In a career that's included hundreds of articles in publications like the New York Times and Newsweek and books about the collapse of Enron (Conspiracy of Fools) and other corporate scandals, investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald has established himself as a dogged and fearless reporter. But no story he's unearthed is as compelling as the one he tells in his traumatic memoir, A Mind Unraveled. In it he focuses on his battle with epilepsy and the equally fierce fight he waged against the discrimination he suffered as a victim of that disease.First diagnosed in 1979, his freshman year at Swarthmore College, in suburban Philadelphia, Eichenwald underwent care initially guided by his father, a world-renowned expert in pediatric infectious disease, that was nothing short of disastrous. In the course of that treatment, he was misdiagnosed with everything from a brain tumor to mental illness to pancreatic cancer. From informing him that he should keep his diagnosis a secret to allowing the levels of anticonvulsants in his blood to reach near toxic levels, three unfeeling doctors pushed Eichenwald to the brink of suicide. It was only when he entered the care of a neurologist in his home town of Dallas who was compassionate and, above all, capable of listening, that his condition began to stabilize.
But Eichenwald's medical story, painstakingly reconstructed with the aid of contemporaneous diaries and tape recordings of himself, family members and friends, isn't merely an account of treatment that was ill-informed and heedless of his emotional state at best and negligent at worst. Equally disturbing is the story of his battle against the efforts of Swarthmore's administration to force him out of school in 1981, treating him as a "frightening oddity impeding other students' education." Through what Eichenwald characterizes as an "amalgam of ill will, incompetence, arrogance, and error," a novice dean who later expressed her profound regret for her actions allowed herself to be manipulated by unscrupulous colleagues into dismissing him during the first semester of his junior year. It was only when the college administration became convinced that Eichenwald would follow through with his threat to launch a federal investigation for violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that the school capitulated and reinstated him.
Eichenwald's professional success and personal satisfaction (he's been married since 1990 and is the father of three sons) decades after the events described in his book attest to his triumph over the worst effects of the disease. But his path into elite journalism was anything but smooth, and his description of the crises he faced when prospective employment didn't include health insurance hasn't lost any of its timeliness. Candid, meticulously reported and at times terrifying, A Mind Unraveled is an inspiring story of a man whose fierce will helped ensure he would not be defined or defeated by a chronic disease. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: An esteemed journalist brings his considerable skills to the story of his battle with epilepsy.