At turns harrowing and inspiring; also serves as a valuable piece of education on recovery from brain injury.
Brandon’s debut memoir details her experiences with her “bloody brain,” from stays in the intensive care unit to a turbulent life after surgery.
In 2007, Brandon worked as a math professor at Carnegie Mellon, well respected among students and colleagues. After experiencing strange symptoms—bouts of confusion and numbness—doctors discovered cavernous angiomas in Brandon’s brain and brain stem. These angiomas, described as “malformed blood vessels in [the] brain,” cause severe problems when they bleed. After initial treatment, Brandon’s doctors believed that she was out of danger. Within six months, however, the bleeds came back. She experienced multiple seizures and frequent bouts of confusion. Brandon decided to have a risky set of surgeries to remove the angiomas. The surgery was successful, but its invasive nature forced Brandon into extensive rehab. Recovery from brain injury doesn’t occur linearly, though, and Brandon dealt with myriad mental and physical issues, including re-establishing her balance and retraining herself to read. Once out of rehab, Brandon found support from friends and family. Not everyone initially understood her situation, however, often carelessly adding to her discomfort. Brandon ably describes her episodes, and the reader feels transported into her mind when, for instance, she has a “shutdown,” her brain momentarily shutting down after an overflow of sensory input, “settling into...a protective cocoon.” These moments succeed in making readers understand Brandon’s plight, her frustrations, and, eventually, her triumphs. The memoir follows a chronological timeline, but there are also chapters that focus on small experiences, interruptions not unlike the stop-and-start nature of her recovery. In the end, Brandon doesn’t sugarcoat her account. Despite her eventual return to teaching, the reader ultimately knows there will be more to overcome.
At turns harrowing and inspiring; also serves as a valuable piece of education on recovery from brain injury.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63152-246-8
Page Count: 220
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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