Just barely out of college, and brimming with life, Louise Krug was ready to take on the world.
She had recently graduated from the University of Kansas and was literally hours away from her first day on the job in southern California.
Her storybook life was skyrocketing through the fast lane. She’d already earned a freelance gig from Us Magazine to trail Britney Spears to report on the pop star’s daily routine. Her boyfriend, a fellow reporter, had just started his new job at a nearby newspaper. Krug’s full-time reporting job was to start the next day.
The couple figured she had been sitting awkwardly when she tried to stand at the end of watching a movie premiere that Sunday evening in 2004 and her leg was numb.
But the numbness didn’t go away. She awoke the next morning — when she was supposed to be getting ready for her first day at her new paper — too dizzy to stand, the slightest noise enough to trigger searing headaches.
Doctors soon realized the episode was triggered by a ruptured cavernous angioma — burst blood vessels on the brain — that paralyzed half her body.
Her condition steadily worsened, to the point that walking, talking and even eating were practically impossible on her own. The left side of her body was paralyzed. Unable to control her left eye, Krug suffered from double vision.
The ensuing craniotomy — doctors sawed into her skull in order to remove the snarled collection of leaking veins — preceded years of grueling therapy and other surgeries with the hopes of restoring her motor functions and eyesight. She had to learn to walk, talk and live all over again.
The emotional toll on Krug’s family, boyfriend and other acquaintances was just as traumatic.
Krug, 29-year-old daughter of Register publisher Susan Lynn, tells her story in a newly released, spell-binding story “Louise: Amended,” which she’ll discuss at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Creitz Recital Hall of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. The discussion is part of the Bowlus Fine Arts Speaker Series.
KRUG’S autobiography is accentuated with “fictional interludes” that look at the lives of those closest to her.
The 192-page tome is divided into three sections: before, during and after her surgery, a procedure that led to other complications, and soon hammered home that life would never return to normal for the picturesque blonde.
She paints, in vivid detail, her frustrations and moments of despair, as well as glimmers of hope.
Krug decided to write her story shortly after returning to Lawrence to resume her schooling. She holds a bachelors degree in journalism and masters in fine arts in creative writing. She is pursuing her doctorate in creative writing.
It was during a creative writing course that Krug experienced an epiphany: writing about her episode proved cathartic.
