An inspiring story of mettle and optimism in the face of overwhelming challenges.
A man recounts his struggles to overcome the debilitating effects of a severe brain bleed.
On July 18, 1999, debut author Buff finished a round of golf. He returned to the clubhouse and collapsed. He was diagnosed with “a malformation of veins and arteries that are sometimes weak in places and can burst.” He underwent two microscopic brain surgeries, the first to remove the pooled blood around his cerebellum and brain stem, and the second to deal with the arteriovenous malformation. At age 36, this father of three young children saw his life forever changed. He remained in the hospital, connected to feeding and breathing tubes (the latter replaced by a tracheotomy), for six weeks. Buff reconstructed details of his hospital stay from stories he was told by family and friends; he has no memory of that period. He was transferred to Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey, where he received extensive physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and returned home in time for Christmas. But years of rehab remained ahead. Despite physical, personal, and financial setbacks, the author employs a generally positive tone in these pages: “God has blessed me with a unique personality trait. I will do something over and over again until I am satisfied with the outcome. It worked for my sports; now it was working for my rehabilitation.” Indeed, athletic activity played a significant role in his life—skiing, surfing, football, soccer, baseball, and especially golf. He highlights the stark contrast between his former routines and his post-surgery days by opening many chapters with joyful recollections of his youth followed by sections describing the initial brain trauma and his gradual recuperation. The only bitterness he displays concerns his wife’s decision to leave him in November 2000: “She would not live with a cripple the rest of her life.…I thought her love for me would stand up through all adversity. Obviously, it couldn’t.” After several years living with his parents, Buff now has his own home, drives a car, and even plays golf. His mission: to encourage others to “keep going.”
An inspiring story of mettle and optimism in the face of overwhelming challenges.Pub Date: July 20, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2662-2
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Toplink Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2019
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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