Where is the Mango Princess? A Journey Back from Brain Injury
by Cathy Crimmins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cathy CrimminsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-09
ISBN: 0375704426
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Where is the Mango Princess? A Journey Back from Brain Injury
Book Review: Now we laugh.....
Summary: 5 Stars
My husband suffered TBI in 1996, a year after we began dating - that was over five years and a lifetime ago. We struggled through the first year just trying to get through each day. He never gave up and neither did we. "We", include his son and my three children. Watching him "fight" and evolve into a different person (a composite of the "old" & the "new") created a range of emotions for us all from anger, denial, sadness to relief (when we found the right mix of health care resources)& hope & happiness. We "blended" our families a year after his injury and while there are moments when we wonder "why did this happen to him", we continue to face each day - one day at a time. Some are good, and some downright stink. Cathy's book reminded me once again that we are not alone - I dove into the research just like Cathy (the knowledge & my understanding of it was my life jacket. Our children, our reason for not giving up) Her messages are our messages - I hear my voice in her written word. There were moments when I had to put the book down as it saddened me to remember how painful those days, weeks, months were. How the fear and frustration made us feel physically and emotionally spent. And there were many passages where I laughed with her! I'm writing to say - we too survived! It's not easy, and it never, ever ends. It's about courage, love and support. It's about our new little family sticking together despite the challenges and now we look back and talk about some of our dimmest moments & smile. (Cathy's dedication to Al says it all for me - "to the past, present and future") Read the book - take the journey - you are not alone. Cathy, thank you.
Summary of Where is the Mango Princess? A Journey Back from Brain Injury
Humorist Cathy Crimmins has written a deeply personal, wrenching, and often hilarious account of the effects of traumatic brain injury, not only on the victim, in this case her husband, but on the family.When her husband Alan is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Crimmins' husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? is a breathtaking account that explores the very nature of personality-and the complexities of the heart.
"Alan's brain got run over by a speedboat," Cathy Crimmins writes. "That last sentence reads like a bad country-western song lyric, but it's true. It was a silly, horrible, stupid accident." And so begins the harrowing tale of a family vacation gone awry when a speedboat collides with her husband's small craft, changing their lives forever. Crimmins (The Seven Habits of Highly Defective People and When My Parents Were My Age They Were Old... or Who Are You Calling Middle-Aged?) is used to writing with wit, self-effacing humor, and a warmth that can bring readers to their knees--or at least to tears of laughter. But in this stunning memoir about her husband's brain injury and the subsequent fallout, Crimmins has outdone herself, bringing all her sharply honed narrative skills into play as she tackles the life-wrenching drama of witnessing her husband's near death and ensuing rebirth as a very different person.
Crimmins takes readers inside the drama with all the right details and interior feelings to keep us fully mesmerized: her 7-year-old daughter's ashen face, her husband's twitching body, the paramedic's alarming question, "Is your husband one of these people that ordinarily has large pupils?" As deftly as she takes readers inside this personal story of not-quite recovery--more like discovery--she is also able to pan back and show readers the comedic silver lining (the self-important doctors, the moments of mishaps, and of course, the whereabouts of the mysterious Mango Princess) that lies within the cloud of her family's tragedy. Anyone who has endured a head trauma or loved someone who has will be engrossed by this wise and knowledgeable storyteller. The rest of us will have a captivating lesson about the rejuvenation of the brain as well as the human heart. --Gail Hudson
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