Is My Brain Broken?

About the Book

Being diagnosed with a neurological disease is scary for children and their parents. How do you explain to a child what is wrong with them? This book is the answer. While the book contains explanations of the disease processes by a pediatric neurologist in easy-to-understand terms meant for children, the heart of the book are the essays written by the children themselves. The children were between seven and sixteen when they wrote the first essays, and fourteen years later, they discuss how their disease impacted growing to adulthood. These children frankly discuss that they want other children and adults to understand. Diseases covered include common disorders (such as epilepsy and headaches, ADHD and ADD, autism, cerebral palsy), less common diseases of the muscles and nerves, and rarer disorders such as Friedreich's ataxia, juvenile Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and brain tumors. In the spirit of the book, the cover art was provided by a seven-year-old trying to understand why two of her siblings have seizures and she doesn't, and the internal drawings were provided by an eleven-year-old with ADD. This guide should prove useful to children with a neurological disease, as well as to their family and friends, teachers, physicians, scout leaders, and other adults who will find these children in their care

About the Author

Deborah A. Lee, MD, PhD, received a PhD in molecular biology, an MD from Mayo Medical School, completed a residency in child neurology at Mayo, and practiced for almost ten years as an associate professor at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans and Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

She is a fellow of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with special competence in child neurology and is currently working at INSYS Therapeutics, Inc., as VP of Clinical Development, where she is committed to bringing safe and effective medicines to children.