The neuroscientist who lost her mind

The neuroscientist who lost her mind: my tale of madness and recovery / Barbara K. Lipska w/ Elaine McArdle, read by Emma Powell, 199 pgs.

A neuroscientist who studies mental illness gets cancer and suddenly her personality changes so much that she can reflect on it later and be amazed.  At the time, however, she didn't notice the change and her family and co-workers struggled to act like it was stress from her illness rather than the illness itself.  I like medical memoirs and this one is interesting, the author was raised and educated in Poland, coming to the U.S. as an adult to work in her field.  How, I have to ask, did she and her circle not see that her personality changes were related to her illness?  It sort of defies logic.  Still, the science and medical stuff is very interesting.  The audio version irritated because the narrator's accent seemed all wrong to me.  I finished the book in print.

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh, 277 pages.
A great medical memoir from a British Neurosurgeon. The stories highlight some of the differences between the British and American medical system and the differences in medical training in the two countries. Each chapter revolves around a specific case with a grim diagnosis, Pineocytoma, Ependymoma, and Medullablastoma for example. Marsh takes the reader through the case and tells what happened to the patient.
Well-written and sympathetic tales from a caring surgeon. Marsh does long for the day when as a surgeon he could get his way in the medical environment because he was the surgeon. There are many more layers of bureaucracy in British medicine now, and tantrums no longer have a positive outcome for the surgeon or the patient.
Check our catalog.

Memory Man

Memory Man by David Baldacci  405 pp.

Amos Decker was a professional football player for just one play. A hard helmet to helmet hit left him with permanent changes in his brain in the form of Hyperthymesia (remembering everything that ever happens to him with photographic accuracy) and Synesthesia (in his case seeing colors and/or numbers in relation to events or memories.). After the end of his football career, Decker became a police officer until the next life changing event: the brutal murder of his wife and daughter which sends Decker into a sixteen month downward spiral. When a total stranger comes forward and confesses to the crime the day before a brutal school shooting Decker becomes part of the investigation with his old police partner, the police chief, and a senior FBI agent. For an unknown reason, the killer has targeted Decker and he must figure out why.  It is only with Decker's infallible memory that the sparse pieces of evidence begin to make sense.

Baldacci has featured characters with unusual mental abilities in other novels. In this one, two people with extreme mental abilities are pitted against each other in a race to stop the villain before more people end up dead. This book may be his best to date. Kudos to Baldacci for his sensitive treatment of the topic of the transgendered and intersexed and the abuse they too often receive.