A Book Review of Where is the Mango Princess and the Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury
Where is the Mango Princess is a tragic, heart wrenching, and deeply personal account of how traumatic brain injury affected the life of, author, Cathy Crimmins (2000) and the lives of her entire family. Crimmins wrote this account in order to share her experience of living and caring for a person with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to help those in the same position as her to cope with the myriad of changes that come along with such an unexpected incident. During her family’s last day on a vacation in Kingston, Ontario won in a school raffle, Cathy’s husband, Alan, took a boat trip to take away garbage and laundry from their cabin. On the way, a reckless teenager crashed into Alan's boat, running him over with her speedboat and causing massive bleeding and bruising to his brain. The accident caused Alan to fall into a coma for several weeks, and when he …show more content…
He worked as a lawyer, he was very organized, took care of paying the bills, and enjoyed things such as Japanese cinema and highbrow conversations. However, when Alan awoke from his several week long coma, he was toddler-like in cognitive and psychological ability, as well as the entire right side of his body being paralyzed. His official diagnosis was diffused axonal injury (DAI) with subdural hematomas on his frontal lobes. Imajo, T. and Roessman, U. (1984) broadly define DAI as a distinct form of head injury induced by direct external force at the time of trauma and characterized by axonal swelling, hemorrhages or lacerations of the corpus callosum, and of the brain stem. Basically, the axons in the brain, which are key in sending and receiving signals, had been severely sheared off during the accident. A subdural hematomas is a bruise beneath the skull, which causes swelling and bleeding with nowhere to go for
Where is the Mango Princess is a tragic, heart wrenching, and deeply personal account of how traumatic brain injury affected the life of, author, Cathy Crimmins (2000) and the lives of her entire family. Crimmins wrote this account in order to share her experience of living and caring for a person with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to help those in the same position as her to cope with the myriad of changes that come along with such an unexpected incident. During her family’s last day on a vacation in Kingston, Ontario won in a school raffle, Cathy’s husband, Alan, took a boat trip to take away garbage and laundry from their cabin. On the way, a reckless teenager crashed into Alan's boat, running him over with her speedboat and causing massive bleeding and bruising to his brain. The accident caused Alan to fall into a coma for several weeks, and when he …show more content…
He worked as a lawyer, he was very organized, took care of paying the bills, and enjoyed things such as Japanese cinema and highbrow conversations. However, when Alan awoke from his several week long coma, he was toddler-like in cognitive and psychological ability, as well as the entire right side of his body being paralyzed. His official diagnosis was diffused axonal injury (DAI) with subdural hematomas on his frontal lobes. Imajo, T. and Roessman, U. (1984) broadly define DAI as a distinct form of head injury induced by direct external force at the time of trauma and characterized by axonal swelling, hemorrhages or lacerations of the corpus callosum, and of the brain stem. Basically, the axons in the brain, which are key in sending and receiving signals, had been severely sheared off during the accident. A subdural hematomas is a bruise beneath the skull, which causes swelling and bleeding with nowhere to go for