The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery

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In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts Barbara Lipska's deadly brain cancer and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind.

And for two months in 2015, she developed similar symptoms of dementia and schizophrenia — only to learn they were the effects of cancerous tumors, growing in her brain. She wrote like a scientist, almost giving itineraries instead of building a story. When she tried to build a story I knew what she was eluding to well before she gave the reason for the story. Throwing in some visual stuff or smells because that is what writers do, felt forced. Dr. Barbara Lipska dedicated her life to neuroscience and ended up raging a personal battle with her own brain. As a neuroscientist her specialty was schizophrenia, but soon she experienced the very symptoms she studied. The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery follows her personal story of overcoming melanoma that metastasized to the brain. She reminds us that mental illness is a brain disease and provides a blend of brain awareness and personal anecdotes to educate the reader. According to Dr. Thomas R. Insel, former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, when speaking of Lipska, “You have done something so important for people with serious mental illness who do not have an observable lesion. Not only have you reminded us all that mental illnesses are brain illnesses, you have reminded us to be hopeful. People recover.” It is her expertise, desire to help reduce stigma, and optimism that leaves a lasting mark on the reader. Written in an easy to understand format this book provides greater insight into the essential role performed by the frontal cortex and the effect on family. It also helped me understand a little about my own mind and reinforced what an amazing organ it is.Lipska's expertise helped her understand her symptoms when she developed metastatic brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 63. Lipska - who had previously been treated for breast cancer and melanoma (skin cancer) - realized something was wrong when she was preparing for 2015's 'Winter Conference on Brain Research' in Montana. Reaching out to turn on her computer, Lipska noticed that her hand 'disappeared' when she moved it to the right and 'reappeared' when she moved it to the left. I had memories during this period, but they weren’t reliable. Everything was intertwining. You could have told me anything about myself, and I’d have believed it possible. Perhaps I was a criminal. Every client I’d ever had when I worked as a criminal defense attorney might actually have been me. Any story could have been mine and, though I couldn’t remember committing a crime, I felt guilty enough to confess to anything. One day, my brain broke—or maybe it wasn’t one day. It could have been a cumulative process, the result of a lifetime of use. It could have been bad sushi—there’s a fish called the dream fish that causes 36 hours of hellish hallucinations, which I’d love to pin my own brush with madness on conclusively. But it could have been a million things. And I won’t ever know.

In the field of psychiatry, which is rife with mysteries, fugue states are, perhaps fittingly, totally elusive. They are rare, extreme escapes from the self that last as little as a few hours to years. But they do happen, and they seem to be triggered by common life stressors—financial woes, work problems, relationship difficulties, and the like. The mystery writer Agatha Christie was diagnosed with a dissociative fugue in 1926 after her mother’s death and upon discovering her husband had a lover.Personalitatea fiecărui om este rezultatul unor interacțiuni complexe între factori nenumărați care influențează funcționarea creierului." Her tenacity paid off. Despite some horrendous side effects – the mood swings alongside full-body rashes that, she was subsequently told, were as deadly as the cancer itself – she got better. The tumours disappeared; the madness subsided. Doctors were awed. After initial surgery, her treatment consisted of, first, targeted radiotherapy aimed at damaging the small tumors before her treating physician administered an immunotherapy agent to help her body’s immune system seek and destroy the damaged and vulnerable tumor cells. The immunotherapy protocol was available to Lipska through her enrollment in a clinical trial. After successful surgery to remove the raisin-sized cancerous growth that was bleeding, Lipska received targeted radiation to the other tumours. Only after this could such treatments as immunotherapy (which empowers the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells) and “targeted” therapy (aimed at specific molecules within cancer cells) be tried. In spite of an iron will and a high tolerance for pain and discomfort, Lipska confronted tumours that had minds of their own. They kept popping up “like weeds in a garden”. At one point, she had eighteen simultaneously. Many of us might not be able (or even want) to persist in the face of considerable suffering as Lipska did. However, she attributes at least some of her endurance to her long-time training and competing as a marathoner and tri-athlete. Lipska is still not out of the woods; however, the mostly new treatments she underwent have prolonged a life that she obviously values, even if that life continues to pose challenges. A vibrant mental health expert’s bout with brain cancer and the revolutionary treatments that saved her life.