A Journey Into a Damaged Mind and Back Again
WHERE IS THE MANGO PRINCESS?
By Cathy Crimmins
Alfred A. Knopf, 257 pages, $24
Humorist Cathy Crimmins recounts here in poignant detail how a 1996 boating collision on a quiet lake in Canada vaulted her family into upheaval. During a summer vacation, her husband, Alan Forman, suffered a traumatic brain injury, the kind from which no one fully recovers. The Alan who survived was not the funny, athletic man Crimmins met in graduate school and married. He also was not the father their school-age daughter Kelly had known.
With humor, wit and an ability to explain the workings of a scrambled mind that once came up with the nonsensical question, “Where is the mango princess?” Crimmins tells how she helped nurse him back to a new life: first inside Canada’s nationalized health system, and then closer to their Philadelphia home, where she incessantly battled HMO bureaucrats. Along the way, she learned to appreciate those doctors and nurses who put his care first.
Her fight began with getting her husband’s Canadian hospital care covered by his U.S. insurance company, because “foolish me, I never thought to contact Alan’s ‘primary care physician’ (read: gatekeeper) when he was first brought in by helicopter. I was too busy worrying that he was going to die,” she writes. When it came time for his eventual return home, their HMO dispatched a small plane ill-suited to transport her semi-comatose husband back to the United States. She blames that episode, in which he was left dehydrated and unmedicated for hours, for setting back his progress.
She then takes readers through his recuperation: the joys of seeing him awaken from a coma, then watching him speak again and walk again and eventually practice law again. She describes the disappointments and struggles with physical, emotional and intellectual deficits as well as his new lack of inhibition.
But there is redemption in this beautifully written account from a loving woman who takes to heart the marriage vows “in sickness and in health, till death do us part” and shares insights into brain damage and the mystery of personality.
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BALANCE YOUR BODY, BALANCE YOUR LIFE
By Dr. Edward A. Taub
Pocket Books, 445 pages, $14.95
Dr. Edward A. Taub, a California-trained pediatrician and family doctor perhaps best known to television viewers for his many appearances on public and network television as an expert on wellness, says Americans are brainwashed into believing “we have no choice but to accept illness and enjoy eating food that is lacking in energy and vitality.” He believes that by understanding nutrition and modifying what we eat, we can learn to enjoy good food, avoid being overweight and lower our stress.
Taub’s book is a how-to, with advice about nutritional needs at every age, relaxation, exercise, meditation, supplements and a bit of his personal theology thrown in. It’s a gentle, easy read. Taub’s the kind of guy who, instead of saying, “We age,” says, “We progress through the cycle of life.” That’s surely easy to swallow.
In revising his 1999 book of the same name, Taub has tried to incorporate new research. The paperback reflects, for example, findings that fiber reduces heart disease risk in women. He now advises folks approaching 50 to ease up on carbohydrates and has rearranged his “food energy ladder,” a food pyramid. Taub wants you to build your meals around his top 5 items: 1) fruits, vegetables and water; 2) beans and legumes; 3) olive oil, nuts and avocados; 4) whole grains, high-fiber cereals and brown rice; 5) potatoes, dark grain breads and pastas. Fish and poultry should be eaten less frequently, and he says it’s best to go easy on eggs, beef, pork, lamb, veal, low-fat dairy products, regular dairy products, candy and sweets.
To keep readers from becoming discouraged as they try to carry out his 28-day plan, he reminds them of his philosophy: “everything in moderation including moderation.” He includes recipes, detailed instructions on exercise, as well as daily journal entry spaces for the 28 days he says it takes for his advice to become ingrained. There’s a lot of sound, common-sense wisdom packed into this one volume. As even he says: There is nothing new under the sun.