What doesn't kill us makes us : who we become after tragedy and trauma / Mike Mariana.
"A deep examination of what happens after life-altering events, from car accidents to incarceration, and how we forge new identities when our lives are cleaved irrevocably into a before and after "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger," the saying goes. But does it really? Tracing the lives of six people who have experienced catastrophic, life-changing events, journalist Mike Mariani explores the nuances of what happens after one's life is cleaved into a before and after. If what doesn't kill us doesn't necessarily make us stronger, he asks, what does it make us? When his own life was transformed by the diagnosis of a chronic illness, Mariani turned inward, changing his active existence into a more pensive one. In this ambitious work of reporting, he uses his own experience, as well as the lessons of medicine, literature, mythology, and religion, to tell the stories of people living what he terms "afterlives." Their experiences range from a paralyzing car crash to a personality-altering traumatic brain injury to an accidental homicide that resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment. Their "afterlives," Mariani argues, have supercharged their identities, forcing them to narrow and deepen their focus to find their sense of purpose-whether through academia or religion or helping others-in identities that have been struck by tragedy and then dramatically reinvented. Delving into lives we rarely see in such detail-lives filled with struggle, loss, perseverance, and triumph-Mariani brings us to the darkest aspects of human existence, only to show us just how much we are capable of becoming"-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780593236949
- ISBN: 0593236947
- Physical Description: 358 pages ; cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York, New York : Ballantine Books, [2022]
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-358). |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Life change events. Psychic trauma. Adjustment (Psychology) Emotional Adjustment. |
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Poplar Bluff - Main Library | 155.93 MARIANA (Text) | 38420101773873 | NON-FICTION | Available | - |
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What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us : Who We Become after Tragedy and Trauma
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Excerpt
What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us : Who We Become after Tragedy and Trauma
Chapter One Diminishment Sophie Papp and her family had a ritual for the recently departed. Whenever a relative died, she and her brother and cousins would all squeeze into a car and drive to Koksilah River, an hour north of their homes in Victoria, British Columbia. There, they would spend the day swimming in the glassy jade water, letting the current drag them along the squishy riverbed and gazing at the native arbutus trees, whose red bark peeled like crinkly snakeskin in the summer months. On September 1, 2014, shortly after her grandmother passed away, Sophie--Âa sweet, reserved girl with gray-Âblue eyes and freckles--Âjoined her younger brother, Alex, her cousin Emily, and a close friend. They packed themselves into a navy-Âblue Volkswagen Golf and headed up island to the banks of the long, twisty river. On the way, the group made a quick stop at a Tim Hortons for coffee and breakfast before pulling back onto 1 North. That's the last memory Sophie, who was nineteen years old at the time, has of that day. It would also be the last memory she would form for the entire next week of her life. Over the years, she's cobbled together the facts from those who were with her in the VW that morning to create an account of what happened next. About forty-Âfive minutes after the stop, Emily, who was driving, spilled her iced coffee. It started dripping onto her seat, her clothes, even trickling into her shoes, and as she scrambled to clean it she let her attention slip from the highway. The car drifted to the right, eventually veering into the gravel shoulder. The sound of the tires rumbling over the carpet of rock fragments made Emily finally look up, and when she saw how far the car had slipped off the road she panicked, yanking the steering wheel to the left. The wheels struggled to gain traction on the gravel, though, and at a speed of around seventy miles per hour, she lost control. The sedan skidded across multiple lanes in both directions before somersaulting into a ravine on the opposite side of the road. The force of the impact knocked Sophie and Emily unconscious. Hoisting themselves from their seats, Alex and Sophie's friend were able to push the doors open and escape the mangled Golf. After around fifteen minutes, Emily regained consciousness, but Sophie remained unresponsive. When first responders arrived at the scene, they used the Jaws of Life to pull her out of the back seat. She was immediately transferred to a helicopter and medevaced to Victoria General Hospital. Sophie was rushed into the hospital's trauma center, designated for treating the facility's most severe, life-Âor-Âdeath injuries. The large, high-Âceilinged room was filled with beds, ventilators, and defibrillators; snakelike surgical lights swooped overhead and bathed the metallic tables and color-coded medical cabinets in bright fluorescent light. Within an hour, Sophie's parents arrived. After rushing through the automatic front doors and heading for the trauma center, they were met in the hallway by a grave-Âfaced cluster of doctors, nurses, and paramedics attending to their daughter. During the accident, Sophie had suffered a traumatic brain injury. At the crash site, EMTs gave her a score of six on the Glasgow Coma Scale, indicating profound trauma. She had also fallen into a coma. Standing in the trauma center, her parents, who were both doctors, canvassed their daughter frantically for any signs of encouragement. Instead, they observed how her body had assumed an unusually stiff posture--Âarms ramrod straight against her sides, hands tightly clenched, toes flexed upward--Âwith minimal response to stimuli. They both knew this condition, called decerebrate posturing, was a frightening sign, one that often suggested severe and potentially fatal brain damage. Neither, however, acknowledged their observation to the other. Instead, they sat on either side of ÂSophie's hospital bed, stroking her curly brown hair and gently gliding their fingers over her arms. "Sophie, Mom and Dad are here," they whispered, unsure whether their reassurances were getting through. "You're going to be okay." They'd both developed the emotional poise required of physicians navigating the chaos of ER Âdepartments, and that self-possession helped during those immeasurably bleak, desolating hours. Underneath their masks of composure, though, they were scrabbling to absorb the worst day of their lives, scanning their daughter's motionless body and desperately hoping she would survive. Sophie was eventually wheeled to the intensive care unit, where she would spend the next several days. Initially all but lifeless, she grew increasingly restless as she fluctuated between varying states of consciousness. Though still in a coma, Sophie would thrash around in her hospital bed, pull at her IVs, and mumble indecipherably to herself. At one point, while still unconscious in the neurology wing's ICU, she even attempted to stage an escape from her hospital room. Wresting off her wires, pulling out her tubes, and dragging herself out of the disheveled bed, she clambered over the rails before collapsing onto the floor. Her mother, Jane, remained by her side nearly twenty-Âfour hours a day. Though non-Âstaff were technically not permitted to stay in hospital rooms overnight, Jane found crafty ways to evade the hospital's rules, and often slept a few feet from Sophie's bed, on a faux-Âleather chair that converted into a cot. By her fourth day in the hospital, Sophie was moved to the neurology wing and placed in an acute care unit that specialized in brain injuries. Her condition had stabilized somewhat, but her physical state remained disconcerting. Behind the glass walls of her private room, she was hooked up to a snarl of medical equipment: Wires measuring heart rate and oxygen saturation dangled from her body; an IV delivered a steady stream of fluids through a butterfly needle in her forearm; and nasogastric tubes snaked through both her nostrils, which reminded her mother of a "very disturbing" plastic bull-Âring. She thrashed under the hospital bedding, and her legs were often splayed at odd angles over a rumpled tangle of papery white sheets. Because she tugged at her wires and tubes so often, staff tethered her hands to the bed railings with wrist restraints. But Sophie survived those precarious first few days, when the extent of her brain damage was entirely unclear and her stiff, contorted posture evoked her parents' worst fears. By the end of her first week in the hospital, she was gradually emerging from her coma, her mind surfacing in short, erratic bursts. Sophie would awaken for brief, bleary snatches, offering monosyllabic responses to her parents and nurses--Âher first three words were "blanket," "pee," and "head"--Âbefore slipping back into a fretful, tumultuous sleep. Due to a phenomenon in the brain called neural storming, her body temperature swung dramatically, and staff cooled her down by wrapping cold compresses around her legs. When she got too hot, she fell into episodes of delirium, growing agitated and disoriented and sometimes even hallucinating conversations with people who weren't in the room. Still, she was starting to communicate regularly with the family, friends, and staff checking in on her throughout each day, something her parents found extremely heartening. Sophie, it would seem, had been spared a traumatic brain injury's grimmest scenarios. As Sophie moved into her second week at Victoria General Hospital, though, her convalescence began to assume more perplexing qualities. Just days after regaining the most rudimentary communication skills, she was engaging in extended, in-Âdepth conversations with everyone around her. "One day she spoke a sentence, and then not long after, she was talking endlessly, about everything," Jane recalled. She asked staff how old they were, whether they had children, what their most interesting cases had been. She peppered doctors with questions about both her condition and their personal lives. She slipped effortlessly into sincere, heartfelt exchanges with the floor's nurses' aides. Excerpted from What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us: Who We Become after Tragedy and Trauma by Mike Mariani All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.