Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.barbaralipska.com/
CITY: Annandale
STATE: VA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Polish
https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/barbara-k-lipska/1080770/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Poland; married Mirek Gorski; children: Kasia and Witek.
EDUCATION:University of Warsaw, Poland, M.S., 1975; Medical Academy of Warsaw, Ph.D., 1988.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Neurologist. Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, Warsaw, Poland, researcher; National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, postdoctoral fellowship, 1989, director of the Human Brain Collection Core, 2013–.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Barbara K. Lipska is an expert in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia. Born in Poland, she holds a Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Medical Academy of Warsaw and was a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw. In 1989 she immigrated with her family to the United States. Now based in Virginia, she is director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health where she studies mental illness and the human brain. She is also a marathon runner and a triathlete.
In 2015, Lipska experienced blocked vision and after an MRI was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. The disease had spread to the frontal lobe of her brain, the area responsible for behavior, personality, learning, and voluntary movement. As her brain began to shut down, she experienced dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms. She chronicles her condition in her 2018 memoir, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery with cowriter Elaine McArdle. Lipska writes about her treatment, surgery, and immunotherapy that eventually worked but before that caused her to lose her grip on reality. All the while she retained memories of the ordeal. She discusses the eight weeks of therapy, how brain injuries can change behavior and memory, and the support of her family. Lipska and McArdle provide a “deep understanding about the brain and how disease, injury, and age can change our very selves,” according to Andie Paloutzian in Booklist. In Kirkus Reviews, a writer called the book “A harrowing, intimately candid survivor’s journey through the minefields of cancer treatment.”
In an interview with Scott Simon online at NPR, Lipska noted that her illness helped her learn that “Mental illness is a brain disease. It is not some ephemeral thing, like a weak will or a lack of willpower. It has to be treated like any other disease—like the disease of heart or kidney or liver.” In the book, Lipska discusses the toll her illness had on her family, and after recovery that she is more aware of living and tries to find meaning in ordinary things every day. “While this sentiment could seem trite in other memoirs, Lipska avoids sentimentality and doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that her descent into ‘madness’ resulted in collateral damage” with friends and loved ones, noted Vanessa Willoughby in a review in BookPage. Nancy R. Ives commented in Library Journal that Lipska’s “touchingly candid account of personal resilience throughout a devastating diagnosis and treatment will appeal to memoir enthusiasts.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Andie Paloutzian, review of The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery, p. 41.
BookPage, April 2018, Vanessa Willoughby, review of The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, review of The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind.
Library Journal, May 15, 2018, Nancy R. Ives, review of The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind.
ONLINE
NPR, http://kuow.org/ (March 31, 2018), Scott Simon, author interview.
BARBARA K. LIPSKA, Ph.D. is director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development. A native of Poland, she holds a Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Medical School of Warsaw, and is an internationally recognized leader in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia. Before emigrating from Poland to the United States, Dr. Lipska was a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw. She has been at NIMH since 1989 and has published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals. A marathon runner and a triathlete, she lives with her husband, Mirek Gorski, in Virginia.
Barbara K. Lipska, Ph.D is the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she studies mental illness and human brain development with a focus on schizophrenia. A book about her journey into mental illness and recovery from it, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery," based on her New York Times opinion piece of the same name, will be published April 3, 2018, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A cancer survivor and triathlete, she lives in Annandale, Virginia.
Barbara Lipska, PhD, Director HBCC
Email: lipskab@mail.nih.gov
301-496-9501
Dr. Lipska obtained a M.S. degree in organic chemistry in 1975 and a Ph.D. degree in medical sciences at the Medical School of Warsaw, Poland in 1988. She has been at the NIMH since 1989 as a researcher and a chief of a molecular biology lab. Her primary research interests are in mental illness and human brain development. She is an internationally recognized leader in human postmortem research and animal modeling of schizophrenia.
Barbara K. Lipska was born, raised and educated in Warsaw, in Communist Poland. She received her MSci. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Warsaw, and Ph.D. in medical sciences in 1988 from the Medical Academy of Warsaw. In 1989 she immigrated with her family (husband Mirek Gorski and two children Kasia Lipska and Witek Lipski) to the U.S. She started a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD. During her career at the NIMH, she became an internationally recognized leader in animal modeling of schizophrenia, and in postmortem human brain research. In 2013 she became Director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the NIMH.
She published ~150 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
She is a marathon runner and a triathlete. In 1999, she finished the NYC marathon in 3:45 (8:30 min/mile), her PR.
She now lives with her husband in Annandale, VA.
‘I was a caricature of my worst traits’ – how brain cancer can affect the mind
When neuroscientist Barbara Lipska was diagnosed with brain cancer, she thought she knew about the physical toll. But she was unprepared for its effect on her behaviour
Giulia Rhodes
Fri 30 Mar 2018 15.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 2 Apr 2018 00.10 BST
Shares
760
Comments
286
Barbara Lipska: ‘What happened to me mentally was almost dismissed. Even afterwards, oncologists were never curious about it.’
D
r Barbara Lipska was working at her computer one morning in January 2015 when her right hand suddenly disappeared. Having spent her 40-year career studying the human brain, she immediately knew just how bad this was. The neuroscientist was aware that the most likely explanation was a tumour in the area of her brain governing vision. Having twice overcome cancer – in the breast in 2009 and then melanoma three years later – the spread of the disease was already a frightening possibility.
So when Lipska’s doctor called the following morning to report the results of an emergency MRI scan – three tumours in the brain, one of them bleeding, suggesting metastatic melanoma – she was undoubtedly devastated, but not completely surprised.
The prognosis was “effectively a death sentence”. At her age, then 63, and with that number of tumours, she knew she could expect to have between four and seven months. Instead, three years later, Lipska remains the director of the Human Brain Collection at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland, is training for a summer triathlon and has written an account of her experiences. She hopes this will raise awareness of an aspect of her illness about which, even with her extensive professional experience, she knew very little. “The idea that I might lose my mind didn’t enter my thoughts and was never discussed,” she says. “All anyone focused on was that I might die.”
Pinterest
Lipska’s brain scans.
Yet for two distressing months, after surgery and radiation and just as she began an immunotherapy clinical trial, Lipska slid into what she terms “insanity”, the tumours and swelling in the different areas of her brain triggering bewildering behaviour changes, lack of judgment, empathy and tolerance, and difficulty in relating to the world around her.
Advertisement
For some time her family did not realise these changes were an indication of what was happening physically in her brain. “I wasn’t a completely different person, more a caricature of my worst traits,” says Lipska. “There was always a vague link to reality. It could be excused away.”
When she summarily sacked a pest control worker, convinced of his intention to poison the household, alarm bells rang. Yet, reasoned those around Lipska, she was under a lot of stress, and of course the pest control chemicals were potentially toxic.
Lipska herself had no awareness of her tenuous grip on reality. “I was sure that everyone around me was acting wrongly. I thought they were conspiring against me, being mean.” The irony, she points out, is that she needed a part of her brain that was affected – the frontal cortex – in order to comprehend the very fact of it being affected.
When her brain was rescanned – her husband and adult children increasingly alarmed by her lack of empathy – 18 tumours were found. With the immunotherapy apparently initially unsuccessful, Lipska then began treatment with two drugs, trametinib and dabrafenib, newly available to patients with her type of melanoma. The “kitchen sink” of treatments began to work, shrinking the tumours. As Lipska’s ability to process emotions returned, the realisation of how unwell she had been was a difficult one.
“The most awful thing was that I hurt the people I love. As I regained my sanity, started coming back to life, I saw that I had no insight into my behaviour, I couldn’t recall the emotions. I learned that I upset my grandsons, who I love like nobody else,” she says, recounting an incident in which she shouted at them. “I feel terrible guilt even now. For me and my family this was such a distressing part of my illness.” Yet for the doctors treating the disease that almost killed her, any resulting mental illness was – understandably, she accepts – not a priority. “The concern was the cancer, the treatment of the tumours. What happened to me mentally was almost dismissed. Even afterwards, oncologists were never curious about it.”
As medical science advances, there are more survivors and medicine becomes ever more compartmentalised – “no one can specialise in everything” – but mental illness, she fears, risks being marginalised further. “I am a success story,” she adds, “a rare case. Not many survive my condition and are able to tell the tale afterwards. But if I had but lost my mind for ever, if the tumour had already ravaged the frontal cortex of my brain, if I had remained that monster and my family had had to live with that, would that be a success for me? I don’t know.”
Lipska has dedicated her career to understanding the mechanisms of mental illness – focusing particularly on schizophrenia – and her own survival affords her a valuable new case study. “I hope that my insight into living in a world which makes no sense can help advocate for people who experience mental illness for all sorts of reasons,” she says.
Most important, she states, is to build the understanding that mental illness is a disease of the brain and must be studied and treated as such, “just as coronary illness is a disease of the heart”. Notions of mental illness as different – “somehow involving blame” – still linger, she believes. “We are so far away from understanding how the brain functions. Understanding how it malfunctions is even further away. There is so much work to do.”
At her most recent scan, in January, doctors discovered another small tumour. She has just completed a course of radiation. It was a “heartbreaking” discovery, but one she and her family hope is “just another bump on the road”. In June she is aiming to complete a half ironman triathlon with her family. As they did at the same event last summer, Lipska’s son will cycle, her son-in-law will run and she will swim with a guide. “It is an incredible, bonding experience, however slow I am now,” she laughs.
Lipska’s illness has permanently changed her. She is blind in one eye, considerably weaker and she no longer fully trusts her mind. “My attitude to my brain and mental health has changed. I no longer feel invincible.” She is, she suspects, a “more feeling” scientist and a more tolerant person. When brains arrive at her lab, ready for research, Lipska and her team are simply given an age and a cause of death. “It could have been me. I look at them and I know each one holds so much personal history.”
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery by Barbara K Lipska is published by Bantam Press (£16.99).
'The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind' Returns From Madness. By: Scott Simon, Weekend Edition Saturday (NPR), 03/31/2018
Originally published on April 4, 2018 6:58 am
One spring morning in 2015, Barbara Lipska got up as usual, dyed her hair and went for a jog in her suburban Virginia neighborhood.
But when she returned from a much longer than expected run, her husband Mirek was completely taken aback.
"I was lost in my own neighborhood," Lipska says. "The hair dye that I put in my hair that morning dripped down my neck. I looked like a monster when I came back home."
Although she now lucidly recalls that moment, at the time she was oblivious to her unusual appearance and behavior.
Lipska studies the neuroscience of mental illness and brain development at the National Institute of Mental Health. In her work she's examined the molecular structure of the brains of people who were so afflicted with schizophrenia or other disorders that they took their own lives.
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.
A melanoma that had spread there caused the scientist to have to personally contend with the kind of ordeals and anxieties encountered by those whose brains she'd studied in the safe confines of her lab.
Lipska survived and, with journalist Elaine McArdle, has written a book about her illness and recovery called The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Discovery.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview Highlights
On what was happening inside her brain
I didn't know it at the time, and nobody knew. I had tumors growing in my brain, unbeknownst to anybody. And I had dramatic swelling and inflammation in my brain. Altogether, I had around 20 tumors.
On how the person her family knew and loved changed
I was changing very gradually, from a loving mother, grandmother and wife, into a kind of a heartless monster. I was yelling at my loving husband. I was yelling at my beloved grandsons and my children. I was behaving like a 2-year-old with a tantrum — all the time.
I lost particularly frontal cortex — it was swollen, it was not functional. And parietal cortex, behind my forehead. And these are the brain regions that regulate these high cognitive functions. These are the brain regions that make us human — that regulate how we dream, how we love, how we behave, whether we are inhibited, and think about not running into the streets barely dressed with hair dye dripping down our clothes.
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.
On what her family went through
I think it was more terrifying for my family than for myself because, as I said, I didn't realize what was happening. I was the one that was actually kind of spared, of the whole experience. But my family [members] gradually were realizing they were losing the person they loved. And they had no way of getting connection with me. I didn't make eye contact with them. I was detached. I didn't have any empathy. I hurt them — it was horrible.
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.
On what she learned about the brain
Yes, a very important message, which I knew all along — but it's just getting hard evidence. This: Mental illness is a brain disease. It is not some ephemeral thing, like a weak will or lack of willpower. It is not how I was brought up or what my family was. It is the brain disease. It has to be treated like any other disease — like the disease of heart, or kidney or liver.
And what it means is we need to find the mechanisms. We don't know still what causes it. We know it is in the brain, and it's a physical change in the brain.
On not knowing what treatment helped her get better
We don't know exactly, because I was given so many different treatments — radiation, immunotherapy, steroids for swelling and targeted therapy [for] melanoma cells. It is probable that everything that I received helped to some extent, but my belief is that immunotherapy probably had the biggest effect.
But as I argued with my doctor, "Don't give me so many drugs, because we'll never know what helped me." And he laughed at me — at the time of crisis, really — and [he] said "You know what, I don't care. I don't care to know at this moment. If you are better, that's all we care about." And I did get better. Pretty quickly.
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. Again, it happened in my brain — not in my 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!
NPR's Denise Guerra and Daniella Cheslow produced and edited this story for broadcast. Emma Bowman adapted it for the Web.
SCOTT SIMON: Barbara K. Lipska got up one morning, as usual, in the spring of 2015, dyed her hair and went jogging in her suburban Virginia neighborhood - all as usual. So why was her husband, Mirek, so alarmed to see her?
BARBARA K. LIPSKA: He was alarmed after I came back because I was there for a very long time running. I was lost in my own neighborhood. Not only that - the hair dye that I put in my hair that morning dripped down my neck and dried into these strange black rivulets. I looked like a monster when I came back home.
SIMON: Barbara K. Lipska, Ph.D., who joins us in our studios, is one of the world's preeminent researchers into the neuroscience of mental illness. Barbara K. Lipska has written a book with Elaine McArdle, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale Of Madness And Recovery." Thanks so much for being with us.
LIPSKA: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
SIMON: What was happening inside your brain?
LIPSKA: I had tumors growing in my brain unbeknownst to anybody. And I had dramatic swelling and inflammation in my brain.
SIMON: Yeah. And at first, it was three tumors, but in time, it became quite a few more, didn't it?
LIPSKA: Altogether, I had around 20 tumors in my brain.
SIMON: Help us understand how the person your family knew and loved changed.
LIPSKA: I was changing very gradually from a loving mother, grandmother and wife into a kind of a heartless monster. I was yelling at my loving husband. I was yelling at my beloved grandsons and my children. I was behaving like a 2-year-old with a tantrum all the time. Why was it the case, you probably will ask.
SIMON: Yeah. Well, I mean, you've laid that out beautifully - why it was the case - in your book.
LIPSKA: Yes. I lost particular frontal cortex. It was swollen. It was not functional. And parietal cortex, so somewhere here behind my forehead. And these are the brain regions that regulate these high cognitive functions. These are the brain regions that make us human - that regulate how we dream, how we love, how we behave.
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.
SIMON: And I'll note they still loved you and stayed with you.
LIPSKA: Which is believable, and 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. It's my biggest worry.
SIMON: Do you know, scientifically, how you got better?
LIPSKA: We don't know exactly because I was given so many different treatments - radiation, immunotherapy, steroids for swelling and targeted therapy that directly target melanoma cells. It is probable that everything that I received helped to some extent, but my belief is that immunotherapy probably had the biggest effect.
But as I argued with my doctor, don't give me so many drugs because we'll never know what helped me. And he laughed at me - at the time of crisis, really - and said, you know what? I don't care. I don't care to know at this moment. If you are better, that's all what we care about. So it's a little bit of a spoiler for the book. I survived. I still...
SIMON: Well, just the fact that we're interviewing you kind of spoils that part of it, but that's all right. Yeah. But it must've taught you something about the brain that you've been studying all those years that you didn't know before.
LIPSKA: Yes. A very important message, which I knew all along, but it is like getting hard evidence for this. Mental illness is a brain disease. It is not some ephemeral thing, like a weak will or a lack of willpower. It has to be treated like any other disease - like the disease of heart or kidney or liver. And we don't know, still, what causes it. We know it is in the brain, and it's a physical change in the brain in mental people and in people like me that had tumors.
SIMON: How are you feeling now?
LIPSKA: I'm feeling great, although I'm not as powerful as I used to be, both in terms of my physical strength and emotions. I went through so much. My brain was assaulted with drugs, with radiation. I lost my eye - my vision in the left eye. Again, it happened in the brain, not in my 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.
(LAUGHTER)
LIPSKA: And that's all what counts. And I'm happy.
SIMON: Barbara K. Lipska, who's director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health. And her book, "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale Of Madness And Recovery." Thanks so much for being with us. So glad you could.
LIPSKA: Thank you. Thank you so much.
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
Andie Paloutzian
Booklist. 114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p41.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. By Barbara K. Lipska and Elaine McArdle. Apr. 2018. 208p. HMH, $25 (9781328787309). 616.99.
As a director of the National Institute of Mental Health who focused on the impact of schizophrenia on the brain, Lipska knew a thing or two about mental illness. But she knew considerably more after she exhibited signs of the disease and came back from the brink with amazing insights. In 2015, she was sitting at her desk when her right hand seemed to disappear, as though it was missing. She thought that might indicate a tumor. Then the faces of her coworkers started vanishing. An M.R.I. scan did, indeed, reveal a brain tumor, followed by a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma. Surgery and an immunotherapy clinical trial were scheduled. For eight weeks, her brain further betrayed her, causing her to act erratically and lose her grip. Thankfully, the treatments worked, and Lipska found her way back to normal while retaining memories of her ordeal. Her story, told with coauthor McArdle, conveys deep understanding about the brain and how disease, injury, and age can change our very selves.--Andie Paloutzian
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Paloutzian, Andie. "The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2018, p. 41. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956823/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=113642d8. Accessed 7 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956823
THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND
Vanessa Willoughby
BookPage. (Apr. 2018): p24+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND
By Barbara K. Lipska
HMH $25, 208 pages ISBN 9781328787309 Audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
The mind is a precious thing to lose. Dr. Barbara K. Lipska, the director of the Human Brain Collection Core at the National Institute of Mental Health, learned this terrifying truth firsthand. In January of 2015, a melanoma diagnosis turned her once nimble mind into a war zone. With alarming quickness, the metastatic melanoma in Lipska's brain attacked her frontal lobe, the area of the brain responsible for behavior, personality, learning and voluntary movement. She began to transform into a distant stranger, experiencing symptoms that mimicked dementia and schizophrenia. Friends and family members wondered if this new version of their beloved mother, wife, friend and colleague would permanently replace the woman they once knew. Lipska waged a tough battle against her faulty brain, and remarkably, through radiation and immunotherapy, she recovered.
As a medical professional whose career revolves around analyzing the molecular and genetic structure of the brain, it seems a cruel trick of fate that Lipska was struck by a disease that affected her own brain function. In The Neurosci-entist Who Lost Her Mind, Lipska recounts her ordeal with equal parts raw honesty and clear-eyed conviction. Her brush with death changed her physically, mentally and emotionally,
and lead to a realization that the tragedy of an unlived life should be feared more than death itself. Lipska writes, "I've become more aware of living. I try harder than ever to find meaning in ordinary things every day." While this sentiment could seem trite in other memoirs, Lipska avoids sentimentality and doesn't sugarcoat the fact that her descent into "madness" resulted in collateral damage among her loved ones; she was somewhat safe in the eye of the storm.
Lipska's memoir makes clear that, in many ways, our brains are still a mystery.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Willoughby, Vanessa. "THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND." BookPage, Apr. 2018, p. 24+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532528593/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=75b91e9d. Accessed 7 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532528593
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
Publishers Weekly. 265.9 (Feb. 26, 2018): p80.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery
Barbara K. Lipska. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 (208p) ISBN 978-1-328-78730-9
In a terrifying moment one morning in January 2015, neuroscientist Lipska lost sight of her right-hand while she was eating breakfast. As she reveals in this fast-paced memoir, her symptoms eventually lead her doctors to discover that a melanoma had spread to her brain. Although she studied brain disorders for a living, she was afraid to look at the first MRIs of her own brain, admitting that her brain was a "mortal danger" to her. Following surgery to remove the small malignant tumor that caused vision loss, Lipska, hopeful she could return to normal life, began an intensely active physical regimen of cycling and running. Within a few weeks, however, she experienced dementia--and schizophrenia-like symptoms, exhibiting aggressive behavior, caused by what she would learn were lesions in her brain. Lipska shares excruciating details of the drug therapies and other treatments she underwent, such as radiation and taking immunotherapy drugs. She recognizes that she will never be the same and that she must deal with brain scans and other tests the rest of her life, but she revels in the pleasures of living every day with her family. Her exhilarating memoir reveals the frustrations of slow recovery, and that even with the best medical care there are no guarantees for good health. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery." Publishers Weekly, 26 Feb. 2018, p. 80. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530637479/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ba5edeeb. Accessed 7 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530637479
Lipska, Barbara K.: THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lipska, Barbara K. THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Nonfiction) $25.00 4, 3 ISBN: 978-1-328-78730-9
A vibrant mental health expert's bout with brain cancer and the revolutionary treatments that saved her life.
In 2015, Lipska, a veteran neuroscientist and triathlete who studies brains at the National Institute of Mental Health, found herself in a panic while out jogging in her suburban Virginia neighborhood. Without warning, she suddenly didn't recognize her surroundings and became severely disoriented. Her confusion dissipated, and then she received a devastating diagnosis of metastatic melanoma in her brain emerged. The resulting grueling two-month ordeal battling debilitating mental problems forms the core of this intensive memoir. The author briefly sketches the details of her history as a young, ambitious research scientist in Poland who eventually moved her family to America to pursue the study of brain illnesses and schizophrenia. In 2009, she underwent a mastectomy after a breast cancer diagnosis. In frank, unfettered prose, Lipska clearly demonstrates her courage, resilience, and pure dread in the face of disease and adversity. Of the three tumors found in her brain, one particularly "nasty raisin," vexingly located in the folds of her visual cortex," was bleeding. Though excised immediately, the author's mental acuity deteriorated. Through urgent and vigorous passages, the author chronicles a valiant fight for her life, with radiation treatments and an immunotherapy trial, which caused a whole new subset of medical maladies. Toward the end of the treatment plan, her behavior went haywire, and she suffered cognitive impairment, rage, paranoia, and bafflement, all of which crowded out any semblance of rationality. Eventually, however, the treatments worked, and Lipska experienced a miraculous (and statistically rare) "second chance at sanity." Throughout it all, the sheer irony of her ordeal never escaped her: "I am living through some of the processes of a disease that I've spent my life studying and trying to cure."
A harrowing, intimately candid survivor's journey through the minefields of cancer treatment.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lipska, Barbara K.: THE NEUROSCIENTIST WHO LOST HER MIND." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248129/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4ad93d3e. Accessed 7 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248129
The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. By: Ives, Nancy R., Library Journal, 03630277, 5/15/2018, Vol. 143, Issue 9
Lipska, Barbara K. The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. 6 CDs. 7 hrs. HighBridge. Apr. 2018. ISBN 9781684412662. $29.99. MEMOIR
When Lipska, a renowned brain scientist and triathlete, feared something was seriously wrong when she noticed part of her visual field had disappeared. A high-achieving Polish immigrant with a loving, supportive family, she had survived breast cancer and a previous bout of melanoma. When an MRI revealed brain tumors caused by metastatic melanoma, she was treated with surgery and radiation, then immunotherapy. After two months, though, the tumors multiplied, and her brain swelled dangerously, causing her to experience some of the same symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia as the people whose brains she had studied. She raged at her family, lost her inhibitions, and got lost while walking in her neighborhood. After beginning targeted therapy, she miraculously started to become herself again. In explicit, yet approachable language, Lipska explains what happened to her brain. Unfortunately, Emma Powell's narration, while clear and upbeat, doesn't feel quite authentic. VERDICT This touchingly candid account of personal resilience throughout a devastating diagnosis and treatment will appeal to memoir enthusiasts and listeners interested in how the brain functions. ["Readers who enjoyed Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight and Susannah Callahan's Brain on Fire will find this memoir of interest": LJ 4/15/18 review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]