This inspiring account of caring for a loved one with a brain injury will help guide anyone in a similar situation.
One couple’s tale of struggle and ultimate triumph over a debilitating brain injury as relayed by both patient and caregiver.
The journal-style writing delivers a deeply personal account of Laura and Bruce Allen’s difficult journey as they learned that Bruce had two lesions in his brain, a life-threatening condition requiring immediate surgery. Both religious leaders in their Southern community, the patient and caregiver never lost faith. Though the surgery to drain the abscess was a success, it was only the first step in a process of healing and learning to do the most basic actions. Bruce had to learn to walk, talk and manage mundane tasks all over again, while Laura learned to be patient and supportive. Laura describes their life after the diagnosis as the “new normal,” and comes to terms with that fact that Bruce may never return to his pre-brain-injury self. “When the person can accept these changes and make use of adaptations where needed, he will find he can enjoy life—perhaps even more than before….” Each chapter opens with an email that caregiver Laura sent to close friends and family, relaying Bruce’s condition and detailing his slow return to health. Laura matter-of-factly shares the timeline and details surrounding the monthslong process of Bruce’s hospital and rehabilitative stays and the small but triumphant steps he makes toward recovery. Passages describing the same events, but written in Bruce’s voice, provide the unique vantage point of the patient. The support network of family and friends, including a daughter who is a nurse at the Shepherd Center where Bruce does his inpatient and outpatient rehab, help the couple make it through the toughest event of their lives. The book provides tangible advice and resources for patients and caregivers to maintain their strength of spirit and body.
This inspiring account of caring for a loved one with a brain injury will help guide anyone in a similar situation.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1449737719
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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