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| I Had Brain Surgery, What’s Your Excuse? An Illustrated Memoir by Suzy Becker, Workman Publishing, New York, N.Y., 2004; 256 pp., $19.95. |
Sometimes doctors are viewed as less than ideally empathetic, and some show little appreciation for what their patients experience. Now comes a book describing and illustrating in great detail the experiences of neurological dysfunction and of complicated brain surgery.
Becker suffered nocturnal seizures and eventually had a magnetic resonance scan showing a small left parietal lesion that needed to be removed surgically. She does a splendid job of describing the tests and anxiety that preceded surgery. Post-operatively she was markedly dysphasic and required prolonged rehabilitation.
The author describes many ups and downs during her illness, and she has the skill to make the reader laugh and cry along with her. This book alternates poignancy with humor. Best of all are the illustrations, which cover every page of the volume.
Becker wrote this book because she could not find anything to read from a patient’s perspective. She writes, “I wanted to read something by someone with a real tumor … I couldn’t find anything, and the harder I looked, the more I knew I needed to hear what awake brain surgery was like from someone who had had it. Not a resident or a surgeon. I wanted someone who really knew what this experience was like to tell me I was going to make it through this part okay.”
Patients now have such a book. But this book serves another need as well: It is a helpful book for neurosurgeons, too. We need to know about what our patients are experiencing.
Gary Vander Ark, MD, is the director of the neurosurgery residency program at the University of Colorado. He is the 2001 recipient of the AANS Humanitarian Award.