Small Press Reviews Sean Malone

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TEN16 PRESS

TEN16 Press, a division of Orange Hat Publishing, housing fiction, non-fiction, YA and poetry books.

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Catastrophic Rupture: A Memoir of Healing by Dr. K. Jane Lee.

Review by Sean Malone, Publishing Consultant with Orange Hat Publishing | Ten16 Press

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

reconciled with the author’s medical craft maintained my interest and engrossed me to the final pages. What truly solidifies the achievement of Catastrophic Rupture is the indelible empathy that it imparts on the reader. By the end, I had a strong and lingering impression that I had shared in Jane’s parenting journey and could see myself in her initial reactions, doubts, fears, and hopes. Her progression in the way she both comes to care for and perceives her child is relatable on a profound level for all parents—that we are enabled to give our children all the love that we can, that we see their lives fulfilled in the fullest sense, and that our own perceptions of normal are defined by barriers that may deserve reassessing. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

CATASTROPHIC RUPTURE: A MEMOIR OF HEALING

As a pediatric critical care physician and an ethicist, Jane Lee was accustomed to caring for children with a range of serious conditions and disabilities, and felt comfortable helping families navigate decision-making for these children. When a complicated delivery leaves her second child with a severe brain injury, she finds that everything she learned about disability and personhood as a physician and ethicist is no help as a parent.

This book allows the reader to walk alongside the author as she struggles to bond with and love her child, as she reconciles what is happening at home with her ongoing role as a physician to patients and families in similar circumstances, and as she shifts from the medical perspective of disability that sees an impaired body to the mother's perspective that sees the beauty and value in the person that is her child. Tailspin is more than a war story. It's a story of two men's separate journeys confronting trauma and loss. It's a story of resilience and hope.