In 2008, after recovering from a few years of hard drinking and harder
drug use, after building back up a life as a successful and happy New
York writer, Eva Hagberg woke up dizzy. She spent the next five years
searching for a diagnosis, a treatment, and most of all an answer. It
was a journey that took her from a career as a New York City
architecture critic to a bicycle-riding year in Portland, Oregon to
graduate school in Berkeley, California. She saw internists, vestibular
specialists, and endocrinologists. They all told her she was normal;
that the way she felt was all in her head. When everything she thought
she could try failed, she began to believe them, trying to heal through
yoga, acupuncture, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and long
walks in the woods.
In February 2013, an MRI revealed a mass in her brain. A blood test
revealed an elevated tumor marker: A sign of cancer. And that's when the
second journey started - one grounded in physiology, in steadily rising
marker numbers, and in the brutal invasion of a brain biopsy. And yet,
there was uncertainty. And yet, there was the insistent voice that told
her she was making this all up. It was definitely all in her head. But
how?
An amazing personal narrative of the nightmare of medical care for
women, the terror of early-onset brain disease, and the power of love. A
haunting, beautiful memoir.
