Reviews
A Mother's Nightmare: A Heartrending Journey into Near Fatal Childhood Illness by Cathy Crimmins
liralen's review
3.0
Bad things sometimes come in sequence, and our family had been suffering through a storm of bad things for some time. Based on the idea of bad things happening in numbers (threes?), I suppose I should have guessed that something was wrong with my daughter. (9)
Gosh. Crimmins and her family went through the wringer: a life-changing brain injury for her husband, which she documented in [b:Where Is the Mango Princess?|129867|Where Is the Mango Princess? A Journey Back from Brain Injury|Cathy Crimmins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348192318l/129867._SY75_.jpg|1902351], a devastating auto-immune disease for her daughter, described here, and then fatal complications of an injury for Crimmins herself. I had trouble tracking this one down, but when I eventually saw how close together the publication of this book and her death were, it made sense: she died so soon after the publication of this book that I imagine promotion and publicity for the book were rather curtailed.
There's a tremendous sense of frustration throughout the book—sometimes that the medical professionals aren't 100% on point, sometimes, I think, that Crimmins can't do more to spare her daughter the trials of autoimmune hepatitis. Sometimes that frustration feels more like blowing off steam than like useful narrative, but sometimes it feels pretty justified:
But there's also this: Right now AIH is incurable—the patient’s best hope is to go into remission, which can happen for months or years at a time but almost never lasts. The recurrence rate is 80 percent (59). When Crimmins wrote the book, of course, she had no reason to think that she wouldn't be around to support her daughter through further medical trials. You have to wonder what books she might have written later, no? If only it were that simple.
Gosh. Crimmins and her family went through the wringer: a life-changing brain injury for her husband, which she documented in [b:Where Is the Mango Princess?|129867|Where Is the Mango Princess? A Journey Back from Brain Injury|Cathy Crimmins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348192318l/129867._SY75_.jpg|1902351], a devastating auto-immune disease for her daughter, described here, and then fatal complications of an injury for Crimmins herself. I had trouble tracking this one down, but when I eventually saw how close together the publication of this book and her death were, it made sense: she died so soon after the publication of this book that I imagine promotion and publicity for the book were rather curtailed.
There's a tremendous sense of frustration throughout the book—sometimes that the medical professionals aren't 100% on point, sometimes, I think, that Crimmins can't do more to spare her daughter the trials of autoimmune hepatitis. Sometimes that frustration feels more like blowing off steam than like useful narrative, but sometimes it feels pretty justified:
The nurse filled in the questionnaire for me, as if I couldn’t possibly have completed it myself. There were dozens of weirdly worded, insulting questions, such as, “Is your child subject to domestic abuse in your household?”
At one point, the nurse smiled sweetly and read this question: “How long have you know about your daughter’s terminal illness? Have you talked to her about it?” And she says this in front of Kelly.
Terminal. There is a vast silence after she says it.
“Terminal?” I squeaked. “Have you been told something I don’t know?”
The nurse looked down at the form on her lap. “Oh geez, did I say terminal?” Her voice sounded upset. “What she has is probably chronic liver disease. Oh, like, I am so sorry. I meant chronic. Really. I misread it.” (45)You can feel the fury in that passage, can't you? But it's also, well, hard to imagine feeling anything else. That's quite a slip.
But there's also this: Right now AIH is incurable—the patient’s best hope is to go into remission, which can happen for months or years at a time but almost never lasts. The recurrence rate is 80 percent (59). When Crimmins wrote the book, of course, she had no reason to think that she wouldn't be around to support her daughter through further medical trials. You have to wonder what books she might have written later, no? If only it were that simple.
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