Catastrophic Rupture: A Memoir of Healing

Catastrophic Rupture: A Memoir of Healing was written by K. Jane Lee, MD, a member of Team Wisconsin. As a pediatric critical care physician and an ethicist, Lee was accustomed to caring for children with a range of serious conditions and disabilities, and felt comfortable helping families navigate decision-making for these children. When a complicated delivery left her second child with a severe brain injury, she found that everything she had learned about disability and personhood as a physician and ethicist was no help as a parent.

This book allows the reader to walk alongside the author as she struggles to bond with and love her daughter, as she reconciles what is happening at home with her ongoing role as a physician to patients and families in similar circumstances, and as she shifts from the medical perspective of disability as an impaired body to the mother’s perspective that sees the beauty and value in the person that is her child.