The Beginning of Everything
The Year I Lost My Mind and Found Myself
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Narrated by:
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Andrea J. Buchanan
About this listen
A PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist
A real-life neurological mystery and captivating story of reinvention by the New York Times bestselling author of The Daring Book for Girls.
Andrea Buchanan lost her mind while crossing the street one blustery March morning. The cold winter air triggered a coughing fit, and she began to choke. She was choking on a lot that day. A sick child. A pending divorce. The guilt of failing as a partner and as a mother. When the coughing finally stopped, she thought it was over. She could not have been more wrong.
When she coughed that morning, a small tear ripped through her dura mater, the membrane covering the brain and spinal cord. But she didn’t know that yet. Instead, Andrea went on with her day, unaware that her cerebrospinal fluid was already beginning to leak out of that tiny opening.
What followed was nine months of pain and confusion as her brain, no longer cushioned by a healthy waterbed of fluid, sank in her skull. At a time in her life when she needed to be as clear-thinking as possible - as a writer, as a mother, as a woman attempting to strike out on her own after two decades of marriage - she was plagued by cognitive impairment and constant pain, trapped by her own brain - all while mystifying doctors and pushing the limits of medical understanding.
In this luminous and moving narrative, Andrea reveals the astonishing story of this tumultuous year - her fraught search for treatment; how patients, especially women, fight to be seen as reliable narrators of their own experiences; and how her life-altering recovery process affected both her and her family.
The mind-brain connection is one of the greatest mysteries of the human condition. In some folklore, the cerebrospinal fluid around the brain is thought to be the place where consciousness actually begins. Here, in the pages of The Beginning of Everything, Andrea seeks to understand: Where was “I” when I wasn’t there?
©2018 by Andrea J. Buchanan. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)
- A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying
- By: Sallie Tisdale
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Listen to a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides - a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and talking about death make us uncomfortable - but she also explores its intimacies and joys.
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I thought I had more time...
- By Alyssa on 09-09-19
By: Sallie Tisdale
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind
- My Tale of Madness and Recovery
- By: Barbara K. Lipska, Elaine McArdle - contributor
- Narrated by: Emma Powell
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.
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Be Prepared To Feel Insane--
- By Gillian on 04-11-18
By: Barbara K. Lipska, and others
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My Glory Was I Had Such Friends
- A Memoir
- By: Amy Silverstein
- Narrated by: Erin Moon
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly 26 years after receiving her first heart transplant, Amy Silverstein's donor heart plummeted into failure. If she wanted to live, she had to take on the grueling quest for a new heart - immediately. A shot at survival meant uprooting her life and moving across the country to California. When her friends heard of her plans, there was only one reaction: "I'm there." Nine remarkable women - Joy, Jill, Leja, Jody, Lauren, Robin, Valerie, Ann, and Jane - put demanding jobs and pressing family obligations on hold to fly across the country and be by Amy's side.
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Great listen!
- By Natalie on 05-13-23
By: Amy Silverstein
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Expecting Adam
- A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
- By: Martha Beck
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment Martha and her husband, John, conceived their second child, all hell broke loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. But the dream had begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard community warned them not to keep the baby.
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True Life Fairy Tale
- By Desarae on 11-27-13
By: Martha Beck
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Patient Care
- Death and Life in the Emergency Room
- By: Paul Seward MD
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Recalling remarkable cases - and people - from a career launched in the first days of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward tells us that medical staff must be more than technicians of the body: They must be restorers of the human.
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very enjoyable
- By Patricia Oxenham on 03-21-19
By: Paul Seward MD
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The Last Best Cure
- My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy, and My Life
- By: Donna Jackson Nakazawa
- Narrated by: Karen Saltus
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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One day Donna Jackson Nakazawa found herself lying on the floor to recover from climbing the stairs. That’s when it hit her. She was managing the symptoms of the autoimmune disorders that had plagued her for a decade, but she had lost her joy. As a science journalist, she was curious to know what mind-body strategies might help her. As a wife and mother she was determined to get her life back. Over the course of one year, Nakazawa researches and tests a variety of therapies including meditation, yoga, and acupuncture to find out what works.
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Amazing book, but struggled with the voice.
- By erin norton on 01-05-18
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The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
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Schizophrenia Inside Out
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-23-09
By: Elyn R. Saks
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Unshattered
- Choosing a Beautiful Life After Unspeakable Tragedy
- By: Carol J. Decker, Stacey L. Nash
- Narrated by: Stacey L. Nash
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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On June 10, 2008, Carol Decker walked through the hospital doors a healthy woman with flu-like symptoms and early labor contractions. Three months later, she returned home a blind triple-amputee struggling to bond with a daughter she would never see. Unshattered recounts Carol's fight for survival against sepsis and its life-shattering complications. From excruciating skin grafts to learning how to function in daily life without lower legs, a left hand, and her sight, Carol takes us on a personal and raw, yet inspiring journey.
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inspiring !
- By Cindy Tortorici on 12-03-18
By: Carol J. Decker, and others
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The Ghost in My Brain
- How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back
- By: Clark Elliott Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.
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Mostly Tedious With Moments of Insight
- By Brent on 01-17-16
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Switching Time
- A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities
- By: Richard Baer M.D.
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Switching Time is the first story centering on multiple personality disorder to be told by the treating physician. It is the incredible saga of a young woman stranded in unimaginable darkness who, in order to survive, created 17 different versions of herself. One by one, Karen's "alters" began showing themselves: men, women, young boys, a toddler, black, white, vicious, nurturing, prim, licentious. And their "stepping out" confronted Baer with the challenge of a lifetime.
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Couldn't help myself
- By Tech Nut on 12-31-07
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Marrow
- A Love Story
- By: Elizabeth Lesser
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Lesser, Sally Field
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A mesmerizing and courageous memoir: the story of two sisters uncovering the depth of their love through the life-and-death experience of a bone marrow transplant. Throughout her life Elizabeth Lesser has sought understanding about what it means to be true to yourself and, at the same time, truly connected to the ones you love. But when her sister, Maggie, needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life, and Lesser learns that she is the perfect match, she faces a far more immediate and complex question about what it really means to love.
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“ Love came first “
- By marie on 03-26-18
By: Elizabeth Lesser
What listeners say about The Beginning of Everything
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Connie R.
- 08-05-21
How an innocent cough charged her life forever
Although the reasons which caused our CSF leak‘s vary, so much of what you shared with us from anxiety to anger to the worry of finding suitable doctors, waiting on healthcare insurance, etc. it is all but too familiar.
I also appreciate you bringing us into your personal space and telling us stories about your own family, especially your little one who nearly lost her life.
The battles that we fight in order to be seen and seriously heard by those who are able help us is painful, lengthy and not always successful. But somehow we find the courage to forge through and you have shown how you so bravely accomplished it.
Well written. Thank you.
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- Zara
- 01-23-23
Andrea says what I couldn't during my CSF leak
Thanks so much for letting others know what many of us go through with CSF leaks.
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- Mahala Howard
- 10-17-21
Insightful Work on Living with a CSF Leak
It was a helpful read overall. They suspect a CSF leak on me left from a spinal fusion and Chiari decompression in 2018. I’ve been living with it for more than 3 years now. I used to be on 5 liters of IV fluids a week because I also have POTS and it seemed to be compensating until I weaned off of them and went downhill.
The part of the story that hit me the hardest, and provided quite a revelation, was the part where the author discusses how when your brain is sick it doesn’t always realize it is and attempts to rationalize it. I had made some of the same rationalizing comments shared just 3 days before reading that and bursted into tears realizing how that’s exactly what I’ve done.
In some ways reading this brought up a lot more fears. I have history of a bad TBI and then the Chiari and instability a few years after that and my brain is better than back then, so I never stopped to think it could still not be working very right. It’s made me afraid that once I get these neuro things fixed I will regret things from the period I was leaking. It’s made me afraid to trust myself and my brain. And in some ways maybe that’s a good thing given what I shared above, but in others it’s unsettling, as I’ve only recently started to really trust myself at all.
The vivid descriptions of pain freaked me out that it will be worse than what I’ve experienced so far, but at the same time with all I’ve been through it’s hard to imagine much worse.
It also kinda took my positive outlook on the situation down multiple notches. Maybe that’s better and safer, I’m not sure. But at the end of the book, hearing the progress gave me a lot of hope. My brain has been so impacted since the TBI and it’s neat to think things could get even better. That I may be able to think clearer, that I may be able to do more. I just want to be able to sit up to read a book and to write and to take a walk sometimes. 🤞
I’m still grateful for this book as there isn’t a lot of books on CSF leaks at all. There isn’t as much info about it as some of the things I’ve dealt with in the past. I suppose it has helped me accept my situation and probably be more realistic about things. I did learn a lot. I guess my only complaint is wishing it was a bit more positive, but that feels like an awful thing to critique. Maybe it’s because I’ve buried a lot of medical trauma and pain and haven’t been able to be as honest about the hardships, to even feel the weight of these situations. I think it’s great for outsiders to understand the weight of the situation, but wish it was a little more positive for those going through it. That’s probably a me problem though.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-25-22
Amazing Story, my Wife is going through this now
Really incredibly detailed journey through this very rare and difficult medical condition. My wife is going through this now and while some moments in this book are so similar to our experience it’s scary, however our diagnosis period and finding out about Duke took a bit longer. Thanks for sharing and great read for anyone looking to learn more about CSF leaks how to handle it and the rebound headaches that come after patching.
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