The Beginning of Everything by Andrea J. Buchanan


The Beginning of Everything
Title : The Beginning of Everything
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1681776723
ISBN-10 : 9781681776729
Language : English
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 304
Publication : First published April 1, 2018
Awards : PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Shortlist (2019)

Andrea Buchanan lost her mind while crossing the street one blustery March morning. The cold winter air triggered a coughing fit, and she began to choke. She was choking on a lot that day. A sick child. A pending divorce. The guilt of failing as a partner and as a mother. When the coughing finally stopped, she thought it was over. She could not have been more wrong.


When she coughed that morning, a small tear ripped through her dura mater, the membrane covering the brain and spinal cord. But she didn’t know that yet. Instead, Andrea went on with her day, unaware that her cerebrospinal fluid was already beginning to leak out of that tiny opening.


What followed was nine months of pain and confusion as her brain, no longer cushioned by a healthy waterbed of fluid, sank in her skull. At a time in her life when she needed to be as clear-thinking as possible?as a writer, as a mother, as a woman attempting to strike out on her own after two decades of marriage?she was plagued by cognitive impairment and constant pain, trapped by her own brain—all while mystifying doctors and pushing the limits of medical understanding.


In this luminous and moving narrative, Andrea reveals the astonishing story of this tumultuous year—her fraught search for treatment; how patients, especially women, fight to be seen as reliable narrators of their own experiences; and how her life-altering recovery process affected both her and her family.


The mind-brain connection is one of the greatest mysteries of the human condition. In some folklore, the cerebrospinal fluid around the brain is thought to be the place where consciousness actually begins. Here, in the pages of The Beginning of Everything, Andrea seeks to understand: Where was “I” when I wasn’t there?


The Beginning of Everything Reviews


  • Kat

    A detailed memoir of illness, orphan illness, and the helplessness and hopelessness that come when your body is incapacitated, and doctors can’t figure out why. My favorite parts were the ones detailing CSF Leak (spontaneous intracranial hypotension—where fluid leaks from the spine and causes constant fluid shortage in the brain) is a rare disorder that occurs in only 1 out of every 20,000 people, and so it often goes undiagnosed and misdiagnosed for years while patients worsen, are accused of malingering, and the disease progresses, causing severe headache, confusion, cognitive impairment, dizziness, sensitivity to light and sound, and inability to be upright for more than a few minutes. This memoir is very detailed at times, and painful to read, but an accurate depiction. A great book for "Leakers" in all of its detail and the reminder that there are others out there experiencing the same thing.

    Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.

  • Ann Douglas

    I have been looking forward to reading this book since before it was a book. Andrea Buchanan shared a piece of writing with me a few years ago -- an essay describing the health challenges she was in the process of working through at the time. I told her that it was the best thing she had ever written (which is really saying something, because she's an extraordinarily talented author) and I told her that the essay needed to become a book. This past week, I had the opportunity to read the resulting book and I loved it for so many reasons. I loved it as a writer (because the book is beautifully written and brilliantly structured). I loved it as someone who lives with a chronic illness (because the book spoke to so many of the issues that I have grappled with during my own health journey). And I loved it as Andi's friend (because I am so proud of her for writing such a raw and honest memoir). There's just so much about this book to love. Thanks, Andi, for writing it.

  • Alicia


    http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2018/04...

    FULL DISCLOSURE: I am friends with the author and love her dearly. That said, this is still an amazing and engaging memoir about the author's struggle to deal with—and be treated for—a brain leak. It is also about divorce, motherhood, family, medicine, biology, history, chronic illness, memory, and the stories we tell—not to mention, a super incredible woman. I rarely read nonfiction but this had me totally gripped, and not just because it was about someone I know. It's well written, moving, and deeply honest. And some parts are very funny, too. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. A.

  • Susan Ebel

    This was one of those books I should have just stopped reading and put away, but I hate leaving things unfinished, so I slogged through it anyway. The story sounded cool. Its a true life account of a woman who sneezes, and the force of the sneeze causes a tear in her spinal dura. Her spinal fluid slowly starts to leak out so that her brain is no longer suspended in fluid, and it sags down low into her spinal cord. It starts as an interesting account of what it feels like to have your brain literally banging around in your head, but then spends way too many pages reiterating the same point over and over - that it is hard to think and the sensory input of the world is overwhelming when you have this condition. She describes it the same way, over and over, for 200 pages. Reading it felt just about as excruciating as her description of her condition.

  • Jen Lawrence

    The next book has a more personal connection for me.

    Back in late 2003, I was a new mom living in Toronto. Although I lived a hop, skip, and a jump from the Rosedale subway station, they had no elevator: meaning I had to push my daughter’s stroller to St Clair or Bloor if I wanted to take the train somewhere. And then, sometimes, the elevator at the stations would not be working. I wanted to let other mamas know not to make the long walk, only to be disappointed. So I made a website. I started to write about other baby friendly places in the city and chronicled my mothering experience, which was something not a lot of others were doing at the time.

    I looked around for other mamas in other cities who were doing similar things and found Andi Buchanan, a Philadelphia mom who was a few years ahead of me in her parenting. She was a pioneer in the mommy blogging scene. She’d written Mother Shock, a book that, to me, felt like oxygen. Her work launched me on my own mothering writing journey and, over the years, we loosely kept in touch.



    Now, she is pioneering in a new area: writing about her year recovering from a serious illness. In 2015, while sick with the flu, she had had coughing spell and ruptured her dura mater, which is the tough membrane covering the brain. Apparently, it’s more common than you might think. From that, she developed a CSF leak: the same thing that causes George Clooney’s debilitating headaches. In Andi’s case, the leak was much more severe and she ended up losing a year to pain, bedrest, and medical procedures.

    She has captured her experience in her beautiful new book, The Beginning of Everything: The Year I Lost My Mind and Found Myself. She is forging a path yet again.

    The writing is exquisite: she brings the same discipline she cultivated as a concert pianist to the page. She explores the way our narratives – about our trauma, our healing, our lives – affect the way we live. She challenges herself – and the reader – to question the things in our lives we believe to be true, and to ask how well that truth serves us:

    What’s the payoff for believing this particular story right now? What’s in it for me to believe the story I’m telling myself?

    This kind of self-analysis can be freeing, particularly if your experience has been shaped by trauma, grief, or pain. Her biggest breakthrough comes when she lets go of her belief that she could have prevented her injury. She writes, “I didn’t have to keep holding myself accountable for failing to prepare for a thing that I didn’t even know could happen.”

    This is a book about resilience and restoration. It’s about grabbing on, and at the same time, letting go.

    She realizes that even if there is not a reason for suffering, there is purpose to our pain: “I have had a million second acts, each one evolving out of complicated periods of pain and worry and vulnerability and acknowledgement that I didn’t know exactly what to do next, and each one of them bringing me to a new, deeper understanding, of realizing that I never feel more like myself than I do when I’m in the midst of learning what I need to do and where I need to go by doing it, by going there.”

    Writers are always terrific observers of others, but its takes particular skill to be able to observe your own experience with both detachment and self-compassion. Buchanan is a master. If you know anyone coming back after a significant setback, this is a perfect book.

  • Pat

    A. J. Buchanan's autobiography of a year in which she had the flu, a bad cough that led to a leaking brain resulting a year of hellish pain. She was shuttled from doctor to doctor with no relief until she was sent to Duke University for yet another patching treatment. We suffer with her and her 2 children after her divorce and continued frustration and pain. CSF is cerebrospinal fluid leakage a scary torn dura matte of the brain which I now know more about than I EVER wanted to know. Thank God for online suffers network and Andrea's determination leading to her return to classical music as therapy. About page 250, I was skimming all of the repeated medical treatment and jargon. If you are interested in the rare CSF, this is the book for you!

  • Beth Toner

    My heart goes out to this author and I can’t imagine writing this book after having navigated rebuilding my brain. But the book was scattered and I had a really hard time staying focused. Repetitive in many places and could have used a more coherent thru-line.

  • Meagan Houle

    From the first word to the last, I experienced wave after wave of emotion. Andrea's vivid writing and cleverly fluid structure reproduced a taste of the confusion, pain, and disorientation she had endured. Whether she was listing gruesome symptoms or extracting meaning from the recovery process, I was right there with her. I felt her desperation as she attempted to remain productive while unable to be upright. Her anger was mine as she was dismissed by doctor after doctor. And, in the end, I sensed her triumph in my own fingertips as she learned to play the piano again, found her feet, and managed, with tremendous patience and hard work, to stay upright.
    Andrea's story inspired me to reflect on the fragility not only of our bodies but of our identities. When our entire sense of self is dependent on a perilously permeable membrane, who are we really? Are our personalities, our very consciousnesses, as fixed and immutable as we like to imagine? Or are we all one coughing fit away from losing our minds?
    "The Beginning of Everything" was a demanding read, but it presented me with gift after gift as I wended my way through the excruciating details and the dizzying narrative jumps. I am now more aware than ever that we are woefully far from understanding everything--about our brains and about ourselves. I am reminded that women still have to fight to seem like reliable narrators of our own suffering. I was compelled to meditate on the terrifyingly gossamer nature of my own mind--of the consciousness that gives me my identity and the brain that gives me my cognitive power. As a woman who relies heavily on her brain for her career, her hobbies and her general ability to enjoy her existence, this book was a challenge and a source of major discomfort.
    But it was also an invitation to be grateful and, perhaps more importantly, it was concrete proof that we are capable of living through astonishing things. Pain, illness, disability--these can be frightening and depressing. For people less privileged than Andrea, they can strip financial and physical security to an alarming degree. They can do all that, and yet we humans are rather adept at fighting back, at healing, at learning to live with pain rather than merely surviving it.
    With the strength of the human spirit at the forefront of my mind, I can't help but be filled with hope.

  • Hannah

    Full disclosure: I know the author personally. This was...a beautiful book. I wasn't sure what to expect going in - I don't often read nonfiction - but this was a powerful read. Andi has a wonderful, empathetic voice and makes the science of CSF leaks so accessible, and then in the next paragraph you can see the love she has for the people around her just pouring off the page. It's a niche topic, in a way, but also it's not at all, because it's about navigating the medical system as a woman in pain, advocating for yourself, advocating for your children, coming to terms with the facade that is our conception of our mind...just really powerful overall.

  • Natalie

    Fascinating story, I’m bringing this book to my chiropractor tonight and I told my physio about it yesterday!

  • Angie Ebba

    A beautiful memoir that spoke to my inner mind as someone living with chronic illness. Gorgeous writing and brilliant metaphors. This book made me feel seen.

  • Abigail Westbrook

    This is the best description I’ve seen of what it is like to be hit with debilitating chronic illness - the suspension in time while life goes on for other people, the sense of fragility and not wanting to fee any more, the weird disbelief when healing actually slowly occurs, and the effect on the rest of the family. Does contain a smattering of strong language.

  • Carolyn

    I was definitely between 2 and 3 stars with this book and rounded up. The premise is super intriguing and as a neuroscience nurse, I wanted to dive deep into this book. Why it didn't garner higher stars is because the narrative about the aching head just goes on too long. Also, her descriptions of her 'foggy' brain are established and said over and over again the book.

    What would have made this book better? A better editor and a different direction on the material. The author focuses on herself and how she's feeling and how the CSF leak is affecting her life throughout the book. When I say 'different direction on the material' I wished she had discussed how her two kids are coping with all this (she did touch on this but there could have been so much more) and what about the husband and the divorce that's happening in the midst of the illness?

    I read the book, Brain on Fire. and it's a much better neuroscience, science-adventure read than this book.

    The final chapter of the book is very good - reflective, summative, and poignant. I wouldn't recommend this book but if you're somewhat interested, it's not a waste of some hours of your life.

  • Shannon Winward

    It is with trepidation that I finally open this book. It took me 12 years to get my diagnosis, and even that failed to lead to a repair. The truth is I might never get better. So I realize going in that this story will be a minefield of emotional triggers. That said, although I am only a short distance in, I could hear in Ms. Buchanan's voice my own journey, right from the beginning of The Beginning. I am right there with her in the doctor's office, which is a stand-in for every doctor's office. While it is gutting to hear my own experiences laid out like this, it's also liberating. So far, I'm hooked.

    She really nails it.

    Edit: I was able to finish THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING in just under two weeks, which for me is remarkable. It's a compelling read. Though, to be fair, I had to deal with a lot of psychological push-back and PTSD to get to the end, because not only have I been through all of it, my journey's been much longer and it only gets worse, not better. In fact I was reading Andrea's accounts of her blood patches on the day I went back for yet another of my own, which, yeah, might not have been the best decision because yeah. They are brutal. And terrifying.

    But I really wanted to see how her leak resolved (and I assumed that it did resolve, that she had a happy ending, because she wrote the book. It's might not be impossible to write a book while leaking, but it's not the more likely scenario). And I'll be honest; some small part of me hoped, against all logic, that I'd find my own happy ending, too. But that is not, in and of itself, all that special. That's what drives a lot of compulsive readers—the hope that somewhere in all these pages we might find answers to the questions that plague us.

    Of course I didn't find in Andrea's story the way out of my own. She's luckier than I've been. But I did find a lot of useful things in this book, for which I am grateful.

    For example: usually I don't mark up a book, outside of, say, a few dog-earred pages. But I went to town on THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING; dozens of underlined passages, asterisks. Lots of "yup"s and "girl, same"s, details jarred from my own memories.

    My marginalia aren't just there as notes to self. Being thick inside the leak, it's hard for me to articulate my own story, and all the things I'd want to say. I imagine giving this book to my husband and kids, I imagine it to be a kind conversation to help them understand what I went through, and why I couldn't be there for them the way I wanted to—but letting Andrea do most of the talking. It can be a kind of shorthand, to get me to the parts of my story that only I can tell.

    Buchanan's discussion of her brain-while-leaking as an unreliable narrator also helped me immensely. Looking back I realize how so many of my poor decisions and mental failings came from that same broken thinking place. Even the horrible writer's blocks that plagued me for years, which always felt like a personal failing, were symptomatic of a brain in trauma. That right there was a much-needed revelation. I've been holding onto a guilt I didn't earn.

    Also; although the book did not end with a magic epiphany leading right to my own one-day cure, it does end on a hopeful note about the remarkable resilience of the brain. She talks about using piano practice as therapy, re-building and re-training neural pathways. Similar to how they say puzzles like crosswords or sudoku can help stave off senility. Buchanan has inspired me to try something similar with writing. Maybe I need to start smaller. Maybe I need to think in sentences, not chapters. Maybe even just one word after the next. Like baby steps.

  • Tonya

    Excuse the long review - it is for my benefit. :) Like many people whose reviews I skimmed through for this book, I feel like I have a personal connection with this one, although I do not know the author. I have spent this year (2018) dealing with the same diagnosis, that of a spinal fluid leak, or spontaneous intracranial hypotension. My case has definitely not been as severe as told in this story - I was not confined to bed for the bulk of my days and I didn't have the cognitive impairment she describes. I did feel slower and not as efficient and in the beginning, before I knew the cause and ways to make it better, I was worried about being able to work full time. ( I work from home and have a lot of flexibility or otherwise I might not have been able to.) She also describes a lot of guilt and self doubt, trying to analyze why it happened, and a lot of trying to come to terms with life in general, which I haven't dealt with. (She was simultaneously going through a divorce.)

    I appreciated this book for a lot of reasons. The biggest reason is the medical information. I read another review where reader mentioned skimming over the parts with medical information about CSF leak after a certain point, but those were the parts where I was on high alert. Because this is not a common condition, even good neurologists / neurosurgeons don't know a ton about it, especially in how this form of spinal leak differs in treatment and recovery from a spinal leak resulting from an epidural or a lumbar puncture. I got a lot of helpful information from this book, especially in what to expect after a blood patch and what to expect for recovery. I was grateful to hear that recovery takes a while, because most of what you read is that your headache should be gone instantly after a blood patch (if it works), but that isn't true for a longer term spontaneous leak. (At the time I read the book, I was 2.5 months post-blood patch and ready to call it successful although not 100% sure it was 100% successful.)

    It was also nice to read about someone else having experiences I could relate to - in the beginning, trying to explain that I wasn't having headaches but A continual headache, similar emotions trying to analyze how my head feels, not being able to tell for sure if the leak is fixed, how much to tell people when they ask about it and not having tests be able to show the exact point (or points) of the leak.

    Aside from the spinal leak information, I liked her glass metaphor, how practicing piano helped her heal, and her comments about what an "ordinary" day is. If you are at all interested in spinal fluid leaks, this book is a great resource. If not, it might drag on a little, but it is still a good, well-written memoir.

  • Fee

    Imagine that your brain is not cushioned by cerebrospinal fluid; it is sitting, scraping on the base of your skull, while your CSF is seeping out of an unknown hole in your protective spinal membrane. If you are upright for any length of time, your headache becomes so excruciating that you cannot think or process external stimuli.

    This was the experience of Andrea Buchanen, mother of two, author and classically trained pianist.
    After a violent coughing fit one day, Andrea began a year living with spontaneous intracranial hypotension, surviving pain of hellish proportions, while trying to care for her children as she and her husband were divorcing. Initially, the medical help she received was mostly useless and she endured primitive sounding interventions (having her own blood injected into her spinal column), whilst she had to repeat over and over the same story to every new doctor.

    Eventually, she did heal but not without discovering more about herself along the way. At times, she repeats specific things, at times she drifts into deep philosophical realms, and other times into the realities of coping with the unrelenting, unforgiving world, so oblivious to those living with chronic and or unexplained conditions.

    What I liked about this memoir, were the acutely described feelings and thoughts experienced by a person living with a serious, rare and painful condition. Anyone with lived experience like this will relate to this. With intense pain and loneliness comes the deep thoughts, the existentialism, the questioning, the searching for answers about why, or how. And the recovery process too, is another journey of introspection and the pivot point into a new trajectory. The "afterwards".

    This is a profound book, there is a lot to take in. It shows vulnerability (her doubts, fears and worries about being a good person, a good parent), objectivity and subjectivity, there is no blame or resentment, just sensitive intellectual writing.

    It was fascinating to read how music is so benficial for the brain. It aided her recovery and surprised the doctors. I kind of wish I'd kept up my piano now.



  • Nicole D'Amato

    I really loved this book. The author is a highly skilled writer, I was constantly in awe with the way she painted the picture of this debilitating issue. I felt especially close to the subject material as I am still in recovery or my own version of "Year Zero" from a spontaneous CSF Leak or (SIH) and the timeline of emotions and feelings that the author describes is so incredibly spot-on. This is an awful, terrible, horrible, emotional, extremely painful issue that many doctors and neurologists know nothing about. Having to navigate that plus the unrelenting pain is literal hell. I was impressed with the author's strength throughout the book - like really impressed. There needs to be more awareness to this issue so that people don't have to suffer for so long before they get the proper treatment they need to start healing. And the treatment is available! I can't say enough about how good this memoir is.

  • Bettejean Cramer

    Unexpectedly Good Read

    A casual text conversation with my 14 year old granddaughter inspired me to read this book, one of the books on her summer reading list. I wanted the shared experience of reading the same book, and as a former hight school English teacher, I was curious about current young adult fiction. I soon realized this more than a book for adolescents. It was multi-layered, weaving together the journey of a medical condition unfamiliar to me, the drama of an all too familiar story of a family in transition, and a story moderately reminiscent of a Bildungsroman, although the narrator is well into her own adulthood.

  • Nicole

    I got interested in this book because of an excerpt that I saw on Wordpress. It was from the chapter where she explains pain to her daughter using the metaphor of glass people. I was really intrigued (and it also made me admire her honesty and skill at handling conflict as a parent) so I immediately downloaded the book! It took me awhile to finish, and now I know more about CSF leaks, and how terrible it is to suffer from such a rare and misunderstood condition. I liked how this book makes the topic accessible to a mainstream audience, and overall I liked how this was written, so I am giving this 3.5 stars.

  • Melissa

    I won this book as a giveaway and am fortunate to have had the chance to read it.

    I would rate this 3.5-4.0 stars.

    The deep insight and personal reflections were candid and raw. As a reader, I appreciated the genuine approach to suffering, tragedy, and obstacles. This was balanced with essential, medical background info/explanation. At times, I got a little lost in this and pushed forward to the more personal connective potions of the story.

  • Karen DeBonis

    I have a sporadic history of debilitating migraines, and I can't even begin to imagine the extent of the author's pain from spinal CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) leak. I felt her pain. She made me feel it, all of the pain, in her head, of her divorce, of her immobility and frustration as she searched for a correct diagnosis, and endured the treatment. It's amazing that she survived. Excellent list of resources, too.

  • Violeta

    4.5 stars. Part memoir, part medical mystery, part philosophical meditation of self and pain and recovery, The Beginning of Everything is surprisingly page-turning. Whether she’s writing about her illness, her recovery, music, or motherhood, Buchanan’s writing is beautiful and thought-provoking. Highly recommend.

  • Kaitlin

    Loved this book. The author does a lovely job weaving personal experience together with science in telling her story of living with a spinal fluid leak. It's very difficult to capture the feeling of not being able to think properly with words, but Buchanan does so deftly. I also really appreciated her discussion of the experience of time during chronic illness.

  • Stephanie

    Like the author, I had a CSF leak, but mine was cranial. I feel lucky that I didn't experience such drastic symptoms as she did. Still, I could relate to almost every part of her story, both the medical rollercoaster and the existential questions she tangled with during the treatment and after. Her story helped me process my own experience.

  • Lisa

    A well written memoir of one woman's struggle with a sudden change in her life. Two things it brings to my mind: 1) Life is short..make the most of every day and 2) people have to be THEIR OWN BEST ADVOCATES , especially in MEDICAL CARE!

  • María Verónica

    CSF leaks and classical piano: A relationship

    This book was instructive about illness, about the brain and about patience. It also covered a pianist life. Somewhat repetitive chapters which became overwhelming the more I read. Over all interesting.

  • Aubrey

    It’s impossible to rate this book, as it is so close to my own life experiences… but this is required reading for anyone who has experienced a CSF leak. Hopefully more patients with intracranial hypotension will join Andrea in sharing their stories one day.

  • Thorn MotherIssues

    Another by an author I know, but the story itself resonated with me more than almost anything else and will help pull me through. Extraordinary.