An imaginary interview, conducted by NPR's "Fresh Air" Terry Gross sets the book's tone. "So, you were this perfectly healthy person: You were -- I should say are athletic, you play volleyball, do these biking marathons, then in May of '99, you have a seizure…."

Well, not exactly. For the previous three years, Becker had suffered a series of seizures, one about every six months. Then she had a doozy the night she received an appointment as an affiliate of the prestigious Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College (now absorbed into Harvard University).

Her Bunting project was supposed to be a book -- a chronicle of decision-making about whether or not to have a baby called Fertile Mind. Instead, she shifted into a whirlwind of prodding and poking, testing and retesting. She endured countless medical tests and insurance catch-22.

At this point in the book, "Augusta," her imaginary medical super heroine, appears as a caped, bespeckled, crusader-ette in the marginalia, providing a background voice for what Becker is really thinking. As she methodically marches through her diagnoses, Becker's "Augusta" becomes the stern task mistress, quizzing hospital and lab personnel for pertinent details when they overwhelm the real and in denial Suzy Becker.

Words like neurosurgery, cancer journals, tumor and support group began to filter into Becker's life. The confirmation that something actually was wrong, and that something was actually growing in her head, forced her to consent to her neurosurgeon's strong suggestion that she had no choice but to have the mass excised. All the while Becker's partner, Karen, hovered on the periphery, almost twenty years older and not quite ever understanding Becker's terror and agony.

Step-by-step, Becker traces the route of her July surgery: from the hospital lobby, to the attachment of IV lines, to having her head shaved and subsequently drilled. Perhaps the worst part was that she had to be awake for the surgery and hear the conversations around and about her as her "scalp was sliced open and parted ... skull bone removed ... brain cut open and peeled back ... innards were exposed." With the words, "this'll work" from the surgeon, Becker realized the tumor is gone. "Two hours to close me up (three CDs), and I was -- we were -- all home free."

Not quite. The surgery affected Becker's speech center. Expressive aphasia, knowing what she wanted to say but not being able to say it, caused her the most distress. She couldn't use the phone, she was tired, and she worried. Becker entered speech, physical, and psychological therapy. And in the weeks that followed, her relationship with just about everybody was tested. In fairness to Karen, Becker's divorced parents and her sisters, their role in Becker's care and recovery is par-for-the course in the reality of today's health care system. Woe is the patient who is ignorant of permissions and privacy statements. This book emphasizes the tragedy of the adult who, for whatever reason, has not discussed eventualities with loved ones, dealt with preparing permissions to release care into a capable loved one's hands or signed any kind of consent for treatment. It emphasizes what happens when the patient can't speak or is incapacitated. It makes the dilemma of having a loving family and companion even more pronounced because they just can't help you.

While steadfastly maintaining she would be a Bunting Fellow come September, Becker lived with the daily fear that she couldn't. She obsessed over what she'd do for her writing project since Fertile Mind didn't describe her very well post-surgery, and taking care of herself, let alone a baby, seemed impossible. When she finally reached Harvard, she realized that self-doubt was her best friend. At a medieval-type of "Grand Circle" at which all the Fellows told "their" story, she confided that she was "not the same person who applied here."

But it is with those words that her healing really began. The book, I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse?: An Illustrated Memoir is the story of her recovery. It was also her Bunting project. A rich, honest portrait of a person facing, dealing with and surviving a serious medical crisis, Suzy Becker does what medical databases can't. She provides the story after the surgery, after the visitors have left, and after life is supposed to return to normal. She tells why it can't but provides a glimpse into how it can change and be good.