Review of "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova and "My Stroke of Insight" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and Their Impact on My Medical Practice

“Still Alice” by Lisa Genova and “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor truly give readers a first-hand experience into how the minds work of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and people who have had a stroke.

“Still Alice” follows the main character Dr. Alice Howland as she progresses through a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s. The story starts off describing Alice’s normal everyday life with her husband, her relationship with her children and her role as a professor at Columbia. As the story unfolds, Alice starts to slowly forget little things here and there which she associates with post-menopausal symptoms. These forgetful moments become more frequent and she seeks medical attention where she has tests done and finds out that she has the gene for early onset Alzheimer’s. This comes as a big reality check for Alice and her family because there are important decisions to be made. The author does a wonderful job of using words to show how the Alzheimer’s feels from Alice’s point of view. When Lisa Genova starts to replace the proper nouns of the characters names to nouns like “woman”, or “man”, the reader can truly start comprehending the severity of the disease.

“My Stroke of Insight” does an incredible job of explaining the progression of a stroke in the common vernacular without delving too much into the scientific aspect of it. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who experiences a stroke and explains the deterioration of her brain throughout the event. Being that Taylor is a neuroanatomist, she also included a more scientific section to this book for those readers who are interested in learning more about the topic.

These two books helped me to sympathize more with patients I may have in the future by acknowledging the themes of: loss of independence, frustration and future planning. As the two books listed above are pretty different when talking about main points, there are a few themes that repeat over the course of both. One theme is the loss of independence. Both Alice and Jill are very much used to functioning independently. Alice is a distinguished linguistics professor and Jill is a successful neuroanatomist. Although Alice had a more progressive onset and Jill’s stroke was very sudden, both outcomes resulted in a loss of independence, which neither of the two women were happy about. Alice and Jill both became dependent on others to get through their days. Alice began to rely on her husband and daughters to remind her of things she had to do that day. Her husband had to start leaving notes around the house when she would consider going for a run without him: “John had made her promise not to go running without him. She’d sworn she wouldn’t and crossed her heart. Of course, she might forget”. When Jill had her stroke, she knew she would not be able to do the things that was able to do before. She compares herself to an infant when she says “With my mind stripped of its ability to recall the memories and details of my previous life, it was clear to me that I was now like an infant-born into an adult woman body. And oh yes, the brain wasn’t working!”. She knew that from now and during her recovery, she would be limited in independence, similar to an infant. These two characters learn that they would not be able to complete tasks that they would normally be able to.

Personally, I know that if I was in either of their shoes, I would also have a very difficult time losing my ability to be independent. I think that Jill may have had an easier time with accepting it just because she is a neuroanatomist so she knows that the loss of independence may only be temporary. Another theme that bridges between both books is the sense of frustration. Jill and Alice both became very frustrated with and annoyed at themselves in parts in the book because they could not believe what was happening to them. With the loss of independence comes frustration of not being able to do the things that both of these women were used to doing. Alice demonstrated frustration when her husband was not 100% there for her all the time and she truly needed him to be. “She supposed that wasn’t very understanding. She flashed to anger a lot lately. Whether this was a symptom of her disease advancing or a justified response, she couldn’t say. She didn’t want a treadmill. She wanted him. Maybe she shouldn’t be so stubborn. Maybe she was killing herself too. ”

Alice became frustrated because her husband would tell her to wait for him to go running, but when her husband wasn’t available to go running, that’s when the anger would show itself. In “My Stroke of Insight”, Jill becomes very frustrated with the concept of energy conservation. She has to pick and choose what she spends time doing during the day or else she gets burnt out. “I had to choose between physical and cognitive efforts because they both wore me out…Cognitively I struggled to comprehend my existence. I still couldn’t think in terms of the past or future so I burned a lot of mental energy trying to piece together my present moment. ” It takes a lot of energy to recovery from a stroke, as Dr. Bolte explains to us in this novel. Having to choose certain things to spend energy on was frustrating for her because of how she was used to being able to do a lot in a day. I can definitely understand how both of these women would be frustrated with their situations because it is not something they are used to. They are not used to this “new world” that they find themselves trapped in. It is all scary and new.

The last theme that I found present in both books is the idea of futuristic thinking and planning ahead. Once Alice becomes more aware of her condition, she makes a plan for herself. As sad as this is, Alice felt the need to do this for her future self. “She needed a plan that committed the future her to a suicide she arranged for now. She needed to create a simple test, one that she could self-administer every day. ” She creates a list of 5 questions that she must answer and if she has any trouble with these, she would open a file “Butterfly” on her computer and follow a set of instructions. The questions were answered each day. Towards the end of the story, Alice finds that she cannot answer the questions she had written for herself and then she takes matters into her own hands. She did not want to be a burden on her family. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor made plans for herself for motivation through recovery. Being that she is a neuroanatomist, she knew the long road ahead of her. Jill knew she was a burden at the time, but she tackled each day to reach that end goal of fully functioning independently. She understood that for the time being, she would need help living on her own so she had her mother move in with her. “However, she felt that she could help this child recover from her neurological trauma. G. G. turned all those years of frustration for not being able to heal my brother’s schizophrenia into a plan for heling me recovery my mind. ” G. G. , Jill’s mother, was willing to tackle this long-term process alongside her and accepted this challenge. Although it is a difficult thing for her to think about, planning future recovery was crucial to regain function and help her get through everyday life. I found it sad that Alice was so ready for that suicide plan once she could no longer answer those questions, however she did not want to be a burden on her family so she did what she felt would benefit everyone. Jill welcomed her mother’s help with open arms because she knew what had to be done for her future success.

To conclude, I enjoyed both of these books and they both impacted the way I will practice. They both helped me see through the eyes of the person. “My Stroke of Insight” gave me a play by play as to what happens to the brain when a person has a stroke. I am able to sympathize with a patient who has a stroke because of how well Jill Bolte Taylor was able to explain what happens to the brain. “Still Alice” showed the progression of Alzheimer’s and this can help me plan for what a patient may present with. I was able to really feel the frustration that Alice had and how scared she was. I am glad that I chose these two books to read because it gave me the opportunity to sympathize more with patients with Alzheimer’s and patients who have experienced a stroke. They both gave me a first-hand look into each condition and made me think about the possible populations of patients that I want to work with. The books also gave me insight as to what to expect when working with a patient who has had a stroke or who has Alzheimer’s. It helped me truly understand what is going on in each person’s brain.