How do you cope when your baby is born with a severe and life-limiting brain disorder? With huge amounts of love, compassion and bloody-mindedness, if this compelling true-life account is anything to go by!
Little Amberlie Murphy was born with lissencephaly (a smooth brain). In her short life, however, filled as it was with relentless seizures and terrible feeding and breathing problems, if she knew nothing else, she knew she was greatly loved and wanted by her family - so much so that her dedicated mother, Sandra, has written this moving and often harrowing story commemorating Amberlie's seven years.
Sandra pulls no punches - she was often angry at everyone and everything, and goes into detail about Amberlie's symptoms and how they were managed with an overwhelming cocktail of medications. But in the end the book is a testament not only to her undying love, but also to her gratitude to the medical profession for pulling out all the stops in an effort to help Amberlie.
'A Headbanger's Ball' is about unconditional love and acceptance - how a family coped, cried, laughed, celebrated and preserved their sanity - how they all joined Amberlie in her fight to stay alive, yet still functioned as a normal family.
Little Amberlie Murphy was born with lissencephaly (a smooth brain). In her short life, however, filled as it was with relentless seizures and terrible feeding and breathing problems, if she knew nothing else, she knew she was greatly loved and wanted by her family - so much so that her dedicated mother, Sandra, has written this moving and often harrowing story commemorating Amberlie's seven years.
Sandra pulls no punches - she was often angry at everyone and everything, and goes into detail about Amberlie's symptoms and how they were managed with an overwhelming cocktail of medications. But in the end the book is a testament not only to her undying love, but also to her gratitude to the medical profession for pulling out all the stops in an effort to help Amberlie.
'A Headbanger's Ball' is about unconditional love and acceptance - how a family coped, cried, laughed, celebrated and preserved their sanity - how they all joined Amberlie in her fight to stay alive, yet still functioned as a normal family.
