Piece of Mind: My Journey to Peace Amid Seizures, a Tumor, and Brain Surgery

As doctors keep getting it wrong, one young mother with epilepsy must trust her instincts in solving a medical mystery in order to reclaim control of her life. The solution is brain surgery. With an engaging flashback approach and pitch perfect prose, new author Deanna Brady pens a fascinating tour de force medical memoir; a funny, inspired, if at times heartbreaking account of her journey with epilepsy - part mystery, part comedy, part love story, and part self-help. It's also a survivor's guide of how, rather than focusing on a tragedy, Brady chooses to live her life after epilepsy did a pretty good job of mucking it up. On the eve of her wedding Deanna Brady's sister found her in the throes of a grand mal/generalized tonic clonic seizure. After this initial 911 call, the story candidly retraces clues from previous years as a student in which Brady describes bouts of confusion and disorientation before moving on to portray what it was like for the next years of her life as a wife, new mother, and elementary teacher living with epilepsy. Until her eventual brain surgery, which is thought to have saved her life but not without consequences, her days revolved around finding answers to a condition - a condition which befuddles the medical community and affects fifty million people worldwide. And while medically speaking, things did not add up for a very long time, it was in trusting her instincts, learning to communicate with her doctors, and taking some good advice from an eavesdropper that secures her peace of mind. Brady gives readers the confidence to trust their gut - and proves that when it comes to losing a "piece" of your mind it's best to keep your wits about you.

Deanna M. Brady lives with her husband and their two daughters in Las Vegas, Nevada. She became a second grade teacher after graduating with honors from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Piece of Mind is her first book about taking control of a seizure disorder-her way of spreading the word like someone did to her.