Catastrophic Rupture: A Memoir of Healing by Dr. K. Jane Lee.
Review by Sean Malone, Publishing Consultant with Orange Hat Publishing | Ten16 Press
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Dr. K. Jane Lee’s Catastrophic Rupture (published 2021) relates the overall journey and internal processing of a medical doctor and mother. At the book’s core and central to its appeal is the perspective provided by the author herself. As a pediatric critical care physician and an ethicist, Jane Lee has provided care for children with a range of serious conditions and disabilities, attaining a comfortable proficiency in helping families navigate decision-making for these children. The heart of the narrative is born concurrently with the author’s second child, in which a complicated delivery leaves her daughter with a severe brain injury, or ‘catastrophic rupture.’ Lee discovers that everything she learned about disability and personhood as a physician and ethicist renders no help as a parent. From this key moment, the book takes the reader alongside the author as she struggles to bond with and love her child and as she reconciles what is happening at home with her ongoing role as a physician to patients and families in similar circumstances. The profound issues that the author must grapple with can be appreciated by any reader within or outside of the medical profession. The key journey of transition involves the shift in view from a strictly medical perspective of disability, that of an impaired body, to the mother’s perspective that sees the beauty and value in the person that is her child. This celebration of motherhood
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