Get Me Through Tomorrow: A Sister's Memoir of Brain Injury and Revival

by Mojie Crigler

Overview

On August 4, 2004, Jason Crigler was onstage in a New York City nightclub when a blood vessel burst in his brain. The thirty-four-year-old guitarist, a fixture in the downtown music scene who had played with Marshall Crenshaw, Linda Thompson, and John Cale, narrowly survived the bleed. A string of complications that followed—meningitis, seizures, coma—left him immobile and unresponsive, with his doctors saying nothing more could be done. Meanwhile, Jason’s medical insurance quickly hit its lifetime cap, meaning that his policy would no longer pay for his care. Despite such overwhelming circumstances, Jason’s parents, sister, and pregnant wife were sure that he was still there, trapped inside his incapacitated body but able to fight his way back. They mounted an intense course of rehabilitation for him even as they fought a healthcare system that was geared toward defeat.

In intimate and unflinching prose, Mojie Crigler chronicles her brother’s harrowing decline and miraculous recovery. Get Me Through Tomorrow is much more than the story of a medical victory amid a broken healthcare system, however. It is about a sister’s metamorphosis from fearful naïf to assertive caregiver. It is about families bridging heartache and divorce to find hope. It is about the deep and enduring relationship between siblings—and the love that transforms them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803254145
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	04/01/2015
Series:	American Lives
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Mojie Crigler’s fiction and nonfiction works have appeared in numerous publications, including Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review, and Brooklyn Rail. She received the 2010 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize.

Table of Contents

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Editorial Reviews

“A profoundly moving story about the unbreakable bond between siblings, and a beautifully written testament to the tremendous healing power of love.”—Mira Bartók, author of The Memory Palace

Mira Bartók

“With candor and a sister’s love, Mojie Crigler has written a lyrical account of her brother’s brain injury and their family’s heroic efforts to find a path to recovery. Get Me Through Tomorrow should be read by all who aspire to make the care of these patients more humane and effective.” —Joseph J. Fins, MD, MACP, Weill Cornell Medical College, and author of Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness

 

Joseph J. Fins

2015-01-21
The story of a family's triumph after a medical catastrophe.In her moving nonfiction debut, Crigler recounts her brother Jason's arduous recovery from a burst blood vessel in his brain, a recovery that involved his wife, parents and, most intimately, the author herself. Punctuated by brief diary entries and recollections of anxious dreams, Crigler chronicles Jason's day-by-day challenges as he suffered from the consequences of the bleed—loss of the ability to move and speak—and ensuing complications: meningitis, seizures, coma and a host of infections. After three months of repeated setbacks, Jason seemed imprisoned in his body: "[a]drift on a lifeboat in the most remote sea." As they monitored his care, the family was frustrated by confusing and mixed messages about his prognosis for recovery. They were also frustrated by their health insurance, which "questioned every treatment and refused many of them" with the goal "to pay as little money as possible." Depending on what they hoped would be humane and competent care, the family came to the "harsh realization that Jason's care was driven not by what would help him but by cost." Cowed, at first, by his physicians, the family defied their advice and brought Jason to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, renowned for treating brain injury. There, he made enough progress to be discharged. Crigler and Jason shared an apartment for several months while he worked with physical therapists and on his own to recapture basic skills. With the author as round-the-clock caregiver, other family members pitched in. Exhaustion and stress gave way, at times, to emotional tensions. More than a year later, Jason gained enough independence to share the apartment with his wife and infant daughter; after several more years, which included eye and mouth surgery, proton beam radiation to his brain and much exercise, he was able to resume his career as a musician. A heartfelt memoir of devotion and determination.

Kirkus Review