It's All in Your Head

In 2008, after recovering from a few years of hard drinking and harder drug use, after building back up a life as a successful and happy New York writer, Eva Hagberg woke up dizzy. She spent the next five years searching for a diagnosis, a treatment, and most of all an answer. It was a journey that took her from a career as a New York City architecture critic to a bicycle-riding year in Portland, Oregon to graduate school in Berkeley, California. She saw internists, vestibular specialists, and endocrinologists. They all told her she was normal; that the way she felt was all in her head. When everything she thought she could try failed, she began to believe them, trying to heal through yoga, acupuncture, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and long walks in the woods.

In February 2013, an MRI revealed a mass in her brain. A blood test revealed an elevated tumor marker: A sign of cancer. And that’s when the second journey started - one grounded in physiology, in steadily rising marker numbers, and in the brutal invasion of a brain biopsy. And yet, there was uncertainty. And yet, there was the insistent voice that told her she was making this all up. It was definitely all in her head. But how?

An amazing personal narrative of the nightmare of medical care for women, the terror of early-onset brain disease, and the power of love. A haunting, beautiful memoir.