Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath [Hardcover]

Michael Paul Mason (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374134529 | ISBN-13: 978-0374134525 | Publication Date: April 1, 2008 | Edition: First Edition

Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain damage. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who coordinate care in the complicated aftermath of tragic injuries that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit.

Underlying each of these survivors’ stories is an exploration of the brain and its mysteries. When injured, the brain must figure out how to heal itself, reorganizing its physiology in order to do the job. Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses into brain science, the last frontier of medicine, and we come away in awe of the miracles of the brain’s workings and astonished at the fragility of the brain and the sense of self, life, and order that resides there. Head Cases “[achieves] through sympathy and curiosity insight like that which pulses through genuine literature” (The New York Sun); it is at once illuminating and deeply affecting.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been brought to the fore by the war in Iraq, but not only soldiers experience it. Mason, a case manager in Tulsa, Okla., for people living with TBI, writes with passion and urgency about the unheralded but compelling stories of Americans injured in car accidents or through a miscalculation while snowboarding. Their lives are disrupted by seizures, memory loss, psychosis. One of Mason's clients is an ambitious former air force officer who now goes into waking trances in which he thinks he's dead, as a result of a herpes virus emerging from its hiding place to invade his brain. Mason lays out a damning indictment of the health-care system's failure to provide facilities and services that millions like his clients need. He also tells stories of tremendous courage and perseverance as survivors and their families work to re-establish the everyday skills they had before their injury. The strange effects of neurological damage will draw fans of Oliver Sacks, but Mason's poignant and caring accounts of his clients' lives are sure to touch the hearts of a wide range of readers. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Tulsa-based brain-injury case manager Mason presents the stories of a dozen clients who have suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) with startling candor not just about how their lives and those of their families were altered by the disability but about the scant assistance available on a national scale for TBI victims. The book’s publicity claims readers will come away “astonished at the fragility of the brain.” But who doesn’t already know that? On the other hand, many don’t know that TBI can be caused from either without (an auto accident, a fall) or within (a tumor or even a common virus that many endure with minor symptoms yet that can travel to the brain), changing a life literally in an instant. Additionally, most don’t know how to differentiate between behaviors caused by TBI and those caused by psychosis. Cast against a backdrop of slim resources crying for more aid, the stories are heartbreakingly stark, like so many slaps upside the head, but, coming from a man who too often must deliver bad news, hard to counterpunch. --Donna Chavez

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374134529
• ISBN-13: 978-0374134525
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #733,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Mason is an editor, writer, speaker, and journalist based in Tulsa. His works have appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including Discover, The New York Times, and The Believer. Mason has also appeared as a guest on several national media outlets, including the Lehrer Newshour, CBS News, NPR's Morning Edition and The Diane Rehm Show. In 2010, he founded This Land Press, Oklahoma's first New Media company, and serves as its editor.

Mason's assignments have taken him into the Iraqi war zone, behind Vatican walls, and into aftermath of the World Trade Center. Along the way, he has built a reputation for noteworthy journalism. When Mason's article, "Dead Men Walking," appeared in Discover magazine, it ignited a national debate about the treatment of brain injured soldiers.

Mason's first book, Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath, is an exploration into the harsh realities endured by brain injury survivors. Since the publication of Head Cases, he has maintained a role as one of the country's leading advocates for people with brain injury-he has addressed the Congressional Task Force on Brain Injury and has served as president of the Brain Injury Association of Oklahoma.

A native of Oklahoma, Mason has a long history of involvement in the Tulsa community. He has been a past president of the Tulsa Artist Coalition, and founded the popular cult journal Me Head, which reached more than 300,000 readers a month online. He has written articles for both the Tulsa World and The Oklahoman. He regularly speaks at local events, such as the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Symposium, and dedicates much of his editorial efforts at This Land Press toward community improvement.

Mason is also a member of the PEN American Center. He has served as a board member of the Academy of Certified Brain Injury Specialists and as a past president of the Brain Injury Association of Oklahoma, and he has sat on two advisory councils committed to the bettering of treatment for veterans with brain injury.

In addition to his writing projects, Mason has produced several feature works that have played on public radio stations across the nation. In a project with Tulsa author Jeff Martin, Mason produced one of Oklahoma's most popular podcasts, "Goodbye Tulsa," a show that told the story of Tulsa through the lives of its citizens. Through This Land Press, Mason continues to produce audio content oriented to life in middle America.

In the fall of 2010, Mason left his job as a brain injury case manager to devote his energies to This Land Press. In its first several months of publication, This Land Press achieved international recognition for its journalism. Mason is currently at work on a non-fiction book called The Human Assembly: The Discovery, History, and Industry of our Parts, Tissues, and Organs, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read, difficult to put down, April 4, 2008

By 

C. Elk "NY Amazonian" (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Hardcover)

I was cringing all the way through this book, horrified at the accidents and the run-around that the injured get in our pathetic excuse for a health care system. Mason doesn't go too much into neuroscientific details, but focuses instead on how the injury has affected the injured, their lives and livelihood, their friends and family, and how they have learned or failed to learn to live with their deficits. Each chapter is a biography. Some are hopeful, all are illuminating.
I hope this book helps to raise public awareness about what a desperate state we are in with regards to being able to provide cost-effective care and therapy for people with TBI. Hundreds of brain-injured soldiers are coming back from Iraq and will need help integrating back into society.
Brookhaven Hospital in Tulsa, where the author is based, offers care that is tailored to the needs of each individual. No two brain injuries are the same and no two roads to recovery take the same route. This type of treatment needs to be available at more facilities, and it needs to be available to everybody who needs it, not just the wealthy.
Read it, give it to a friend, wear a helmet.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book on brains with a big heart!, April 2, 2008

By 

Walter L. Larimore (Monument, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Hardcover)

This book was a very pleasant surprise and not at all what I had expected.

Thinking, even fearing, that this book might be an intense or even arduous exegesis of the neuroscience of brain injury, I found instead a series of captivating and absorbing dramas that opened for me a door into the not-often-seen difficult lives, debilitating circumstances, damaged brains, and inspirational hearts and souls of a number of victims of brain injury.

Mr. Mason, with the compassion and astute observation of a skilled case worker, relates story after story that are as captivating and inspiring as they are sobering and heartbreaking.

I felt like I met, came to know, even empathized with and admired, the involuntary stars of each tragedy. I was introduced to their loved ones, learned about their pasts and hometowns, was shown in dreadful detail their horrible accidents, and exposed to the myriad obstacles and difficulties to which these amazing people and their families are exposed each day.

I found myself cheering, with Mr. Mason, their victories, and joined him in a swelling admiration for their courage and spunk.

Along with these compelling stories is the fascinating and fantastic journey upon which Mr. Mason took me - a rollercoaster ride into the "the brain injury capital of the world" at a remarkable hospital thirty miles north of Baghdad on the grounds of Balad Air Base.

The picture Mr. Mason paints of the amazing skills of our military healthcare professionals in providing the best care in the world to brain injured military personnel, innocent civilians, or even enemy combatants, is as astonishing as it is wonderful.

In short, this fascinating and well-written book will open to many readers a world that they hopefully will never experience, illuminate paths that prayerfully they and their families will not have to walk, while inspiring us to appreciate and admire the courage and valor of the incredible people who make up each of the amazing "head cases."

Walt Larimore
Co-Author, His Brain, Her Brain

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well written .. an engaging read!, May 5, 2008

By 

Marinella Glossa "everybody's mom" (Orlando FL United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Hardcover)

I loved this book and read it in one sitting. As the mom of a TBI victim, it was an eye opening book. I felt a little disheartened by the grim reality presented by the author (he is a little gloomy .. ) but I think the book will inspire me to continue to be "a squeaky wheel" on my daughter's behalf.

I have QUITE the head injury library at this point, and many are written by survivors or family members with or without the help of a "ghost writer" and i think this leads to some pretty questionable writing and some of them are really hard to get through. HEAD CASES is extremely well written, and was pleasure to read.