Louise: Amended
Louise Krug
Language: English
Pages: 200
ISBN: 1936787016
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"A massive brain trauma robbed fashionable young Louise of the shallow currency she'd banked on all her life, and the resulting struggle is a page-turner in which a person's very soul deepens before your eyes. Louise: Amended rewards a reader's time—a must read."—Mary Karr
A beautiful young woman from Kansas is about to embark on the life of her dreams—California! Glossy journalism! French boyfriend!—only to suffer a brain bleed that collapses the right side of her body, leaving her with double vision, facial paralysis, and a dragging foot. An unflinching, wise, and darkly funny portrait of sudden disability and painstaking recovery, the memoir presents not only Louise's perspective, but also the reaction of her loved ones—we see, in fictional interludes, what it must have been like for Louise's boyfriend to bathe her, or for her mother to apply lipstick to her nearly immobile mouth. Challenging the notion that one person's tragedy is a single person's story, Louise: Amended depicts a dismantling—and rebirth—of an entire family.
At age twenty-two, Louise Krug suffered a brain bleed and underwent an emergency craniotomy that disrupted her ability to walk, see, and move half her face. Now, six years later, Louise has astounded doctors and loved ones by recovering not only much of her vision and mobility, but a ferocious spirit and enviable grace. She currently lives with her husband Nick and daughter Olive in Lawrence, Kansas, where she's a PhD candidate and teacher.
Claude said there was no way his mother knew; if something like that ever happened she’d leave his father forever. Claude always regretted telling Louise this because he sensed it made Louise think less of his father, and maybe less of him. • Claude thinks of J’Ayme. Thank god that didn’t happen, he thinks, and thwacks the ball as hard as he can. PART TWO: THE SURGERIES CHAPTER TWENTY Things in the brain move around like prizes in a Jell-O salad. This is the analogy that the
of tiny lights, like Christmas tree decorations. I am to touch the light that comes up. My physical therapist times me. He counts the seconds it takes for me to touch the little bulbs. I try very hard to impress him. Sometimes I miss, and my finger will touch a spot an inch or two from the light. I get faster every day, he tells me. • After three weeks, my physical therapist says I am ready to try the home evaluation. The test begins in a room that has been outfitted to look like an apartment.
choose Louise? Who, besides them, her family, knows how to treat her? Who else can be good enough to her? CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Hat Guy and I have a date. I met him in a writing class and he said that we should hang out. I hardly know him. I have heard he plays poker for money, gambles at kitchen tables in smoky rooms where people’s animals are on chains in the side yard. I know that he skateboards and always wears a baseball hat. I’m not sure if I like him, but I cannot afford to be picky.
little anecdotes make me laugh and forget everything else. While my mother’s talking, a thought comes into my head: What if he was sitting across from me right now? The strange thing is, the thought didn’t make me any less happy. I will not give up like Mallory thinks I will. It is my time now. CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE My therapist suggests that I ask Nick to lunch. She says lunch is no pressure. She says the only way to get rid of your fears is to confront them head-on. The next day Nick is
be a sad but inevitable day when our little girl asks about my face, my eye, the rest of it. She will realize that I look different from other mothers, that I cannot run after her in crowds, or find her easily on a playground, and I have to wonder if on some level she will resent me for it. The other day Nick, Olive, and I were on a downtown sidewalk, squinting in the bright sun, thinking of getting coffees or maybe having tacos; it was that kind of day. I was pushing the stroller because it’s