Where Is the Mango Princess?
Where Is the Mango Princess? by Cathy Crimmins, published by Knopf in September 2000, is a poignant narrative that recounts the life-altering impact of a tragic boating accident on her family. In 1996, during a lakeside holiday, Cathy’s husband, Alan, suffered severe brain damage, leading to a deep coma and significant changes in his personality and abilities. This book explores the challenges faced by Cathy and her family as they navigate the complexities of medical care, insurance, and the emotional turmoil that follows such a traumatic event.
Readers will find a candid exploration of resilience and the human spirit as Cathy shares her experiences dealing with medical professionals and the bureaucratic hurdles of healthcare. The narrative delves into themes of identity and the profound effects of brain injury, offering insights into the nature of love and the absurdities of life. With 272 pages of thoughtful reflection, Crimmins combines humor and clarity to illuminate her family’s journey through adversity, making this edition a compelling account of transformation and the enduring strength of familial bonds.
Official synopsis Publisher
This is a book that Cathy Crimmins never hoped to write: the story of how a tragic accident nearly destroyed her family; of how in a split second their lives were changed forever.
In 1996, Cathy Crimmins, her husband, Alan, and their daughter, Kelly, were on an idyllic lakeside holiday when a boating accident left Alan in a deep coma, with severe damage to the frontal lobes of his brain, the area that controls speech, memory, movement, and personality. Where Is the Mango Princess? is the story of what happened to Cathy and her family after Alan woke up.
From the frustrations of dealing with doctors (“The first doctor, whom we call Dr. Asshole, swooped down from the great Neurosurgery in the Sky to tell me he has nothing to tell me”) and insurance plans (“You know what our HMO’s brain surgery plan is? They give your wife a Black & Decker drill and an instruction booklet”) to the enigmas of personality, mortality, and modern science, Where Is the Mango Princess? is a chronicle of an unforgettable transformation.
Crimmins’s story is full of unexpected and hard-won wisdom: a reminder of the precariousness of health, of fortune, of life itself; an indictment of HMOs and the bureaucrats bred by them; a lesson in how resilient love is, and how wide its compass. Most of all, though, it is Cathy’s ability to confront absurdity head-on and not be undone by it that awes and inspires us, in what may be the most miraculous, the most healing, the most uniquely human trait of all–the gift of wit, and how it held her together in the face of the worst life has to offer.
Writing with grace, candor, and remarkable clarity, Cathy Crimmins charts her husband’s painful and often astonishing journey through the world of the brain-injured and takes readers on a voyage–life-affirming in even its darkest moments–through neurology, identity, and the mysteries of the human brain.
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