Leaving La-La Land

Bosscha’s memoir takes a harrowing tour through the mind of a Canadian man diagnosed with encephalopathy.

The author’s experience with encephalopathy (“an umbrella term encompassing brain diseases, damage, or malfunctions that manifest both physically and mentally”) officially began one day in February, when the contractor working on his condominium found him on the floor experiencing a full-body seizure. For the next three months, Bosscha was hospitalized as doctors worked to analyze, diagnose, and treat him for the mysterious illness that felled him (in addition to a variety of other serious ailments that were discovered during the many rounds of testing). The author’s comprehensive account of this period is derived from hospital reports and conversations with family members—he has almost no recollection of the time he spent hospitalized. What he does remember, in vivid, extraordinary detail, are what he has labeled his “encephalopathic dreams,” or “e-dreams.” Though he appeared to be conscious, eating and talking, his speech was incoherent to those around him—at times, he appeared to be psychotic. Bosscha was essentially living in and reacting to an alternate reality constructed by his brain. Imaginative, emotional, and occasionally hallucinatory, the e-dreams, invisible to those around him, were able to create memories, and the author posits that the e-dreams were a bridge between reality and his unconscious, keeping his brain active and aiding in his partial recovery. This complex memoir is well organized, with the dream sequences, which make up a substantial portion of the text, formatted in italics. (As is often the case when listening to someone else’s dreams, these passages occasionally feel laboriously long.) The sections providing information that Bosscha himself does not remember are supplemented with personal commentary boxes about the lengthy diagnostic processes and his feelings looking back upon his experiences. The concluding chapters center around his life today, detailing the lingering confusion and the methods he has devised to retrain his brain, which is still partially damaged and causes him periods of anxiety. This story of survival provides insight into a world that is little understood.

A disturbing and frightening but highly informative tale, with encouragement for fellow sufferers.