Summary
Can you really forget what you did five minutes ago? Can a massive brain tumor turn a successful corporate executive into a man-child incapable of holding any kind of job? What kind of power does the brain have over who you are, and what you do? What should a wife and mother do when her husband’s violent, psychotic brain episodes threaten to destroy her young family? No one has faced the difficult answers to these questions with more determination, grit and love than Wendy Posey, whose husband, Eric lost his memory and then his life five years after brain surgery for a massive tumor. If You Do Nothing, You’ll Die is a true story of brain trauma, psychotic episodes and difficult decisions told by an unbelievable woman who struggled to do the right thing for her 43-year old debilitated husband and father to their two young children. From the start, Posey wondered if anyone else had a husband like Eric, a man so brain damaged that he spent his days convinced he was late for a non-existent softball match, and increasingly angry when he missed the game. The fixation began soon after he came home from surgery, ultimately becoming a full-blown obsession that foreshadowed a violent turn that nobody could predict. Through Eric’s continued deterioration, Posey leaned on her extraordinary sense of humor time and again to deal with her mother’s death, her children’s bewilderment and her own grief. From losing Eric in South Beach Florida to making friends with a blind man who helped Eric find his way on the train to therapy and rehabilitation, Posey peppers her candid story with heartfelt zingers that speak to the craziness of the moment and her determination to make sense out of an altered life.
About the Author
Wendy L. Posey is a college graduate and worked in the international import/export industry for eleven years before marrying and starting a family. Never did she expect to be a caregiver to her husband at such an early age. In her candid memoir, Wendy Posey chronicles their lives from the time of her husband Eric’s brain tumor diagnosis until his death five years later. It’s a true story of brain surgery, psychotic episodes and difficult decisions told by an extraordinary woman who struggled to do the right thing for her 43-year-old mentally debilitated husband, and their two young children. This is Posey’s first book, written in real time, during the course of her experience caring for her husband. Wendy Posey lives in a suburb of Chicago with her two children and their dog Rosie, and is working on her next book.
