CATASTROPHIC RUPTURE

After a complicated childbirth, a pediatric physician reflects on the trials and rewards of raising a disabled child in this debut memoir.

The book opens in medias res with Lee in her role as a critical care fellow in a pediatric intensive care unit, as she and her team race to save the lives of siblings who’ve been severely injured in a car crash. The memoir then goes on to describe the birth of the author’s second child, Josephine, during which Lee suffered a uterine rupture, which led to her child’s suffering a severe brain injury. She discusses how she and her husband, Jason, an emergency medicine physician, adapted to home life with a child with special needs and her own initial struggle to bond with a daughter whose movements and responses were minimal. Josephine was diagnosed with dyskinetic cerebral palsy and other conditions, and the memoir charts the joys and the setbacks of her early life as she started school and began to communicate using technology that tracked her gaze. The work also addresses how Lee found inner peace as her perception of Josephine changed. Lee’s writing is searingly frank, sometimes relating difficult emotions that many would be reluctant to share. On encountering a father whose child is dying, for instance, she notes: “I had a sudden secret desire to trade places with him, imagining that the experience of pure grief would be preferable to being consumed by shame and guilt, by gnawing uncertainty about the severity of Josephine’s disabilities.” The work tenderly and observantly tracks the author’s evolving emotions regarding her daughter, offering heartfelt reflections tempered by a sense of realism: “I accept that Jo may never learn math, whether because she is unwilling or unable. But she’s funny. She likes to tease. And I love that about her.” At times, Lee’s blunt style can make for a distressing read, as when she describes encountering a patient with “an abdomen full of dead gut” at the hospital. However, the way that she starts to reevaluate her clinical detachment proves compelling.

An introspective, elegantly written remembrance that finds hope and joy in adversity.