2009 Dewey Decimal Project: 617.48 M
May. 21st, 2009 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleMy poll about taking library books on vacation was missing an important option: Depressing books on vacation? Are you crazy? If I'd realized Michael Paul Mason's Head Cases was going to be this sad, I wouldn't have brought it with me. In fact, if I hadn't been on a plane, I probably wouldn't have finished it.
Head Cases is a series of case studies of people with brain injuries. I picked the book up off the shelf because I've found other tales of brain injury interesting, but what I didn't realize was that this is told from a social work point of view (Mason is a brain injury case manager) rather than a scientist point of view. Some of the case studies have happy-for-now endings (the thirteen-year-old who is in a school that works for him and who hasn't had a rage episode in two years; the woman who's turned her experience into research on the effect of mindfulness on those with brain injuries), but most of them don't (the man who spends his days drugged in a psych ward because his state won't pay for him to be transferred to an appropriate out of state facility; the man who will soon be released from prison to a world where he won't get adequate medical treatment). More than an examination into those with brain injuries, the book works best as an indictment of our health care system. There aren't enough beds for those with brain injuries, and insurance companies won't pay for the beds there are. The family members in the book are all in debt they can't get out of to pay for care and rehab facilities.
It also works as an interesting look at the war in Iraq. At one point, Mason had a chance to travel to Iraq to see how the military is dealing with trauma at the Air Force Theater Hospital at Balad Air Base where "record time from admit to operating room is eighteen minutes - and that includes CAT scan and lab work." Balad treats both American soldiers and Iraqi victims. Soldiers are patched up and put on medical transport planes to Germany, then home. Iraqi civilians are patched up and sent home with inadequate medical supplies to a life where no one knows how to take care of them and they could be killed for receiving American aid. Balad gives their expired medical supplies to a local Iraqi hospital where the doctors are afraid to leave the hospital for fear of kidnapping. "Had Heekin not received a full dose of morphine to alleviate the leg pain, he may have been able to receive the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation (MACE) at Balad, a twenty-minute neuropsychological test that the military now gives to every American wounded in a blast. The test has only now become compulsory; no similar evaluation occurred for the first four years of the conflict, contributing to the speculation of high numbers of undiagnosed injuries. While the MACE may someday be administered beside football fields and boxing rings, it has one significant limitation. The test does not cross the cultural divide; Iraqis don't receive it."
If you're at all interested in the social and psychological effects of brain injury, or the way our health care system doesn't meet the needs of those with brain injuries, this is definitely a book worth reading, but it's not a hopeful book, and part of the last chapter had me crying in the airport gate area.
Head Cases is a series of case studies of people with brain injuries. I picked the book up off the shelf because I've found other tales of brain injury interesting, but what I didn't realize was that this is told from a social work point of view (Mason is a brain injury case manager) rather than a scientist point of view. Some of the case studies have happy-for-now endings (the thirteen-year-old who is in a school that works for him and who hasn't had a rage episode in two years; the woman who's turned her experience into research on the effect of mindfulness on those with brain injuries), but most of them don't (the man who spends his days drugged in a psych ward because his state won't pay for him to be transferred to an appropriate out of state facility; the man who will soon be released from prison to a world where he won't get adequate medical treatment). More than an examination into those with brain injuries, the book works best as an indictment of our health care system. There aren't enough beds for those with brain injuries, and insurance companies won't pay for the beds there are. The family members in the book are all in debt they can't get out of to pay for care and rehab facilities.
It also works as an interesting look at the war in Iraq. At one point, Mason had a chance to travel to Iraq to see how the military is dealing with trauma at the Air Force Theater Hospital at Balad Air Base where "record time from admit to operating room is eighteen minutes - and that includes CAT scan and lab work." Balad treats both American soldiers and Iraqi victims. Soldiers are patched up and put on medical transport planes to Germany, then home. Iraqi civilians are patched up and sent home with inadequate medical supplies to a life where no one knows how to take care of them and they could be killed for receiving American aid. Balad gives their expired medical supplies to a local Iraqi hospital where the doctors are afraid to leave the hospital for fear of kidnapping. "Had Heekin not received a full dose of morphine to alleviate the leg pain, he may have been able to receive the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation (MACE) at Balad, a twenty-minute neuropsychological test that the military now gives to every American wounded in a blast. The test has only now become compulsory; no similar evaluation occurred for the first four years of the conflict, contributing to the speculation of high numbers of undiagnosed injuries. While the MACE may someday be administered beside football fields and boxing rings, it has one significant limitation. The test does not cross the cultural divide; Iraqis don't receive it."
If you're at all interested in the social and psychological effects of brain injury, or the way our health care system doesn't meet the needs of those with brain injuries, this is definitely a book worth reading, but it's not a hopeful book, and part of the last chapter had me crying in the airport gate area.