This true survivor’s moving story doubles as a valuable guide to recovering from the destructive consequences of brain...
In this self-help autobiography, retired Dutch engineer Bakker reveals what it’s like to recover from a debilitating stroke.
Brain strokes devastate more than 700,000 people annually in the United States; worldwide, it’s the number one cause of adult disability. Yet few people have told the inside story of this potentially debilitating condition. In this short but telling account, Bakker reveals the details of a brain stem stroke and what it takes to recover from its crippling effects. Bakker leads readers through this painful process using his own experience as a guide. When he awoke one morning unable to tell where he was, unable to speak, unable even to swallow, the doctors thought he wouldn’t survive. But through three years of physically and emotionally demanding therapy, he fought to regain the abilities he’d once taken for granted. Here, he illustrates the fortitude required to keep from simply giving up and wasting away. Through incredible resolve and an exceptionally positive attitude, he shows that a life devoted to rehabilitation can be a rewarding experience. But he also adds a personal touch, as when he describes one of his hospitals: “the original architectural details of the main building were distinct: tiled corridors, vain protrusions, high ceilings, and the acoustics of a mausoleum.” Sometimes, though, the prose can misconstrue idioms and muddle the clarity of a native English speaker. Vague pronoun usage and some nonstandard syntax also detract from the narrative, but its power still comes through. Each chapter recounts a different struggle to regain a particular capacity, and at the end of each chapter, Bakker provides a graph detailing how much time it took him to recover. For instance, “It could last for days,” he says of hiccups that exhausted him. The book suffers from some organizational problems, since Bakker doesn’t separate biographical material from the guidebook approach, but it nonetheless provides a unique resource for caregivers and anyone who has suffered a stroke.
This true survivor’s moving story doubles as a valuable guide to recovering from the destructive consequences of brain stroke.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480072909
Page Count: 166
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
© Copyright 2025 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.
