Stir Crazy

Good lord, I've been laid up and sick all weekend.  First my daughter got hit with bronchitis, then once she was out of the woods with her fever and infection (thank god for antibiotics), I took a hit.  Luckily, it happened over the weekend so my husband could take over the parenting responsibilities.  

The only good thing about being sick, as far as I'm concerned, is that it generally allows me to have a total reading extravaganza.  I seem to have some sort of uncanny knack for having plenty of good reading material around whenever I'm coming down with something.  

This weekend I've been gorging on crazy people.  First I read The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, then followed up with An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.  Lots of fun, right?  Actually, they were both fascinating.  The Center Cannot Hold is a firsthand account of a woman living with schizophrenia.  She also happens to be a scientific expert in the field of this particular mental illness.  It's pretty spellbinding to learn how a schizophrenic mind actually works and to get a personal account of what a psychotic episode actually looks like.  

In An Unquiet Mind, the author is a professor of psychiatry who specializes in the study of bipolar disorder.  She also suffers from the disease.  Once again, the insider information on the manic and depressive episodes is captivating.  What pleases me the most about these two books, aside from the fact that they're both beautifully written, and written by women to boot, is the fact that both of these authors have managed to attain great success in the face of highly debilitating illnesses.  Not only are they at the height of their respective academic fields, they're both actively working toward finding ways to ease the pain of current and future sufferers of these diseases.  They're both hopeful and inspiring women who have overcome considerable odds and continue to strive to give back to the communities that have fostered them.  I say bravo to both.