Foreword by Beth Powning, bestselling author of The Sea Captain’s Wife
A poignant, darkly funny, and hopeful memoir of the psychological impact of illness from a retired New Brunswick doctor.
Sharon McCutcheon was a busy family doctor in Sussex, New Brunswick, when she learned she had a brain tumour. Growing up with a chronically ill father and a severely depressed mother had led her to become a caregiver, a healer—a doctor. But while striving to provide the best care for her patients, she had ignored her own health. Her life was already chaotic and, at times, overwhelmingly stressful. The mother of three was burnt out, sleepless, and terrified that the life she had built was suddenly crumbling.
This is not just the story of a doctor with a brain tumour, or how a brain tumour and seizures led to the end of her career. It’s also about beginnings—how our childhood determines our coping skills during life-changing events. It’s about mothers and daughters passing traumatic experiences down through the generations—creating strength and resilience despite family dysfunction. Ultimately, it’s about recognizing that people are complex and that every illness has a psychological impact.
It’s also a story of how humour can heal, or at least make a bad situation more bearable. Can living with a brain tumour be funny? Turns out it can be. With dry wit and frank honesty, McCutcheon pieces together her compelling story through personal journals, medical records, and e-mails, and through conversations with doctors, nurses, family, and friends. Rounded out with black and white photos taken by the author, Brain Storms paints a vivid picture of what it’s like to lose control of your own brain.
Sharon McCutcheon, MD, is a retired family physician living in Sussex, NB. She received her medical degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, in 1996. Her writing has been published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and in an anthology entitled From Band-aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine.
Advance Praise / Blurbs
“With candor and humour, Dr. Sharon McCutcheon shares a deeply personal account of how her lifetime of extraordinary personal and professional accomplishment was unexpectedly hurtled into disarray. Confronted with a medical diagnosis she understood but struggled to accept, the physician reluctantly became the patient, her overwhelming commitment to her thousands of patients in constant conflict with the urgent need to heal herself. In exploring “how to live with a medical career and then how to live without it,” she chronicles a personal journey that also lays bare the often-unrealistic expectations society imposes on our over-burdened family doctors and the lack of resources they themselves may require as they tend to the needs of so many others. Brain Storms is also a detailed and reflective account of how the same painful, traumatic experiences that often scrambled her thinking ultimately altered her perspective, enabling a deeper understanding of her childhood, her parents, and herself. She writes, “A brain tumour was the catalyst for change. With all its imperfections, life is good.” An insightful diagnosis; a valuable life lesson for us all.”
Steve Murphy, Broadcaster
Brain Storms is available (English only) to purchase wherever books are sold, including online from Nimbus Publishing, Indigo, and Amazon.
