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This is one strong lady used to being in charge and when her brain started acting off, her family really didn't know how to react, and she didn't realize it's happening, so it's a real mess for a while because no one wants to take the reins from her or tell her she's not in charge anymore. A spellbinding investigation into the mysteries of the human brain, led by a scientist whose tenacity is as remarkable as her story.” And for two months in 2015, she developed similar symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia — only to learn they were the effects of cancerous tumors, growing in her brain.
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. 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.Very rarely do I get upset at anything I read. I did for some judgments made on this book by other reviewers. I wish I had not read them at all. Somehow I want to believe that people can be non-judgmental, tolerant. And see more than a class or an identity or ethnicity or a skin color. 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. 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. Personalitatea fiecărui om este rezultatul unor interacțiuni complexe între factori nenumărați care influențează funcționarea creierului." Lipska did recover, both from the cancer and the side effects, though she's aware the 'cure' might not last forever. Still, Barbara's at peace, and very grateful to her family - as well as the doctors and other medical professionals who treated her. She says "I'm feeling great, although I am not as powerful as I used to be — both in terms of my physical strengths and emotions. I went through so much. My brain was assaulted with drugs, with radiation. I lost my vision in the left eye.....I lost some balance. I am a little disoriented spatially, so I have sometimes trouble with maps and finding my places. But, you know what? I'm alive — and that's all that counts. And I'm happy!"
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. 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. 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 scientist knew, however, that she wasn't cured, and that new tumors were likely to appear. Lipska decided that her best chance of survival lay with an experimental immunotherapy procedure, which primes the body's immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Lipska got into an immunotherapy clinical trial at Georgetown University Hospital, and was periodically infused with powerful antibody drugs over a period of months.Lipska is very fortunate to have a husband, Mirek, who's a cool-headed mathematician; a son, Witek, who's a neuroscientist; a daughter, Kasia, who's a physician; and a sister, Maria, who's a physicist and chief of therapy in the radiation oncology department at Boston's 'Brigham and Women's Hospital.'
Generally Lipska’s husband, children, and grandchildren are presented quite stereotypically in her book. Her grandsons are adorable; her son, tall and handsome; and her daughter is beautiful and intelligent. I found myself occasionally wondering how Lipska, clearly a high-achieving Type-A personality, would manage if she had to describe children who were not athletic high achievers like herself. I also wondered what the descriptions of family might have been like if they'd been written by a writer other than McArdle--one more sensitive to language and nuance, who could tease compelling details out of her subject. 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. We have these thoughts about behaving properly — not yelling at our families and the loved ones. But I lost it. And I didn't realize it. 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." Barbara Lipska is the director of the Human Brain Bank at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C. An internationally recognized researcher in human brain development and mental illness, Dr. Lipska has a doctorate in Medical Sciences from the Medical School of Warsaw.
AMANDA RIPLEY, New York Times bestselling author of The Smartest Kids in the World and The Unthinkable 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. Primul soț al autoarei s-a îmbolnăvit de melanom, o formă de cancer care avea o rată de supraviețuire de doar câteva luni (la acea vreme). La scurt timp, căsnicia celor doi s-a răcit. De ce? Păi, cică omul trăia în negare, adică nu îi venea să creadă că va muri și s-a închis în el. Probabil trebuia să îi ducă flori, când venea de la chimioterapie. Așa că autoarea l-a înșelat. Nici măcar nu a avut decența de a se despărți de el înainte să se culce cu altul. Peste ani, s-a îmbolnăvit și ea de aceeași formă de cancer. Atât de scârbită am fost de atitudinea ei, încât i-am numit boala ,,karma". Lipska's expertise helped her understand her symptoms when she developed metastatic brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 63. Lipska - who had previously been treated for breast cancer and melanoma (skin cancer) - realized something was wrong when she was preparing for 2015's 'Winter Conference on Brain Research' in Montana. Reaching out to turn on her computer, Lipska noticed that her hand 'disappeared' when she moved it to the right and 'reappeared' when she moved it to the left.
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