Customer Reviews

Where Is the Mango Princess?

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Cathy Crimmins has taught us all a lesson in this book.....that life isn't always as we had thought it would be and that we must be proactive in order to change it.

When her husband, Alan, a successful bank attorney in Philadelphia, suffers a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in an accident, his life and his family's lives change forever. Crimmins takes us through the extensive rehab process which she handles with both tears and laughter. As a reader, I found myself experiencing feelings of anger, hope, sadness, and joy at the smallest improvement in her husband's condition and at the smallest victory over the system.

I could not believe how much I learned from this book. It should be "must reading" for everyone who works with brain-injured patients and also for all of those insurance company "voices on the phone" who make life and death decisions based on very little information, and with very little empathy. I learned about something called "perseveration" which is when a brain-injured person repeats an action or phrase over and over and over again. I also learned that with brain injuries such as this, inhibitions disappear, which means that socially inappropriate behaviors are often displayed. Crimmins also made the reader understand why these patients and their families become so frustrated. I could fill pages with what I learned.......

I read this book in one day and a friend who was visiting me read it the next. I then passed it on to my daughter who also read it in one day and then recommended it to her neurobiology professor who thought it was outstanding. If I had the power to make this book a bestseller, I would!

Having never read a book that talked about a personal experience with Traumatic Brain Injury, I found myself unable to put the book down. My god-daughter recently sustained a head injury from being thrown from an All Terraine Vehicle (ATV) and I found so much of Cathy Crimmins' story right on the mark. This book can be a difficult book to read because of the deeply emotional subject, but is a touching memoir told with a great deal of humor, and most of all... honesty.

Reading this book will touch anyone who has ever known someone who has sustained a TBI. It's also a book that should be shared after reading it. I congratulate the author for sharing her story; one that shares the heartache and explores the mystery of dealing with a loved one who survives a serious head injury. It's a world that I hope my family is spared from ever knowing firsthand.

I guess we never know how we will respond to a life changing event, and Cathy Crimmins shows the human side - the ups and downs with a rare openess. This is not anything like the Harrison Ford movie, Regarding Henry, where he wakes up a sweet guy afer a serious accident. This is what really happens! This is a must read.

Cathy Crimmins is an eloquent and amazing person. Her description of life after a loved one's Traumatic Brain Injury is riveting. My father sustained a serious TBI a year after Cathy's husband did - I found that she was able to put into words all the feelings that I've had. This is a must read for anyone who's life has been touched by TBI, as well as a must read for anyone who knows nothing about it. TBI is not the Hollywood scene where the person wakes up and life goes on like normal....Cathy puts a real face on the nightmare of life after TBI.

Cathy Crimmins says that WHERE IS THE MANGO PRINCESS? is the book she never hoped to write. But we should be glad she did!

It is a book that is sure to bring tears to anyone's eyes, but tears that alternate from tears of sadness to tears of joy to tears of laughter. It is Oliver Sacks meets Robin Cook! However, Robin Cook never took the Insurance Companies & HMO's to task with the biting humor that Cathy Crimmins does in this book. And Oliver Sacks never described the strengths & frailities, the inner workings of the human mind, and the human psyche, in such a personal way and with such candor & grace as does Cathy Crimmins. Cathy can truly say "Been There, Done That."

A short moment in time. A family vacation. Suddenly, a life is in jeopardy, a family is forever changed. Cathy takes us through that harrowing first year AFTER. We see Kelly, 7 years old, suddenly lose her childhood innocence. And we see Alan, a successful 40something lawyer, replace Kelly as Cathy's child.

Head Injury is all around us. It is a great hidden "disease" in which the victims are often unaware of their own changes, and the public is unaware - period. This book not only helps raise awareness of this particular tragedy, but it makes us aware that there are so many people out there who are facing tragedies that we see as impossible to cope with, yet somewhere, find the strength. Cathy found the strength.

As the spouse of a head injury victim, I could not have written this book. Congratualtions to Cathy for writing the book that had to be written. As a member of the human race, I would not want to have missed reading this book. It should be read by anyone who is in, has been in, or contemplates ever being in, a relationship. It defines Love.

As I finsihed this book, I posed this question to myself: Does this book have a happy ending? Well, does it? Decide for yourself.

An excellent book about the life of a TBI survivor and how brain injury not only changes the life of the survivor, but also the life of his/her family. Crimmins writes with clarity about her husband's accident, rehab, and subsequent deficits. She pulls no punches when she describes HMOs and their lack of caring and understanding. Being the mother of a TBI survivor I can certainly relate to much of what Crimmins has to say about Alan's cognitive problems. This book should be read by anyone who works with TBI survivors and their families. Unless one walks in the shoes of a TBI caregiver it is very difficult to understand what we experience. Where is the Mango Princess? gives a firsthand account of what many of us go through on a daily basis.

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.

Okay, the title snared me, but this little book is not about either mangos or princesses, but rather about traumatic brain injury (TBI) and its effect on the author and her family. Ms. Crimmins sketches a gritty, brutally candid and knowledgeable tale of what happens when her husband is terribly injured in a boating accident. I would label this book a must read for anyone dealing with TBI, as well as for all of us who will probably come upon it in some form at some time or another. "Imagine a world where the library is intact, but the librarian has gone insane." When something terrible happens in a family, the dynamics that made that family what it was, can and do disappear forever - and what's left is a far shot from what we bargained for. The book is not warm or fuzzy or inspirational or spiritual, the characters are not always very likeable, but the insights are very personal and true, from her own admittedly stupid mistakes to simple miscalculations, and the reactions of folks who can't or won't understand brain injury. Ms. Crimmins not only writes of their personal journey through the maze of TBI, but the entire medical support/non-support systems that are in place and how "Managed Care" is a silly oxymoron that is being sold to us to insure [no] care when we most need it. The transfer of her husband from the Canadian hospital to the US left me gasping - simply incomprehensible and inexcusable. The responses of the HMO were sobering and agonizing and maybe even criminal? Crimmins says "I fantasize about roasting the executives [of HMOs] on a spit, then taking them down and throwing a few Band-Aids and a jar of Vaseline at them: 'Here's the treatment - this is what we've authorized for first-degree burns under your plan.'" Read this book for first hand knowledge and understanding.

In her no holds barred book, Where Is The Mango Princess? Cathy Crimmins takes the reader on a candid journey of courage, determination and humor, as she struggles to rebuild her life following a senseless accident which leaves her husband Alan with severe traumatic brain injury. In the weeks and months after the accident, Cathy shares the challenges she and her family face as Alan survives coma, completes rehab,and re-enters the workforce.

Cathy's take charge and 'take no prisoners' attitude as she battles her HMO with a razor sharp wit, is indicative of the conversations many of us have in our heads, but would never dare verbalize. As a traumatic brain injury survivor, I found her story touching, bold and brilliantly executed.

Everything about this book has been said in prior reviews. I admire Crimmins for her courage and positive outlook. I would like to know how the tale proceeds, how is her husband now, after the first year of rehabilitaion has passed. My then seven-year old daughter suffered brain trauma through disease, equine encephalitis rampant in Mexico when we visited there in 1970. After seizures, a cardiac arrest, a six week coma, and the long road to recovery began. I kept a journal and wrote about the illness and the eventual break-up of our family. This head-injury infected the family like a virus, causing the fabric of our structure to weaken, eventually to break. Later, much later, after having been married to a young man who had also suffered TBI through riding sans helmet on a motorcycle, and having lived a rewarding life, the old scars in my daughter's brain led to a violent seizure, and death. Unexpected and sudden. I read recently of a young woman who suffered TBI and lay in a coma. My impulse was to go to her mother and try to give her hope, from experience. I didn't, simply because I feared the question, "How is your daughter now?" And having to answer, "She died," hardly encouraging, since the death was related to the earlier brain-injury. There are no pat answers in a brain injury. Every case is unique. I could see how different the trauma was in my son-in-law, who was injured (motorcycle accident) when nineteen, and with little more than an average education. He fared less well than Cathy's husband with a higher education. Methods used today are much better than those used even fifteen years ago, and much advanced over those used thirty years ago. Age has something to do with it as well. Stephanie was seven, at an age when the brain could still form new synapses. All these factors come into play making each and every case different. Stephanie's neurologist told me, when he read the memoir I had written of Stephanie, "Mrs. Finell, when I read how Stephanie was treated thirty years ago, I feel neurology was still in the dark ages. Everything we know now we have learned within the last ten to fifteen years." That is why I would hesitate to recommend this book to family members of anyone who has "only yesterday" suffered TBI. The truth might be too frightening. On the other hand, it should be read by every doctor, caregiver, HMO person, and after a certain while has passed, then, by every member of the family. It should be read by co-workers, or co-students of the TBI person. No one understands TBI. Just yesterday I read an article again, where a teenager is lying comatose after having been hit by a car, accompanied by photos of schoolmates with balloons, with smiling get-well faces, innocently believing that after a while the stricken person will awaken from her coma and after a given recovery time, everything will be as it was. The sad news is, and this Crimmins drives home over and over again, that it will never be again as it once was. The old clichee holds: Ignorance is bliss. Optimism and hope carry the day. Some of the doctor's predictions come true, some do not. It would take courage for someone to read the book had a recent TBI occurred to a family member. I am amazed that Cathy Crimmins could write this book while her husband was recovering, I suppose it served to keep her sane and was in a way cathartic. My hat is off to this wonderful writer, this "Amazing Crimmins," never maudlin, always matter of fact, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always straight on target. One last word: This book is invaluable for what it teaches us about the brain. And yes, it reads like a novel and therefore will be read. Other books dealing with brain injury written by doctors, offer valuable information but will not be read by the lay reader, and this is a story that HAD to be told to Everyman.

Cathy Crimmins is an amazing woman for writing this book. Her husband has survived a near-fatal accident -- and she too is a survivor. She manages to cope with it all (without succumbing to a total nervous breakdown), and maintains some level of normalcy while bringing up her only child in an atmosphere that is vastly different from what it was only weeks ago - with a husband she no longer recognizes, a "new Alan."

Alan's new personality struck so many chords with me -- my brother was diagnosed in his early teens as having paranoid schizophrenia, and he and Alan display similar characteristics, even though their maladies are profoundly different. My brother isn't brain damaged, he was "born that way." I don't remember him being vastly different from what he was before, so my family doesn't have memories of "normal" to fall back on. I honestly can't say whether that would be easier or worse for us, so I can understand why this issue is so bittersweet for Crimmins. My brother exhibits a tremendous capacity for warmth, pride and giving (like Alan, he picks up on what interests you and carries it through to the extreme. A good example is, he knows I like music so he spent his entire disability check on a 300-disc cd player that I don't really need but wouldn't ever say as much. When I was promoted to a new position at my old music label job, he told everyone I was president of the company.) He also has stormy outbursts of temper where everything is someone else's fault (which, all these years later, is a family joke of sorts -- "YOU did it!" or "the DOG did it!") Tiny things send him into a rage, and moments later he is like a young child, apologetic and thoughtful. The only difference is Alan really can't help it, and sometimes with my brother I JUST DON'T KNOW. He's admitted to being manipulative, deliberately saying hurtful things and being lazy. Sometimes that translates into anger for everyone --asking themselves why can't he just behave like a NORMAL PERSON??!! At other times he is perfectly well-behaved and a gentleman. This is similar to what Crimmins says about Alan: it's hard for people to see what's wrong with the brain when the body appears normal. For example, my brother and I and another person can sit down and discuss something of interest to him. In the space of two minutes he will begin to wander off -- he has no focus. Like Alan, he doesn't have that voice inside his head that tells him things are inappropriate -- and because he can't hold down a normal job (or keep his temper in check) unfortunately, he falls into that percentage of broken families. I identify with the author -- when you love someone whose brain isn't right it is truly a life-long devastation. Why did this happen? Why did this happen to THIS PERSON -- and you? And after you accept it -- what are you going to do about it?

Crimmins manages to show us these horrible, devastating events that happen to her family without disassociating us. Instead she engages us in the evolving dramas and progression. Alan will only be able to do what he can do, and that's the most you can ask for of anyone -- to function at their optimum and put their energies to good use for their benefit and for others. Good luck Cathy, there are a lot of readers out here batting for you.