 Nic rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoirs, adventure, nonfiction, medical, science, military, middle-east

3.5 for the writing. Good writing, but not spectacular. 4 stars for the overall story. I could not put this book down!

I need to start a new "could not put down" bookshelf. It's books like this which contribute to my fuzzy eyesight. The writing's okay, but the story is amazing. The authors are the husband and wife duo who battled one of the 6 ESKAPE superbug bacteria and survived to tell the story. Desperate for a cure they turned to an experimental phage therapy and trail blazed a way out from a 3.5 for the writing. Good writing, but not spectacular. 4 stars for the overall story. I could not put this book down!

I need to start a new "could not put down" bookshelf. It's books like this which contribute to my fuzzy eyesight. The writing's okay, but the story is amazing. The authors are the husband and wife duo who battled one of the 6 ESKAPE superbug bacteria and survived to tell the story. Desperate for a cure they turned to an experimental phage therapy and trail blazed a way out from an antibiotic resistant bacterial attack. In so doing, and sharing their story with the world, they are pioneers in new cures for deadly bacteria which antibiotics no longer overcome.

We have a new weapon in our arsenal for battling superbugs. Interesting how we tend to use military terms in describing patients' disease processes and return to health, as I did in the opening sentence. It was a bit much, at times, with the writing:
Chip called it the Darwinian dance, but that's a lyrical way to describe a ground war that is more scorched earth and a battle to the death, all of it in a microbial universe. I'd like to say, "in a galaxy far, far away," but it wasn't. It was right here, ravaging Tom's body from the inside out. Tom was the battleground, the field of action where the Acinetobacter and phages were staging this Armageddon, a tactical war between them with stealth strategies and advanced genetic weaponry. In a sense, from their microbial point of view, this isn't even about Tom. This is one-on-one a battle between virus and bacteria, each one purely focused on its own survival. 237

Often, between chapters, there is an included quote, but it's not definitively attributed to anyone. If it's not certain that "so and so" said something, then I wouldn't include it. Especially since many of these quotes were banal. For example: We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us. - Attributed to Charles Darwin. 1 and Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word. - Attributed to Louis Pasteur 79

There are a very few "interludes" included by Thomas Patterson, which I loved. They are snippets from his wanderings in his delusional state, while "in limbo", with one foot in the grave and one foot in the ICU. They form a nice juxtaposition between his liminal existence and his wife's reality. If you are sitting bedside of a dying person, this writing may be helpful to understand what they are enduring on the other side. Here's a tiny piece, because I don't want to give too much away:
A Bedouin man suddenly appears as if rising from the dune, directly in front of us. He is dressed in a white flowing robe, and his head is wrapped in a turban. I sense he is a holy man. He walks toward us, carrying a package that he is careful not to drop. 106

Interesting that the Army and Navy are heavily involved in phage research and the Navy supplied some of the phage treatment for Thomas. Also intriguing that many of our service members coming back from the Middle East with multi-drug-resistant infections, it makes a lot of sense that they'd already be working on this. 172

A very good read on the cutting edge of science. ...more

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Nov 13, 2019 Amanda marked it as to-read

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