Customer Reviews

Where Is the Mango Princess?: A Journey Back From Brain Injury

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My heart is sore,,,,,,,I just finished reading this book for the second time. My lifetime partner had a brain aneurysm 18 months ago. Our world was turned upside down. This book written by Cathy has been my Bible to move forward. Tonight I came to the computer to write Cathy, only to find out she passed away last September....my heart hurts for a woman who wrote so brilliantly to heal my soul.

Loving thoughts of you Cathy.....Susan Davis

When someone close to you suffers an accident, and ends up in a hospital bed in a coma, the world around you collapses. This happened to us on April 6th 2003, when Mickey was involved in a car accident and was in a coma for over 2 months.

This book has been incredibly helpful. It contains a lot of priceless information, information you CAN understand, complementing it with loads of personal experiences.
Thanks to the very easy language (it can be read as a novel) it has allowed everyone in my family to understand and accept the choices and changes we wnet though and are still going through with a TBI survivor. It has also helped us understand and help Mickey in his recovery process.

I have cried and laughed on endless nights with this book.
I have underlined passages and read them over and over (something I dont do very often)
I have shared this book with the rest of my family, friends, Mickeys friends and caregivers and even some doctors....

Thank you Cathy Crimmins for helping US stay confident, focused, and happy....

This book opened my eyes and warmed my heart.

To anyone going through this terrible ordeal... there IS HOPE at the end. Dont despair!

Recently my mother suffered a severe brain anuerism and stroke. She was unconscious for over a week and spent 27 days in the SCU. She was very young and this experience was very tramatic. Crimmins does a tremendous job to explain the oddities of TBI and name them without ever making you feel like you are reading a medical novel. By reading this story, I have been able to cope with confabulation and many other behaviours that TBI patients exhibit, that would have been shocking before reading this book. It is a truely amazing story as all recoveries from TBI are. I would hightly recommend this book to anyone dealing with any form of TBI.

Julianna Margulies will be in a new movie Where is the Mango Princess son on TNT! WATCH IT!

My son recently suffered a brain injury. This book helped me more than anything else that I have read. It also made me laugh and cry. It was really great to know that I was not alone in my struggle to help my son recover. I loved this book.

Cathy Crimmins partner researched medical libraries to provide factual details within the context of this entertaining and cohesive account of a chaotic and painful experience.

She shares the story of her husband Alan's injury from a motorboat running over his head and the aftermath of that event.

There are elements here contained in many brain injury stories to a greater or lesser degree; insurance companies, jobs, the impact on friends and family and the slow, frustrating process of recovery.

How she contends with these larger difficulties as well as the daily problems presented by her husband's disability is a story skillfully presented. She maintains hope and provides support during a time that seems incredible in the telling.

My husband suffered TBI in 1996, a year after we began dating - that was over five years and a lifetime ago. We struggled through the first year just trying to get through each day. He never gave up and neither did we. "We", include his son and my three children. Watching him "fight" and evolve into a different person (a composite of the "old" & the "new") created a range of emotions for us all from anger, denial, sadness to relief (when we found the right mix of health care resources)& hope & happiness. We "blended" our families a year after his injury and while there are moments when we wonder "why did this happen to him", we continue to face each day - one day at a time. Some are good, and some downright stink.
Cathy's book reminded me once again that we are not alone - I dove into the research just like Cathy (the knowledge & my understanding of it was my life jacket. Our children, our reason for not giving up) Her messages are our messages - I hear my voice in her written word. There were moments when I had to put the book down as it saddened me to remember how painful those days, weeks, months were. How the fear and frustration made us feel physically and emotionally spent. And there were many passages where I laughed with her! I'm writing to say - we too survived! It's not easy, and it never, ever ends. It's about courage, love and support. It's about our new little family sticking together despite the challenges and now we look back and talk about some of our dimmest moments & smile. (Cathy's dedication to Al says it all for me - "to the past, present and future") Read the book - take the journey - you are not alone. Cathy, thank you.

Although brain injuries take many forms, this book is a great start for anyone who has either suffered from some form of brain injury or the family members of patients. CE Crimmins tells a true tale of a horrible accident but she peppers it with her humor and her real feelings about what has happened to her family and her marital relationship. She understands and points out the inability of members of society who are not informed on this subject to understand what a very long recovery process is involved with any brain injury. I found it particularly poignant in the areas of looks normal/acts normal, but in fact, is not normal! In other words, Ms. Crimmins illuminates that although brain injury suffers may appear totally recovered the recovery process takes upward of one year. Ms. Crimmins also assists individuals who have suffered any type of brain injury in understanding how it feels to be the family member rather than the patient. The author gives her own valuable knowledge through her experience that provides hope that others will have patience and the information necessary to realize how many physical and mental issues continue to plague patients after surgery and during recovery - including the effects of the medications. Ms. Crimmins also describes the battles with the HMOs in a powerful way.

I loved this book and could barely put it down.

With wit and humor, this book provides a horribly accurate depiction of a TBI and its aftermath, as well as a surprising amount of insight into the functioning of both healthy and damaged brains. Guess what? The 1 in 20 figure (percentage of TBI survivors who get all the help they need) is not only true, but a likely overestimation. I was sent to the prestigious Sister Kenny institute, but my jaw literally dropped when I read about all the followup care this TBI survivor received (which I didn't.) I was shocked to read the exact same problems I experienced. The subject of this book was lucky enough to have caretakers who at least had some idea of what they were getting into-- well, at least somebody was told something, I certainly wasn't. I had more respect for myself than ever before after reading this book. I survived, too. This book may not be such an intensely personal experience for you, but you will be glad you read it! Everyone needs to be educated about TBI!!

There is much literature on the diseased and disabled and their caretakers, full of raw emotion and excruciating pathos. There's plenty of that here too, but seldom has the loving anguish and unmitigated joy of caretaking been so gloriously and eloquently expressed. Crimmins is a fine writer and her book so plaintively sings the song of her husband, the endlessly charming, disability and all, Alan; her daughter Kelly, and herself. What a privelege and pleasure to be allowed to share their incredible story! She even pointedly garrotes HMOs and the American health care system. Simply brilliant!