A sensitive, affective, and moving chronicle of how a woman with Alzheimer’s has refused to let the disease completely rule...
How a woman’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s changed her life.
It crept up on Mitchell gradually as a general feeling of tiredness and a fuzziness to her thinking, then one day, she fell, and a few weeks later, fell again, her coordination definitely off. Cognitive tests revealed the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s, and Mitchell felt her world slowly slide away in forgotten bits and pieces. In this moving, well-written memoir, Mitchell relates how her life inevitably changed; she went from a person whose work required her to remember tremendous amounts of information to someone who didn’t understand the computer system she had navigated so easily; she needed to leave herself reminders on her phone and notes on the floor to eat and take her medications; she no longer dared drive and felt anxious riding the bus or walking in unknown neighborhoods. Yet, once she was forced to retire, her life was still full; she reached out to others with the same diagnosis, gave talks on the topic, and engaged in research projects that might help someone in the future. Mitchell’s sharing of the personal details of her mental decline helps readers thoroughly understand the scariness and confusion that Alzheimer’s patients go through as they gradually lose the ability to take care of themselves and perform daily tasks that used to be done by rote. She triumphantly shows methods she used to help overcome some of her setbacks so she could continue to live independently, offering others with this disease examples of what can be done. The journey continues to grow harder, but Mitchell obviously refuses to give up, as evidenced by her writing this poignant statement of her life after the diagnosis.
A sensitive, affective, and moving chronicle of how a woman with Alzheimer’s has refused to let the disease completely rule her life.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9791-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
IN THE NEWS
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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