Verbose at times but astonishing and inspirational nonetheless.
Ashburne’s debut memoir recounts her extraordinary journey toward recovery from the physical and emotional scars of a near-death experience with flesh-eating bacteria.
After three attempts to become pregnant via in vitro fertilization, Ashburne and her husband, Michael, were heartbroken to learn that she had an ectopic pregnancy. Ara was not completely surprised, though, as she had been experiencing intense pain in her lower abdomen. After the procedure to remove the pregnancy, Ara hoped to heal and move on with her life. However, her body continued to be wracked with pain even worse than before her surgery. Baffled, her doctors gave her a changing cocktail of pain relievers that had little or no effect. Not finding anything wrong, they eventually discharged Ara. At home, she was groggy and unresponsive, but when her pulse raced to 120 beats per minute, she was readmitted to the hospital. From there, things only got worse. Doctors discovered Ara had “[n]ecrotizing fasciitis and necrosis of the subcutaneous tissue and mild necrosis.” She was infected with a strain of bacteria that was destroying tissue in her abdomen. Over multiple procedures, doctors removed the diseased tissue, and although her internal organs were spared, the majority of her abdomen was removed. Ara was given drugs to paralyze and sedate her as well as to manage her pain. All the while, she experienced shockingly realistic, often violent delusions. Miraculously, Ara recovered from her ordeal and eventually returned home, but she was haunted by feelings of depression, even suicide. Her struggle to fully heal was nothing short of heroic. At times, Ara’s story is so horrific it may seem unbelievable. Yet the medical notations, specific drugs and dosages, and other information she includes more than uphold her veracity. Many readers may be uncomfortable with her exacting and lengthy detail, especially in regard to her delusions and feelings of utter helplessness in the hospital, but the reality those details impart will no doubt leave a lasting imprint. Ashburne survived the struggle by tackling one significant issue at a time. She sought therapy to work through issues of being sexually abused and tortured as a girl (memories which provided the fodder for her delusions at the hospital), she immersed herself in beauty on a trip to Paris, and she even got herself physically fit enough to ride a scooter across the country—solo.
Verbose at times but astonishing and inspirational nonetheless.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1503383647
Page Count: 298
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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