An occasionally uneven but emotionally engaging story of one woman’s struggle to survive and recover after falling through...
Crew (A Heart for Any Fate, 2015, etc.) shares an agonizing account of prescription drug dependence and withdrawal in this memoir.
The author had knee replacement surgery in 2012, and the oxycodone prescription she received afterward seemed like an effective tool for coping with post-surgery pain. Yet she soon observed that she wasn’t recovering as quickly as she had hoped; she suffered from strange toothaches and struggled to muster enough energy to get through the day. Despite never taking a pill outside of what her doctors prescribed, Crew says, she had become addicted to painkillers. She weaned herself off of oxycodone, as well as antianxiety, antidepressant, and antimigraine medications—all prescribed by well-intentioned doctors but interacting, she says, in ways that proved disastrous for her physical and mental health. Crew struggled for years afterward with post-acute-withdrawal syndrome, in which withdrawal symptoms persist long after drug consumption stops. She says that she endured depression, anxiety, pain, exhaustion, and alienation from her friends and family, but her memoir ends on an optimistic note that points toward survival. Crew insightfully comments on the institutional and interpersonal minefields that sick people must navigate. She observes, for example, that doctors who are too willing to hand out prescriptions contribute to the addiction epidemic, as do doctors who respond to requests for help with suspicion: the first group gets people “hooked,” she says, while the second shames people who are trying to stop. Crew’s interactions with her family can be upsetting, and she clearly shows that the frustration that caused her to lash out was tied to her pain and to society’s difficulty accepting chronic illness. Yet it’s hard to read the note that Crew left for her husband when she went to be alone in their beach house (“Enjoy your vacation from me”) and not feel immense sympathy for the person who found it. This element of the memoir might have been more effective if it were recalled more retrospectively, with more of an attitude of calm analysis instead of in-the-moment pain and rage. But Crew’s battle with her brain and body, as well as the medical system, is still well told and moving.
An occasionally uneven but emotionally engaging story of one woman’s struggle to survive and recover after falling through the cracks of the health care system.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
