A Three Dog Life

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A Three Dog Life

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Written by Abigail Thomas
Reviewed by Marilyn Colter

A Three Dog Life is the story of a loving couple, forever changed by brain injury and their struggle to deal with its challenges. Abigail Thomas describes the dilemma of being married but at the same time having to build a new life alone after her husband was hit by a car and suffered a brain injury.

What's A Three Dog Life about?

Thomas begins her memoir with this quote: "Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a 'three dog night.'"

When her husband, Rich, ran into traffic to save the life of a dog Thomas had convinced him she needed, they embarked on a "three dog life." His brain injury was severe, his skull shattered. Thomas tells the story of the months of treatment and her attempts to care for him at home. His subsequent decline into paranoia and delusion sent him to a nursing facility where he had care that she couldn't provide.

Those of you who've experienced the loss of a family member to brain injury will appreciate Thomas' no-nonsense retelling of her search for a life without Rich by her side and her guilt in doing so. There are no punches pulled in A Three Dog Life so be ready to weep along with Thomas and feel the familiar downward pull of depression she describes exquisitely.

"I put a life together with my family and friends and dogs," Thomas writes. "I learned to make use of the solitude I now had aplenty. I started writing, wanting to make something useful come from our catastrophe, and working hard." And she visited her husband, whose memory loss made conversation a maze—some visits with him were difficult, yet others were warm and comforting as they lay with their arms around each other on his small hospital bed.

Her new life alone became pleasantly interesting and she was happy. "And then one time I asked myself a terrible question," she remembers. She asked herself if she could make the accident never have happened, would she do it. "And instead of yes, I hesitated," she writes. "But by posing the question I had assumed the power, and by hesitating I put myself behind the wheel of the car that struck my husband. You want to talk about guilt?"

Thomas struggles with that idea until her sister explains that the reason she hesitated was only that she didn't want to return to unhappiness. But she still lived with the guilt of being happy when Rich was in a nursing facility.

Abigail Thomas describes the struggle of living with a loved one's brain injury brilliantly and without self pity or drama. It is what it is and life goes on. I was touched by her words and her struggle and her complete honesty in the telling of her and Rich's struggle to make a life again after brain injury. It is not an easy read, but at the end, you will acknowledge her courage and our kinship of brain injury families.

Abigail Thomas's Web site:

http://www.abigailthomas.net/

Reviewer byline: Marilyn Colter

Marilyn Colter is the author of "Missing Pieces: Mending the Head Injury Family." Her husband suffered a brain injury in 1982 during surgery to repair a brain aneurysm. She and her family founded the Brain Injury Family Resources web site at www.braininjuryfamily.net