ALREADY TOAST

A Gen-X writer’s memoir melds a harrowing account of her efforts to help a seriously ill husband and a biting critique of how America is failing its unpaid caregivers.

At the age of 42, Washington was thrust into the role of the primary caregiver for her husband, Brad, after he was diagnosed with a rare form of T-cell lymphoma. The couple’s situation got worse when, after his transplant, Brad developed graft-versus-host disease and a new lymphoma and temporarily lost most of his sight, a complication that required tarsorrhaphy, which “involved sewing his eyes shut.” Medication and enrollment in a clinical trial led to remission, but not before his illness had taken a physical and emotional toll, which Washington describes in unsparing detail. Too debilitated to work, Brad took a disability retirement from his job as an English professor, and the author gave up “career, travel, sex,” and time with two school-age daughters while spending a fortune on necessities their health insurance didn’t cover. Washington evinces a righteous anger about the indignities she faced as a caregiver—from burnout to “the clichés offered by the well-meaning: stay positive. You got this. I couldn’t be as strong as you are. You have to stay strong for him. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”—and her raw emotions can lead to rough-around-the-edges writing. Nonetheless, her experiences justify her moral outrage, and she offers a welcome Gen-X perspective on a topic that mostly focuses on boomer caregivers. Washington also acknowledges the challenges of Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ caregivers by citing academic studies and books like The Color Purple and Like Water for Chocolate. The result is a bracing antidote to “sentimentalized narratives” that cast unpaid caregiving as its own reward when, the author makes clear, better Family and Medical Leave Act benefits would be far more useful.

A startling, hard-hitting story of a family medical disaster made worse by cultural insensitivities to caregivers.