DC Public Library System

Crash, a mother, a son, and the journey from grief to gratitude, Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

eng

individual biography

no index present

non fiction

Crash

783144603

Carolyn Roy-Bornstein

a mother, a son, and the journey from grief to gratitude

After 25 years of caring for children, first as a nurse, then as a pediatrician, Carolyn Roy-Bornstein finds herself on the other side of the stretcher when her 17-year-old son Neil is hit by a teenage drunk driver while walking his girlfriend Trista home after a study date. Trista did not survive her injuries. Neil carries his with him to this day. Gratitude for her son{u2019}s survival ultimately gives way to grief. While initially told Neil{u2019}s only injury was a broken leg, Roy-Bornstein quickly finds herself riding in the front seat of an ambulance transporting her son to the ICU at Brigham and Women{u2019}s Hospital in Boston; his brain is bleeding. Roy-Bornstein is now not the patient{u2019}s doctor or nurse but his mom. The world she so easily navigates in a white uniform or a white coat now must be traversed, understood, and dealt with from the perspective of a parent.There are many dividing lines in this story. The line that divides this family{u2019}s life in two: the events that occurred before the crash and those that came tumbling and faltering in its wake. The line that separates grief from gratitude: gratitude that her son is alive and as whole as he is; grief for his loss of memory and changed personality and for having his whole world shattered in an instant. The line that separates the world Roy-Bornstein knew so well as a doctor from the new one she must now navigate as the parent of a trauma victim. In these pages she explores all of these boundaries: between then and now, grief and gratitude, before and after, us and them. Her many years as a "medical insider" bring her story authenticity and detail, while her newcomer status as the parent of a trauma victim add poignancy and warmth in this first memoir