Barbara K. Lipska - The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery

Copyright 2018 by Barbara K. Lipska and Elaine McArdle

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhco.com

Photographs throughout the book are courtesy of the author. The illustration on is Witek Lipski.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lipska, Barbara K., author. | McArdle, Elaine, author.

Title: The neuroscientist who lost her mind : my tale of madness and recovery / Barbara K. Lipska with Elaine McArdle.

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017054093 (print) | LCCN 2017046211 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328787279 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328787309 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH : Lipska, Barbara K.Health. | MelanomaPatientsBiography. | Brain metastasisPatientsBiography. | NeuroscientistsBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Neuroscience. | PSYCHOLOGY / Mental Health. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical.

Classification: LCC RC280.M37 (print) | LCC RC280.M37 L57 2018 (ebook) | DDC 616.99/4770092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054093

Cover Design by Mark R. Robinson

Photographs courtesy of the author

e ISBN 978-1-328-78727-9
v1.0318

To Mirek, my rock

To science, for saving lives

In memory of Witold,
for whom scientific advances came too late

Im running and running and running. For hours, Ive been running. I want to get home but I have no idea where that is, even though Ive lived in this neighborhood for twenty years. So I keep running.

Im roaming these tree-lined streets in suburban Virginia at a fast clip, wearing my usual outfita tank top and running shorts. I sweat as my pace increases, faster, then faster still, my heart pounding but my breath even and unhurried as I sail past large homes with two-car garages and bicycles parked in driveways.

Its the end of spring 2015 and the beginning of what will become a particularly hot and humid summer. The grass on the immaculately trimmed lawns is still green and lush. Pink and white peonies are in full bloom, and all around me azaleas explode in a rainbow of colors.

Ive jogged this route hundreds of times over the past two decades. I should recognize each maple tree and camellia bush on each street corner, and every gash in a curb where a teenage driver took a corner too fast. They should be landmarks as familiar to me as anything in my life. But today its as if Ive never seen them before.

When my husband and I bought our home here twenty-five years ago, just two years after leaving the grimness of Communist Poland, this normal American suburb seemed a dream come true. What luxuries it contained! Settled into our new home, we quickly adopted a middle-class American lifestyle, complete with regular meals of Chinese takeout and buckets of ice creamindulgences that were nonexistent in Eastern Europe.

One day, I saw a photo of myselfarms chubby and dimpled, thighs spread across my chairand was shocked into a major lifestyle change. I needed to get more exercise, and I began to run. Not one for minor shifts in my life, I decided I would enter a race as soon as I was able.

At first, I couldnt jog a single block. Within a year, I was running three miles. After two years, I signed up for my first race, a six-mile competition where I finished at the top of my age group. Since then, my entire family has become dedicated athletes. Runners, cyclists, and swimmers, were always training for one competition or another.

And so, each morning, I run.

A creature of routine, I always start by taking my German-made prosthetic breast from the shelf in my bathroom. Ive worn the breast ever since undergoing a mastectomy following a battle with breast cancer in 2009. Fashioned from high-tech plastic, it is flesh-colored and feels like a real breast, and it is proportioned to match the breast on my right. It even has a tiny nipple. Engineered for athletes, its light and has a special adhesive on the underside to hold it on to my body. Every morning before my jog, I slap it into place on the smooth, flat skin of my left chest before donning my clothes and sneakers. And then Im off.

But this morningthis morningbegan differently.

After pouring my usual glass of water, I headed into the bathroom and peered at myself in the mirror.

My roots are showing, I thought. I need to dye my hair.

Now!

I mixed the dyea brand of henna from Whole Foods that gives my hair a funny purple tint that I lovein a small plastic cup, then squirted it onto my scalp and spread it over my head. I pulled a plastic bag over my skull and tied it with a little knot on one side to hold it in place.

I must hurry. Its urgenturgent!to get outside and begin running!

I grabbed my shirt and shorts and headed back into the bathroom.

I looked at the breast on the shelf.

No. Too much trouble. It weighs me down. Im not going to spend precious time on stupid things like that.

I quickly pulled my tight-fitting shirt over the plastic bag on my head. My body was noticeably lopsided without the prosthetic breast, but I didnt think twice about it.

I need to leave now!

Purple-red dye oozed down my face and neck as I sprinted out of the house and down the street.

Now, as I run along in the morning heat, the dye spreads over my shirt and stains my asymmetrical chest.

The streets are almost empty in our sleepy neighborhood. If any of the few people I do pass are surprised by my strange appearance, I dont notice. I glide along, absorbed in my own internal world.

After an hour I begin to tire and I am ready to return home. But my neighborhood looks strange. I dont recognize these streets. I dont recognize these houses.

I have no idea where I am. So I keep moving.

Its preposterous that I could get lost in this familiar place, but that fact barely registers in my mind. With no plan for where Im headed, I simply continue to run.

For another hour or more, I jog along, misshapen and covered in gore. Im oblivious, unaware of anything amiss. I just run and run, my thoughts drifting into open spaces and big skies.

Somehow, I finally come upon our two-story Colonial. I open the door and find myself in the cool, dark hallway. Tired and sweaty, I take off my sneakers and socks, which are completely soaked.

On my way upstairs, I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. My head is caked in sweat mixed with hair color, the plastic bag plastered on top like a weird swimming cap. Streaks of purple dye, long since dried to black, have crusted in thin rivulets down my neck and upper arms and all over my shirt, accentuating the sunken left side of my chest. My face is deep red from exertion.

Nothing strikes me as unusual. I continue past the mirror up the stairs.

In his home office, my husband, Mirek, is sitting at his computer with his back to the door. When he hears me enter the room, he says, Youve been away a long time. Good run?

Then he turns to me with a smileand freezes.

What happened? he exclaims.

What do you mean? I say. It was a long run.

Did anybody see you like this? He seems shaken.

Why would I care if someone saw me? What are you talking about?

Wash it off, he says. Please.

Calm down, Mirek! What are you going on about? But I head into the bathroom to do as he asks.

Whats wrong with him? Why is he acting so strange?

I emerge from the shower clean and relaxed. But something nags at me.