I'm a Little Brain Dead is a memoir written by Kimberly Davis Basso. An Acute Cerebral Accident was something Basso had never even heard of, let alone expected to have happen, especially at her age. It was a real stroke, not the less permanent, yet still decidedly frightening Trans Ischemic Attack, or TIA. Part of her brain had died. How could that happen to a relatively healthy forty-four-year-old woman? It had happened early in the morning; she was preparing breakfast when she noticed that her legs felt peculiar from the knees down, like they were floating. When she tried to ask her daughter to call Ben, their neighbor, for help, her words came out as a collection of nonsensical sounds, making her eight-year-old daughter giggle at first until she too realized something was very wrong. Basso did finally get the right words out; she arranged to have her toddler and child looked after and then she went to the hospital. Everything in her world had changed, just like that.

Kimberly Davis Basso’s nonfiction memoir, I'm a Little Brain Dead, broaches a subject that is universally feared -- stroke. In her memoir, Basso shares every detail of her initial response; her experiences in the emergency room and hospital care; and the work she had to put into understanding what had happened to her and why. Then she had to decide what medical steps she needed to undergo to ensure she’d not suffer a stroke again. Basso’s wry sense of humor helps to lighten a very serious subject, and her conversational writing style made even the more technical portions of the memoir accessible and easy to read. Her book shares information most people don’t know about strokes and aftercare, and it’s a book well worth reading. I'm a Little Brain Dead is most highly recommended.

“Let me walk you through the luckiest day of my life. Or as I like to call it, Tuesday.” Thus begins Kimberly Davis Basso’s unfortunately-inspired but undeniably funny recounting – at least as told in her sometimes hyperbolic (a likable trait she still retains, according to her) sometimes unbearably agonizing (in a good way) and always, always, highly self-deprecating (she might not admit this) style – of the infamously lucky day, a Tuesday, that she experienced a real, true, authentic neurological event commonly known as a stroke, leaving her to unequivocally title this recollection: I’m a Little Brain Dead. Which she immediately sets out to prove. And if her eight- year-old savior daughter found it necessary to laugh, well then, you might as well laugh too.

Kimberly Davis Basso is not kind to those she skewers in I’m A Little Brain Dead. Or maybe she is just hyperbolically honest. Even the happy daughter and the supportive loving husband come in for more than one sardonic sideways glance. But Ms. Basso’s primary targets for such honest exposition are the very caretakers whose job it is, in her mind, to fix her. Make her all better. Within a reasonable amount of time. Ms. Basso seems obsessed with time, but her rationale is contagious. Listening to her tell her tale from the viewpoint of the one inside, the reader becomes a bit sarcastic and impatient too. In fact, the reader begins to think he or she is perhaps a little brain dead also. If so, the author will rapidly convince the reader that – to steal an old Reader’s Digest phrase – laughter is indeed the best medicine.

I highly recommend this book! I read it in one day! I would have read it in one sitting but I liked the main character so much I didn’t want her to leave me! This book will definitely make you laugh and quite possibly cry too. Hard to imagine a story about someone having a stroke would be such a good read! It will also make you look at your own health, your families needs in an emergency, and perhaps taking the actions suggested will someday be used to help someone in an emergency situation,

What a great little book! Kimberly packs in a whole lot of laughs, wonderful attitude and gave birth to her very own hero! I loved reading this and took away a lot to think about being prepared in the event of a health emergency.