Summary

In Chapter 3, Christine continued to ask Adam what was wrong and what the doctors initially thought was wrong. She realized that she was reading the same lines over and over in Slaughterhouse Five, and stopped trying to read. A year would pass before she picked it up again. She was at John Muir Medical Center, and the pressing question was whether she might have another stroke. She described a “typical” conversation that might have taken place with Dr. Volpi, including his asking her to remember three words (apple, table, and penny) and then talking about her diagnosis for a few minutes. By the time he asked for the words again, she had forgotten. He instructed her to begin writing things down and she started a journal that “would act as my short-term memory bank … for a long while to come” (37). She compared herself...