Complications, Todd Balf
Complications, Todd Balf
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Complications
The diagnosis was bad. The aftermath was calamitous. My new life as a medical train wreck.

Author: Todd Balf

Narrator: Tristan Morris

Unabridged: 1 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/21/2020


Synopsis

His story begins as cliché: an aging jock with nagging lower-back pain. For the better part of a year, he ignores it, convinced he has a slipped or herniated disk. It’s only when he can no longer ride a bike, a lifelong passion, that he makes the doctor appointment. The problem isn’t a disk; it’s a tumor on his spine the size of a softball.
In the summer of 2014, Todd Balf, author of the acclaimed adventure tales The Darkest Jungle and The Last River, was diagnosed with a rare spinal cancer called chordoma. Only three hundred cases are diagnosed in the United States each year, meaning that Balf was literally one in a million. During two long and risky surgeries, a team of specialists removed the tumor and buttressed his damaged spine with a scaffolding of metal rods. Having survived the surgery, itself a minor miracle, Balf was told that, with some rehab and follow-up radiation, he would soon be back to his former athletic self. He wasn’t. The surgery had resulted in a spinal-cord injury that left one of his legs partially paralyzed. Give it time, his doctors advised. The nerves might heal.
Thus began Balf’s membership in a tribe. The disabled. He imagined his own disability would be temporary, a short visit to a foreign land. He spent years test-piloting remedies that might spark his spinal nerves back to life. With the same gusto and good humor that he brought to his work as a writer, he searched for the perfect treatment: anti-gravity treadmills, adaptive bikes, endless rehab and trips to the gym, and—why not?—a few long-distance cycling events. His wife and children, long accustomed to Balf’s kinetic energy and sometimes harebrained schemes, cheered him on and hoped for the best.
Then came unexpected surgery to repair broken rods in Balf’s spine, followed by yet another complication: a stroke that jeopardized not only his recovery but his professional career. Balf wasn’t just one in a million. Thanks to his unresolved spine injury, topped off with a stroke, he was now an “n of 1”—a single case study. Before his long medical misadventure, Balf had always relished being one of the healthiest and fittest people around. Now he was unique for all the wrong reasons.  
Complications recounts Balf’s journey from cancer diagnosis to his present-day reality as a man caught between two worlds. Both moving and irrepressibly joyful, Complications is a forthright account of what it’s like to suffer a physical catastrophe and manage the uncertainty that comes with it. What’s the right balance between striving to recover and accepting limitations? Was he still just visiting the land of the disabled, or there for good? Who was Todd Balf now?

About Todd Balf

Todd Balf is a New York Times bestselling writer known for his ability to identify little-known people and events in the worlds of adventure and sports and bring their stories vividly to life. He is author of the critically acclaimed adventure sagas The Last River and The Darkest Jungle and the biography Major, about the pioneering Black bicycle racer Marshall “Major” Taylor. Balfʼs writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harperʼs, GQ, Outside, Runnerʼs World, and elsewhere. He is also the author of the Scribd Original Complications, a memoir about how illness reshaped his own life as an athlete.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Carrie on August 11, 2021

Complications is yet another contemporary “romance” by Danielle Steel. I have reviewed quite a few of her newer books out of nostalgia lately since I had read her in my younger years but this one is my least favorite of those. Complications was a complicated story in it’s own way. The main character......more

Goodreads review by Wendy on May 29, 2021

I always enjoy the escapism that a Danielle Steel book provides. Especially during these COVID times, it’s great to escape into the world of jet setters and the rich and famous. This story follows a successful art dealer, a London doctor, a French politician, and an American couple celebrating divor......more

Goodreads review by Jackie on August 23, 2021

My Thoughts Taking place for the most part in the most lauded boutique hotel in all of Paris for decades the Hotel Louis XVI, as well as partly in London, this book follows events bringing together a group of strangers. Reopened after four years of renovations the hotel itself seems little......more

Goodreads review by Suzzie on November 30, 2021

Loved the variety of characters and the different plots.......more

Goodreads review by Sherri on March 20, 2021

Complications is my 37th book by Danielle Steel and once again, she did not disappoint. I enjoyed the story line set in Paris and this has romance in it and a “few” complications happen throughout. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review. Book to......more