A spellbinding investigation into the mysteries of the human brain, led by a scientist whose tenacity is as remarkable as her story.” 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.'' 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. Este o experiență extraordinară să-ți dai seama că tot ce ține de o ființă umană îți poate sta în palme." Lipska's family was disturbed and worried by the changes in her demeanor, but Barbara herself didn't realize anything was wrong - even when her conduct became increasingly bizarre. Examples of changes in Barbara's behavior during cancer treatment include:

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.”The author was not mad, she had deficits more in line with loss of function rather than the peculiar function that comes from psychosis where people are operating from a different frame of reference. Her speciality is schizophrenia but I just couldn't see that she became anything like that or at least not like any I have known or whose books I have read. First, I think the book would have been much better with more collateral information from others (family, physicians, physical therapists she interacted with) about all these different episodes during which the author was acting bizarre. It was hard to trust the author as the narrator of these stories because she's, well, literally brain-damaged. An advance digital copy was provided by NetGalley and author Barbara K. Lipska for my honest review.

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. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. 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. 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. 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.After successful surgery to remove the raisin-sized cancerous growth that was bleeding, Lipska received targeted radiation to the other tumours. Only after this could such treatments as immunotherapy (which empowers the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells) and “targeted” therapy (aimed at specific molecules within cancer cells) be tried. In spite of an iron will and a high tolerance for pain and discomfort, Lipska confronted tumours that had minds of their own. They kept popping up “like weeds in a garden”. At one point, she had eighteen simultaneously. Many of us might not be able (or even want) to persist in the face of considerable suffering as Lipska did. However, she attributes at least some of her endurance to her long-time training and competing as a marathoner and tri-athlete. Lipska is still not out of the woods; however, the mostly new treatments she underwent have prolonged a life that she obviously values, even if that life continues to pose challenges.