Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders

by Cole Cohen

A spirited, wry, and utterly original memoir about one woman's struggle to make her way and set up a life after doctors discover a hole the size of a lemon in her brain.

The summer before she was set to head out-of-state to pursue her MFA, twenty-six-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space—standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis—doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in. Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Medical, Science, Disability, Mental Health

221 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2015

About the author

Cole Cohen has an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts program in Writing and Critical Studies. She was a finalist for the Bakeless Prize and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs prize in Nonfiction and she has been a Yaddo Fellow. She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California where she works for UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

The definition of a boring book: you lose it ten pages from the end and don't care. The definition of a boring memoir: at the end of the book you don't feel you know the author's personality any more than at the beginning. The book was on a remainder site and it has a fantastic cover promising really a really interesting memoir but.... to me at least, it disappoints on every level.

Cole Cohen has a hole in her brain the size of a lemon and the consequent hydrocephalus. Whether it is genetic, present from birth or came about due to some unrecognised trauma is not known. This lesion greatly affects her spatial abilities so she gets lost everywhere and can't drive as she can't judge distances, cannot cross roads by herself and has difficulty with numbers, transposing them and not being able to do fairly simple maths. Although it is interesting at times, imagine getting lost in a supermarket? mostly it comes across as bewilderment with life and being unable to cope although, having an MFA and a full-time job she is obviously much more successful than she describes.

The author whines her way from one situation to the next. I don't think she realises it herself but very little but negativity comes through. She doesn't write about joys, celebrations or successes. Or if she did it was so forgettable I can't recall any now. She has a miserable boyfriend whom she doesn't describe in any way that makes you understand why she fancied and then presumably loved him except he is 'cool'. She also does nothing at all without running it by her therapist whom she also inveigles to get her boyfriend (they share a therapist) to do what she want. The therapist advises they break up and so they do. What? Is this the real world or just California?

There is quite a lot about the crappy places she lived, her flatmates and landlords and the many jobs she lost due to her disability causing her to create havoc with invoices, emails and phone numbers. By no means do I wish to suggest that the author is a boring, negative personality who needs to get a life. She might be a life of the party type, always there with a smile on her face and a joke to tell. Maybe it's just her writing fails to elucidate anything joyful at all about herself.

After gaining her MFA in creative writing the author was advised to live in her car and go from one writing residency after the next. This book feels like the results of one where she was asked to perhaps lead a group in a similar sort of writing.

I did later find the book and finish it. The whole experience was like being stuck indoors as outside it has been drizzling for a week and you feel like going back to bed with a good book. Not this one though. 2 stars.

[☼Bookish in Virginia☼ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book. It's an amazing autobiography that 'speaks to me'.

It begins as a sort of medical mystery. We're introduced to a puzzling set of symptoms. We follow Cole and her parents as they step through The System. In this case the Medical System assisted by an enfeebled educational system where do-gooders are unfortunately in way over their heads.

As the 'experts' and Cole and Cole's family don their detective hats, we don ours and try to figure out what is going on. In the narrative we follow Cole into and out of Doctors offices and get glimpses of what teachers and therapists thought.

And all this time we get the raw story of how it feels to have this aggravating set of symptoms that make us not like everyone else. We do not fit any of the molds. We have disabilities and high intelligence. And this is not only frustrating, it is undermining and soul damaging. Cole is feisty and so smart and these symptoms are destroying her faith in herself.

What's surprising is that in telling her story Cole doesn't cut her parents or anyone else any slack. So they come off as so real people. Not perfect. But people with their own mysteries and flaws and for me this made for a riveting read.

Once we got to the diagnosis I wondered what was left to say. Okay, I thought, we're here. We see the MRI and Pet Scan in our heads and we know that there is not a fix for this. So what next?

This is where the story really broadens out. Cole continues with her life story. Her failing at job after job. Her going back to school to get an advanced degree. We get a lot of her friends and their successes and frailties and failures, and Cole's relationships with them. And it may seem like a wide spread net but it made sense to me because it was revealing that all of us have quirks. Some are physical. Some are emotion or mental. And some are all of the above. But it became clear that Cole wasn't the only person in her world who was 'challenged' by real life.
.
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HEAD CASE is a search for information and identity, and the author drew me in, slapped me upside the head, and taught me what it was like to be lost. I felt on a gut level how finally having the diagnosis wasn't all that helpful. And I certainly felt her frustration with dealing with the Medical System in this country, and with the fact that so many well meaning people can be so incompetent.

This was like reading a novel to me. I learned stuff.

I learned that sometime it's all about learning who you always were.

~review copy

[Rob Slaven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book free for review from the author or publisher in exchange for an honest review. Despite the coolness of receiving a free book, I’m absolutely candid about it below because I believe authors and readers will benefit most from honest reviews rather than vacuous 5-star reviews.

The nutshell view on this is that it's the memoir of a woman who finds out one day that she has a hole in her brain the size of a lemon. From that point of introduction, the story spirals forwards and backwards in time describing her struggles before her diagnosis and her coping mechanisms afterwards. All in all it is an exceptionally detailed but rather disconnected tale.

To the positive side, the author is completely honest with us about her life. She's candid and leaves no stone unturned from her sex life to just getting around town. The level of insight she grants us is extreme and she invites us into her life without apparent hesitation. Because of this, her treatise is a wonderful guide for anyone that finds themselves in a similar situation at least to the extent of the emotional and social aspects of such a diagnosis.

To the negative, the book as a narrative fails in many spots. The storyline is at times disjointed and fails to flow in anything approaching a consistent manner. The author seems to jump around in her story as much as she does geographically during this period. It is disconcerting and at times completely impossible to follow.

In summary, this is an intimate portrait painted with a confused brush. The author lets us into her life but once we get there the whole thing is a mass of carnival mirrors and foggy recollection. I understand the spirit of what the author is trying to say but her thesis is lost in a mass of proverbial spaghetti.

PS: I hope my review was helpful. If it was not, then please let me know what I left out that you’d want to know. I always aim to improve.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say that in the end I found the story mildly disappointing. The first part covering the time from childhood through the discovery of the brain damage was fine; like most folks I've mentioned the book to I found it amazing that there hadn't been a brain scan earlier for her! However, the later sections deal with her personal life, which struck me as more twentysomething-memoir than specific to her condition. Julia Whalen was an excellent fit as narrator.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough book to review. On the one hand, it's a fascinating memoir of someone with a very unique neurological condition (having a large hole in the parietal lobe of the brain), yet I found the author a bit disconnected, in a way. She was difficult to engage with, in that I felt as though I was witnessing an awkward movie with jumps in time and place as opposed to a story with a cohesive whole. Nevertheless, it was interesting work of nonfiction, and as Cohen herself says, "Everyone has a labyrinthine brain with a Minotaur at the center: a memory, an illness, a heartache, a deep frustration." Perhaps this serves as the basis of a reader-author connection.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I think that her writing style mirrored the content. Temporality is not her strength, but her descriptions of negotiating a brain injury for all of her childhood and then seeing the reality of a hole in her brain and progressing from there.

It is a memoir like later Oliver Sacks, but with more of the emotional remove of early Sacks.

I really appreciated her depiction of the fraught relationships with her sisters, boyfriend and mother, but how her father with Asperbergers is easier for her to deal with.

[Meryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's fascinating that someone could go through life not knowing about a hole in their brain. However, the book was all over the place and hard to follow.

[Lyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I need more medical stuff in a medically-based memoir. While I understand this is about her journey, it just seemed glossed over ("Hey there's a hole in my brain") until it was 'needed' (her disability case, etc). Once she described how she navigated and processed, I really wasn't interested in reading about how she navigated and processed somewhere else.

And speaking of, for someone with navigational issues, she moved a LOT. I'm not saying she shouldn't ever move, but it didn't really seem she had any strategies for navigating new areas either. Interesting book, just not a stand out for me.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review at the Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainm...

Review: Cole Cohen's Head Case

by Emma Trelles

Cole Cohen crowns each of the five sections in her thoughtful memoir and first book with snippets from Alice in Wonderland, which is not a coincidence. Both narratives track the surreal journey of a persistent girl as she encounters the unexpected and unidentifiable. And both stories meditate on the fluidity of time — specifically, how all of us corral it into shapes we try to control: the minutes spent boiling tea, the hour it takes to shower and get ready for work.

We gauge so much by counting: how many days left until a deadline, how many blocks to the bank, how much change we should receive after handing over $10 for a latte.

What happens when these sorts of increments disappear, or more puzzling, what happens when they never existed at all? What happens when a person is unable to distinguish between minutes and hours, when simple tasks like crossing the street or shopping for groceries cannot be navigated without assistance, explanatory notes and thorough, often fruitless, planning?

“What’s really going on is that I am horrible at math; I don’t know my left from my right; I can’t judge distance, time, or space, read maps, or travel independently without getting lost,” writes Cohen in Head Case. “The trouble is in wanting desperately to be believed or understood — that this really is my world— and in simultaneously not wanting to be found out.”

At 26, Cohen receives a diagnosis that will offer her equal parts relief and terror. Finally, there is a tangible reason why she was unable to tie her shoes in kindergarten and why she has been unable to hold a job down as an adult. There is a hole in her brain, and as she sits in front of an MRI image with her parents and doctor, she describes it as “the shape of a lopsided heart.”

Her neurologist (the perfectly named Dr. Volt) explains to her that the hole — located in her parietal lobe and thus not rendering her dysfunctional or dead— is more like the small fist of a 10-year-old, or “about the size of a lemon.” Yet Cohen’s first perception of the void resonates most. After a lifetime of visits with psychologists, therapists and tutors, and years of others doubting her limitations, she has also had to live with the heartbreak of questioning her own intellect and capabilities, of wondering what value, if any, she has as a person, one who needs so much from those around her to simply get through an ordinary day.

If this sounds tragic, it is in some ways, and in others it is not, a duality that Cohen readily lays out in the early parts of her story. “There’s a unique pleasure in living free from a solid sense of time or space…,” she writes. “There’s a lovely self-involved gloss to my mornings, sitting on the edge of the bed spacing out, and forgetting that I need to keep moving if I’m going to get anywhere on time. There is also the sense of shame.”

Her honesty is part of what makes Head Case so readable; she’s unafraid to paint herself in a less than flattering guise, admitting to the enormous amount of psychic space she takes in her family or how she struggles to offer the same empathy to a lover that she needs from him.

Cohen is also pretty funny. After receiving her diagnosis, her family decides “to do what we usually do when faced with a family crisis, go out for Chinese food.” When a boyfriend she thought walked out on her explains he was just sitting in his car listening to an avant-garde rock record, we expect the conversation to veer into relationship land. Instead, she remarks, “Here’s what I’m not understanding. Who … listens to Frank Zappa to calm down?”

Cohen also amends some of her medical records, which she includes in the book, so that her MRI is not only filled with cerebrospinal fluid; it also contains “a creamy European hazelnut spread.”

Because she pairs her droll take alongside her scrutiny, Cohen’s story reads not as one about a neurology patient but about a young woman, a human being, trying to find her way through the misshapen labyrinth of her brain but also through the common milestones we all share — school, work, home and love. And this is what makes her story relatable. The truth is, life isn’t easy for any of us. As Cohen writes, “I’ve been looking for a map out of the pain of being human, but no one is born with a map of life in hand.”

Emma Trelles is the author of ‘Tropicalia,’ winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainm...

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick non-fiction read- totally startled by Cohen's condition and her resilience to make her way back from her diagnosis. Awesome.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in elementary school Cole Cohen once waited two hours for a school bus that never arrived--it was a snow day. Later in life she admits that were it not for cell phones she might never find her way out of a Costco. She sums up the first 25 or so years of her life succinctly: "What’s really going on is that I am horrible at math; I don’t know my left from my right; I can’t judge distance time or space, read maps, travel independently without getting lost; or drive."

At age 26 the cause of her problem is revealed when going over the results of an MRI scan of her brain with the aptly named Dr. Volt she is shocked--not by what she sees, but rather by what she doesn't see: there is a lemon-sized void, a hole if you will, in the parietal lobe of her brain. Her inability to make sense of time, space, distance, and numbers suddenly begins to make sense.

The revelation of the hole occurs fairly early in the book, and much of the rest of the book jumps back and forth through the first quarter century of her life as she reviews, often with good humor, the difficulties she has had in school, with getting into college, with holding onto jobs, with relationships, with life in general.

Cohen is very witty throughout the book, much of humor pointed at herself or awkward situations, the very things so funny in retrospect. While applying for Social Security Disability she makes a lists in response to the prompt Describe what you do from the time that you wake up until you go to bed. Her list, reproduced in the book, contains cross-outs such as Drink pots of coffee (2-3), Eat Humus, and Consider writing a poem in hopes of concluding global issues. Cohen's droll humor is often matched by her poignancy: while filling out the same form she realizes that she doesn't know how to apply for "the job of being myself."

The temporal back-and-forth shifts in this book may at times seem a bit rambling. But rather than detracting from her tale, I think they serve to illustrate just what she has been going through all these years. Her book is, after all, a chronicle of a back-and-forth life. Her unique tale, her wit and insight, and her excellent prose combine to make for a very good read and lend credence to the adage that indeed when one is given a lemon, make lemonade.

[Lorilin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still can't quite wrap my mind around this story. Cohen's experience is so crazy and unique, it borderlines unbelievable.

From a young age, Cohen experiences somewhat perplexing symptoms. Skills that most people consider basic and easy to learn, elude her--no matter how often she practices them. She can't remember to keep her hands at "10 and 2" when she takes a driving course. She forgets her route to school--despite the fact that she's traveled it for months. She doesn't know what five minutes feels like, and leaves people waiting for her for an hour or more. She can't do math; her tutor gets frustrated with her because, not only does she get every math problem wrong, but she gets them wrong in different ways each time.

Cohen visits multiple doctors throughout her life, undergoes exhaustive tests, and receives many different diagnoses, but it isn't until she gets an MRI done in her early twenties that doctors discover she has a hole in her brain--a hole so big it could fit 12 eyeballs, as her doctor puts it.

Having a hole in your brain is an interesting enough story on its own, but what absolutely amazed me was how well Cohen told it. Her writing is wonderful--witty and clever. Her ability to tell a story, to communicate events, to find the right words and deliver them with perfect timing, is spot on. A lot of people with brains fully intact can't accomplish as much. And she is genuinely insightful. It's obvious she has taken her difficulties in life and become a better person because of them. I loved when she said, "[T]his is a kernel of what it means to be an adult; understanding your limitations and discerning from experience when to push yourself and when not to."

In Head Case, Cohen manages to create an entertaining, honest, self-deprecating, and thoroughly engaging memoir describing the very strange circumstances of her life. I was hooked from the very first pages and finished the book in a few hours. It was a quick and very satisfying read.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Head Case” is the memoir of a young woman who had difficulties from birth, but no doctor could diagnose her. Was her problem psychological or neurological? Could medications help her? Would this or that new therapist be able to get her to talk and discover a buried problem? Why did she have no ability with math, little perception of things on one side of her, trouble tying her shoes, and nearly zero ability to find her way around, even in a city she’d lived in a long time? Why was she angry all the time? Her intellect is intact- in fact, she’s well above average. What’s going on?

It’s not until Cohen is twenty-six that she takes MRI and PET tests and the source of her problem is found- a large hole in her brain, a good part of the parietal lobe missing. While this explains her spatial problems, there is, sadly, no treatment for a missing part of the brain. She is forced to go on as she had all her life: inventing ways to work around the problem.

It’s a very interesting medical/psychological memoir. Her problem is not one that anyone else has; people who get this area of the brain damaged later in life from accident or stroke do not function like Cohen does because her brain was able to compensate in large part when she was a baby. The work-arounds she comes up with to survive and thrive are the best part of the book. What’s less interesting is her long term ex-boyfriend – a lot of time is spent on their relationship- but he’s part of her full story. One thing I would have liked to know is whether her constant anger is because of the hole in her brain or a result of the frustrations she faces every day, and whether it’s gotten any better after she got her diagnosis.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This just-published book is a fascinating glimpse into the partial dysfunction of the brain. Any Oliver Sacks fan would love this. The author discovers from an MRI that she has a hole in her brain the size of a lemon, which explains her curious inabilities such as being unable to cross the street because of an inability to measure the movement of objects in space. She is also unable to drive, can't tell left from right, can't add figures correctly, yet is a brilliant writer and teaches writing at the college level.

Reading about her gradual discovery of the brain hole is interesting because she has such specific disabilities and has had to spend so much of her life explaining that she's not lazy or dumb; she just can't make out spatial or mathematical things. In school, she is simultaneously in the gifted class for her writing and in the special class for her poor spatial and math skills.

As she realizes her problem at the age of 27, everything suddenly falls into place. It's absorbing reading as she figures out each disability one by one. She's on Social Security Disability, yet teaches a college class. Fascinating woman, great story.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a complete surprise. I picked it up because it seemed to cover several things I am very interested in: the brain, identity, and a medical mystery. I was blown away by Cohen's writing as she reveals her own story of discovering, at the age of 26, that the symptoms she has been experiencing all her life result from a lemon-size hole in her brain.

The revelation, which came just before she left to pursue an MFA, raises all kinds of questions: who is she, now that she knows this about herself? What does it mean to be "disabled?" In writing that's raw, honest, disarming, and often funny, Cohen takes the reader along as she explores the answers to these questions and achieves something that comes without thought to most of us: life as an independent adult.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway. It was a fascinating look into how a person copes with a disability through all the stages of her life. I found it especially discomfiting to learn that it took some many years for her to find out what was actually "wrong" with her. I am reminded of a book written by a woman living in my hometown describing her "face blindness". Both authors learned strategies to cope but the sense of loneliness and frustration came through in both books.

[Beth Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I thought it would be, but good enough. I've never heard of anyone living with a hole in their brain so it was interesting to read about what it's like.

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting read! Cole is an amazing woman.

[etherealfire · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Kindle e-book

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable. Precious insight into life with a hole in your parietal lobe.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hole in her brain did not not prohibit her from writing a very interesting book...

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has its moments. Yes, it could be more succinct, and yes, it could have been better presented, but overall, it's a fascinating subject, even though the presentation is a bit dry. It's like all of the emotion has literally been sucked out of the author's story. That being said, the juxtaposition of the patient's medical history with the history of technological advancement in medicine was quite an enjoyable writing device. Aspects I would cut include the whole discussion of the boyfriend, which may have been important to the author but wasn't important to the tale, and the continued reiteration of getting lost in stores (which could have been replaced with other spatial disorientation stories to create a tighter narrative). That being said, I'm glad I read it, even if it isn't one I will be keeping.

[Deborah Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

6th book from a friend's bookshelf, and I was very pleased to read it. It was a very quick read. No, of course, if you read the book, then you would know why it might not flow as much as some of the other reviewers thought it should. Obviously it wouldn't, and I appreciated the author's storytelling. You have to love that the brain is mysterious and understand that we are never going to know very much altogether about the brain to really appreciate this writing. We don't know much. Neuroscience is fascinating to me, and the way that the author has made her way through life is fascinating as well. I found her very funny in some instances and I believe she meant to be as well, so we laughed together.

[Meg C · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been a long form. The first hour about getting her diagnosis and the issues she has in her life was fairly interesting. The last five hours were about her roommates, horrible boyfriend, ways she screwed up at her many jobs, and what her therapist told her. I kept listening thinking she would circle back around to how she coped with her issues, but instead she decided to detail her conversations with her social security agent. At one point she also goes on for ten minutes about a guy on an airplane that she thought she might talk to but decided not to. I wish I had left this book untouched in an airport as well.

[Sara Swords]

Does anyone find it ironic that several people here mention (as a negative) that the timeline of this book is disconnected and amorphous … in a review about the memoir of a person recounting their brain lesion’s impact on temporal and spatial orientation? Just struck me as, at best, funny…

I can understand if the memoir were any other person’s, there’d be a bone to pick here. I think perhaps a longer version of Head Case, same flow but more info, could fill in the gaps (no pun intended). Regardless, I found it an interesting peek into Cohen’s head. And isn’t such knowledge a driving motivation for reading a memoir in the first place?

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cohen can clearly write. She is brilliant despite missing a lemon-sized portion of her brain. That said, this was more of a mulling over of the first half of her life than anything. Sure, we learn more about what she experiences, but there are few (if any) great obstacles truly overcome, and there's still the question of what she plans to do with the rest of her life. I would love to read a second memoir 10, 15, or more years down the road to see where she can go. This feels like a prequel to a life still being lived, and I hope to read more about what else happens along the way.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cole (short for Nicole) Cohen discovered at the age of 27 why she had lifelong problems with mathematics, and couldn't drive: she has an actual lemon-sized hole in her brain. No one knows why or how it happened, and she is left to figure out how to make her own way in life with her learning disabilities.

The book is dedicated to "anyone who has ever felt invisible."

The writing is sometimes a little uneven, but overall is a fascinating look at Cole's life and how she learns to live with het limitations.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

My actual rating for this book would probably be around 3.5 stars. I absolutely LOVE the author‘s writing style, and I think she did an excellent job at conveying what she was feeling and how she views her life. There were dry points that were a little hard to get through, but there were also so many great points in the book. It wasn’t the best, but it also wasn’t the worst. If you are thinking about reading this, I would say go for it. It taught me a lot and made me ponder things that I had never even thought of before.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tough book to rate. Cole's story is fascinating, and her memoir starts off very strong. As the book continues you realize it's the same thing she's trying to convey - simply - how challenging it is to live her life appearing as a high functioning adult with such a severe brain deficiency. I think her story would make a better article than book, because as a book, it's simply way too long and ends without much wrap up.

[Kaylin Worthington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really well written, deep and somewhat twisted perspective on what it’s like to live with a hole in your brain. This book dives into some questionable subjects and is not PG, but very real and honest.

Note to author: DUMP CHARLIE PLEASE! You deserve someone who wants to fully know you and only you!