Customer Reviews

That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Terrell Dougan and her family are my kind of people; even at the sad points they're cracking jokes. Are we really that unusual? I hope not, because sometimes it's just better to laugh than cry, and it's more socially acceptable anyway.

The story of Irene's life is an incredible one, from her birth in 1946 until now. I have to laugh at all of Irene's tricks to manipulate her sister and her caregivers; it's all SO true, and mental retardation does NOT mean stupid!!

If you're afraid this book will be dull, drab, and depressing, don't be! I don't find it that way at all. It's human and real, but funny just the same.

That Went Well - Adventures In Caring For My Sister - by Terrell Harris Dougan, is the true story of the author and her life caring for and about her mentally challenged sister, Irene.
Irene was apparently injured during her birth, when a period of anoxia left her with the intellect of a small child. Doctors said she would never learn to read and write, and would never live independently. Back then the advice was to find a state hospital and send her there.

The Harris family decided they could not do that to their young daughter and lovingly raised her at home, with the help of a live-in grandmother, Bammy.
At a certain point Irene became restless and combative and entered into several programs, none of which worked for her.
The book goes into detail about some of these programs, one founded by the author, and describes things that worked for Irene and things that didn't. Although it was a great source of stress for the author, in the end, when the responsibility of taking care of her sister was hers and hers alone, she realized she had built a large part of her life around taking care of Irene, and that she was grateful for it.

The first half of the book barely kept my interest, but I stuck with it to the end. The second half of the book was a better read to me, although there were still some things that focused a bit too much on the author and her life, and did not include much about her sister. I felt that anyway.

The last chapter was great and I kind of wish the author had put that much feeling into the entire book. In the last chapter, Harris-Dougan lets everyone know how she feels about how they act with her disabled sister. I appreciated the honesty and the humor used in that last chapter.

Overall, the book has merit. Parents of disabled children always worry about what will happen when they die, and who will take care of their child, and this book is an answer to that age-old question.

Terrell Harris Dougan writes primarily about her experiences as a caretaker and the impact on her life not only of a mentally disabled sister, but a physically disabled mother. Although she shares enough details of her personal story to give us a good sense of her as a person--where she came from, what factors have formed her--she focuses more (and best) on the issues raised by her caretaking.

Challenging work it is. Dougan does not seem to censor her experiences; there is real pain in what she does, though she does not wallow, but tries to bear all with resignation and humor that evidently can't be long suppressed. This book managed to raise both tears and laughter in me--sometimes, at the same time. To quote _Steel Magnolias_, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion." And that, I think, must be Dougan's gift.

If you want to read a book that will touch your heart and make you laugh, then this may be the book for you. If you want an interesting glimpse into the evolution of community care for mentally disabled adults, then this may be the book for you. If you want to read how one woman copes with being part of a network--family with needs and expectations, a society with expectations and goals, sometimes at odds with her own--then this may be the book for you. It's quick, it's warm, and it's witty; it is heartwarming and humbling. That's pretty good.

With a little more introspection, a little more depth, it might even have been great. But, honestly, I would have liked to have known more: more about Irene's condition and abilities, more about the systems and the people who have risen (and not) to Irene's assistance. I would have liked to have known more about the author's other family members and their interactions with Irene. What's there is fine--like a series of still shots taken from a documentary. An overview, the highlights, but it doesn't completely convey the full story.

Still, I don't hold that against Dougan. After all, it's her life, her business how much depth she wants to convey and how much privacy she chooses to retain. What it does, it does well.

A good memoir has a message for everyone; in spite of the difference in circumstance, they underscore our commonalities, the things that make us human, and help us to gain fresh perspective on our own lives. This is a good memoir. It doesn't take much imagination to see ourselves in her place. It doesn't take much more to look at our own lives through the perspective of her experience.

Dougan manages overall to convey her thoughts and stories with an unpretentious immediacy that soon had me feeling as though we'd been good friends for life.

Because its premise is so attractive, I really wanted to like this book. In the end, I simply accepted it as a readable, average work. What could possibly be wrong with a story about a woman growing and caring for herself while defending and caring for her disabled sister? Answer: technically, nothing. The facts of the author's life and her interactions with her sister are laid out in chronological order and recounted in short, even-tempered sentences that seem well suited to an adolescent reader. "That Went Well" is a nice story, but I was hoping for something with more teeth: a sense of emotion and urgency. Bottom line: while it's not my cup of spiced rum, some readers will warm to its gentle, tea-like flavor.

The title of this book, That Went Well, is fairly descriptive of my reaction to the book. It was a pleasant read, interesting, well-written, but I didn't find it particularly engaging. I think it might be more interesting to someone who had worked with, cared for, or interacted with mentally disabled persons -- as the anecdotes might hit home.

The book is about Dougan's experiences caring for her mentally disabled younger sister, Irene, who seems to behave on the level of a pre-schooler -- charming at times, naive, beholden to candy, and prone to tantrums when things don't go her way. It is clear that Dougan loves her sister very much and is quite protective of her, and expects others to treat Irene with respect. That said, most of the anecdotes about Dougan's experiences with her sister seem to be fraught with frustration and exhaustion. Dougan relates that third parties find Irene charming and delightful -- but I don't see Dougan relating stories about her own experiences through which she finds Irene charming and delightful. I just sense Dougan's exasperation on every page, as she tries to maintain her calm while trying to ensure that her sister is provided with a comfortable, stable living envitonment.

I felt like the book meandered a bit -- I never fully came to know Irene, nor did I fully come to understand the author's range of feelings for Irene. Dougan is a good writer -- I actually enjoyed her stories about her own experiences and feelings a little more than I enjoyed the stories about her sister.

I was expecting a book titled, "Adventures in Caring for my Sister" would be less of a random memoir and more of a learning experience. Not only do I feel like nobody in the book learned any lessons by having Irene in their lives, I don't feel as though anybody who reads this book will learn any lessons about the disabled population either. I'm sure in real life Irene's presence has affected those around her, but shoddy editing and lack of focus don't allow that story to come through in this book. (Seriously, there was an entire chapter about the Sundance Film Festival. Where was Irene during all of this? I certainly had no idea.)

Dougan could have done a lot more with this book. The isolated descriptions of life with Irene and working with the disabled could have been expanded to create a cohesive novel. Instead, I got frequently bored reading about seemingly unrelated events going on in Utah and with the rest of the family. By the end of the book, the only time we really get an in-depth look at what it means to have a disability and live with somebody with a disability, I was so exasperated that it was almost painful to finish.

This book must be like life with a developmentally disabled sister--hard work at times, occasionally annoying, funny, a touch tedious, and more than a little heart-warming. Shoot, life's kind of like that no matter what your sibling is like. You will learn a lot from this book, and the last third of it is spectacular. Life lessons within...for all of us.

I really liked the honestly in this memoir. Terrell Dougan has spent a good part of her adult life caring for her sister Irene, and it has not been easy---Irene is prone to violent tantrums and has an IQ of 57. However, she also is warmhearted and friendly, and Dougan is great at realizing that this has given her life lots of interesting moments it would not otherwise have had. I liked also that much of the book dealt with the two sisters as they were in their 50s and 60s. So many books about people with special needs only show them as children, not adults. I loved the line where Dougan said that although it's been a rewarding life with her sister in a lot of ways, at times she wishes it had all happened to the neighbors! I bet most of us have felt that way about things.

Although Dougan is a cheery and upbeat writer, I think the book could use a bit more focus and consistency. There is much here about her parents, about her houses and parts where it starts to feel like a "celebrities I have known" type memoir. Most of this is interesting stuff, but is not really part of the book's larger theme. Also, at times the switches from humor to scenes that would make you cry seem pretty sudden. It's like reading Erma Bombeck for pages, and then there is a scene that needs you to be serious and really feel what is being said, and it's a little hard on a reader, although I bet it's a lot like life with Irene really is.

I don't know what the future holds for my daughter, who is 4 and has been diagnosed as autistic. It's very possible her brothers might some day be her caretakers. I hope they do half the job and have half the self-insight that Terrell Harris Dougan has.

I am so glad I chose to read this book from the list of selections I was offered. I laughed and I cried as I quickly turned the pages to find out what would happen next. This book is written in a very straight-forward style and was all the more interesting to me because the author did not sentimentalize or constantly moan and groan asking the eternal unanswerable questions "Why?".

Caring for a mentally handicapped family member is a full-time responsibility and a sometimes onerous chore. But the love and the dedication of the family to each other shines through the pages of this often funny narrative in an uplifting and thought provoking way that for me was entertaining but also incredibly educational.

When Terrell was about six years old, her younger sister Irene was born and a major change was going to take place in the household of the Harris family of Salt Lake City. From the beginning it was clear that little Irene was 'slow'. Slow to sit, slow to stand, slow to walk, slow to talk. But it was not until she entered kindergarten that the severity of her handicap was realized, when at the suggestion of the teacher, she was taken to the University of Utah for testing. The results and recommendations were difficult to accept. Most like due to oxygen deprivation during a difficult birth, she was brain damaged, with an IQ of about 57. The book details the story of Irene and her family over the next 60 or so years, until the present.

The last part of the book, the last 60 pages or so, is very good. But oddly, until that point, I realized the book was a great deal more about Terrell and her life than about her sister and I had little idea until that point about who Irene was as a person. Finally, the focus changes and the book becomes much more interesting. It seems, at some point, the author realized that Irene is always going to be Irene, with the good and bad that entails, and perhaps what can actually change are her expectations for her sister.

When Irene is at the center of the book it is interesting and eyeopening and at times moving. It makes you pause and wonder what is "normal". The book would have benefited if that had been the focus throughout but the last sections are good enough to give a recommendation.