276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Such suffering and myriads of days and weeks and months in offices, hospitals and with dozens of advocates and possible optimal medicine associations and paths. I applaud the author for sharing a story that must have been very hard to relive/write about. However, there were a couple issues that made it hard to enjoy this book. Thanks to Netgalley, the authors (Barbara Lipska and Elaine McArdle) and the publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) for a copy of the book.

Barbara Lipska, a Polish-born neuroscientist who serves as director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is a long-time researcher in the field of schizophrenia. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009 and melanoma in 2011, Lipska had gone on to enjoy good health and a very active lifestyle for several years. Although advised in 2011 that there was a 30% chance of the melanoma recurring, she was confident that she had beaten it. However, in 2015, the then sixty-three-year-old neuroscientist found herself gaining first-hand experience of the kind of cognitive dysfunction and paranoia seen in the people whose disease she'd studied. A number of brain tumours—metastases of the melanoma that had been removed from behind her ear a few years before—were the cause. I made short work of this one. Was totally absorbed in her story. I find anything to do with the mind fascinating. It can be our best friend or our worst enemy. Yet, so little is known about this miraculous organ, the control center of what makes us who we are. The author is the head of the NIH, studying the brains of those with mental deficits, among them schitzophrenia. She had besten cancer twice, was an avid marathon and triathlon partcipant, when she found out she had a melanoma that had spread to her brain. Despite the many years studying the brains, she didn't recognize her own symptoms, but she was in for the fight of her life.

Need Help?

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. Amintirile pe termen lung sunt puse deoparte de creierele noastre și sunt păstrate în strânsă legătură cu trăiri emoționale, pentru că pot fi importante pentru supraviețuire. Informațiile stocate în memoria pe termen scurt sunt mai degrabă evenimente temporare care așteaptă să fie categorizate și evaluate. Dacă sunt importante, vor fi stocate. Dacă nu, nu primesc validarea pentru a fi reținute și se pierd." In her book, written with Elaine McArdle, Lipska documents her grueling struggle with one of the most lethal cancers. At the time of her diagnosis with metastatic melanoma, one of the original three tumours was bleeding and required immediate surgery. A bleed in the brain is serious. Blood irritates the tissues, causing them to swell dangerously. Pressure builds within the skull, and a patient can die when the brain “cones”—that is, when it is forced downward and the centres controlling heart rate and respiration are compressed.

What was even more surprising to me was how her family - Polish scientists who had immigrated to the US 25 years earlier (her personal family story is fascinating without surviving two cancers - she also had breast cancer earlier ) - also failed to be alarmed by her increasing anger and frustration, her forgetting how to cook her favorite meals, and eventually even do simple math - until she had progressed significantly. One interesting side to her impaired frontal-temporal function was a loss of emotion - she didn't seem to care one bit about the fact that she was dying. She recalls feeling pretty happy most days, and completely unconcerned. That's encouraging to me actually. An advance digital copy was provided by NetGalley and author Barbara K. Lipska for my honest review. There were times during my reading though, when the writing and sequence seemed disjointed. I suspect that it might have something to do with translation. Lipska is a native of Poland, and I feel like Elain McArdle, the journalist who helped write and edit this memoir, could have been a little more handy in that respect. Other than that, I've come away with so much more knowledge about oncology and the different treatments that are now available.Dr Barbara K. Lipska is Director of the Human Brain Collection Core at America's National Institute of Mental Health. She is an internationally recognized leader in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia. Her primary research interests are in mental illness and human brain development. She conducts gene expression and epigenetic studies in postmortem human brains to investigate mechanisms of brain maturation, the effects of genetic variation on transcription and DNA methylation, and molecular mechanisms underlying schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses. Barbara Lipska was born, raised, and educated in Poland before she immigrated to the United States in 1989 to do post-doctoral studies at Maryland's 'National Institute of Mental Health' (NIMH). In 2013 Lipska became 'Director of the Human Brain Collection Core' at NIMH, which secures post-mortem brains for research about the brain and behavior. Cu toate acestea, am mai învățat câteva lucruri noi despre creier și mi s-a părut foarte interesant să urmăresc declinul și, ulterior, repararea lui pe parcursul bolii. Sunt absolut fascinată de puterea lui, așa că nu regret lectura, chiar dacă a trebuit să o suport pe autoare. Încă sunt iritată de faptul că, după ce a rămas oarbă de un ochi și abia reușea să meargă, a continuat să conducă, pentru că o făcea să se simtă independentă, punând viața tuturor din trafic în pericol. Și cică fostul soț era în negare... This woman was a Polish immigrant and of the highest intellect. She ran her own brain study clinic, which makes what happened to her all the more ironic. She was a strong athlete and excelled at several activities. She cooked dinner every night for her family. But she lost all of that and more when she developed brain tumors. Her harrowing tale of treatment and recovery is told in this book.

Her work as a researcher of brain illnesses enabled her to present a unique perspective on brain illness and dysfunction because she actually experienced it. In layman’s terms, Barbara explains how brain injury, illnesses, and age can affect a person’s personality, memory, behavior, and cognitive ability. Because there is so little known about the brain, Barbara’s experience adds to the knowledge in this area of research. A superb memoir from a highly respected neuroscientist who is uniquely qualified to describe her titanic battle against malignant melanoma of the brain. Barbara Lipska clearly believes in those miracles that can be achieved through medical science, and also has an iron resolve to survive. Both qualities underpin this remarkable account of sanity lost and regained.” După ce am aflat asta, nu mi-a mai păsat deloc de ea, așa că nu am simțit niciun fel de emoție. Ca parteneră a lui de atâția ani, să nu înțelegi de ce reacționează așa?! Ca om, să nu înțelegi ce le face ideea de moarte oamenilor?! În calitate de om de știință, care cercetează creierul de câteva decenii, să nu înțelegi că și tumorile aferente cancerului, implicit tratamentele, pot afecta creierul, determinând schimbări de atitudine? În fine, dezgustătoare purtarea ei. Eu oricum nu sunt impresionată de poveștile oamenilor bogați despre cum au supraviețuit pentru că au fost optimiști. Și săracii ar fi optimiști, dacă ar avea acces la cei mai buni și scumpi medici, dar ei preferă să fie realiști.Within months after her surgery, Lipska felt good enough to go skiing with her family and to resume her regular triathlon training, which includes swimming, cycling, and running. As the inflammation goes down and the tumors shrink away, she begins to remember all the strange things she went to while her brain was swollen and being pushed on by tumors. She realizes she has lived through a situation very like schizophrenia, proving that mental illness can be created by physical stresses on the brain. Este o experiență extraordinară să-ți dai seama că tot ce ține de o ființă umană îți poate sta în palme."

Lipska notes that, "Deep inside my brain, a full-scale war had erupted. The tumors that had been radiated were shedding dead cells and creating waste and dead tissue. Throughout my brain, the tissues were inflamed and swollen from the metastasis and the double assault of radiation and immunotherapy. What’s more, I had new tumors—more than a dozen. My blood-brain barrier…..had become disrupted.....and was leaking fluid. The fluids were pooling in my brain, irritating the tissue and causing it to swell." She wrote like a scientist, almost giving itineraries instead of building a story. When she tried to build a story I knew what she was eluding to well before she gave the reason for the story. Throwing in some visual stuff or smells because that is what writers do, felt forced. And that's not even the worst part. OK, you enter a clinical trial because you believe it will benefit you. Clinical trials are meticulously designed and exclusion criteria exist in part to empower a specific intended analysis. By entering the trial under false circumstances, you are jeopardizing the results and potentially the possibility of this drug getting to market. When you had your brain swelling, that very serious adverse event is thoroughly reported. When reviewed by the FDA, such a serious side effect may cause them to decide not to proceed with further trials of this drug. You are potentially sabotaging the release of this drug, and its potential benefit to many patients, by falsifying your information. Also, just considering local consequences, you could have taken the clinical trial spot for someone who could have actually benefitted from it. I mean, I get it, the author was desperate at this point, eager for anything that would help. But, bottom line, it was a very selfish decision. When discussing her first husband’s diagnosis and eventual (1985) death from the very same cancer she would later fight, Lipska mentions that in the Poland of the time, cancer was highly stigmatized. A diagnosis of malignancy was viewed as a sign of weakness and a loss of control over one’s life. No cancer patient discussed his condition with friends, or even with family. One has the sense in reading her memoir that this kind of attitude continued to affect (or, maybe, “infect”) Lipska herself. She states that her typical response to emergencies is to throw herself “into a rational, organized plan, and grasp whatever control” she can. She also writes that (earlier in her life) after breast cancer treatment, she was up and about on the fourth day and that she never failed to cook a meal when undergoing chemotherapy. While receiving treatment for her brain tumours, she remained physically active; she even ran a five-kilometer race a few weeks after her first radiation treatment, placing fourth in her age group. I suppose I should be impressed by this, but I honestly found Lipska’s drive bizarre and even alarming at times. I'm very thankful to them, all of them, for this. You could say, this is what family's for, but I never expected to try them in this way. And I hope it will never happen again — that's my biggest worry.

Select a format:

Creierul ne fascinează cu complexitatea lui și cu misterele pe care le ascunde. Tot ce visăm, credem, simțim și facem - tot ceea ce ne face oameni - vine de la emisferele cerebrale. Noi suntem creierul nostru. Este înspăimântător ca mintea să nu mai funcționeze din cauza bolii sau a îmbătrânirii și să pierdem ce ne este mai drag: persoana noastră.'' A spellbinding investigation into the mysteries of the human brain, led by a scientist whose tenacity is as remarkable as her story.” AMANDA RIPLEY, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and The Unthinkable

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment