Author & Patient Rights Advocate
LisaLindell
I'm Lisa Lindell. My husband isn't supposed to be in the hospital for 108 days. Medical errors at Memorial Hermann Hospital – Texas Medical Center keep him there. I wrote it all down.
Author & Patient Rights Advocate
I'm Lisa Lindell. My husband isn't supposed to be in the hospital for 108 days. Medical errors at Memorial Hermann Hospital – Texas Medical Center keep him there. I wrote it all down.
Watch the Story
"In the loss I found myself — and it has been the ride of a lifetime."
More Videos on YouTubeThe 108 Series
Book One
A True Story — A Fight for Life
"Riveting… grimacing, shock and awe, nodding — I finally understood. If you want a good read, pick up 108 Days." — Toni Brayer, MD
A nurse's worst nightmare. A patient's true story. One family's 108-day fight for survival inside a Texas hospital.
When an explosive electrical accident leaves her husband Curtis with severe burns covering 35% of his body, Lisa Lindell takes up position at his bedside at Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center and refuses to leave. What she witnesses over the next 108 days — medical errors, negligence, and a system that calls every failure a complication — will cost both of them everything.
Lisa becomes Curtis's voice, his advocate, and ultimately the reason he survives. A book about love, vigilance, and the fight that never makes it into the medical charts.
Book Two
How I Lost Everything, Then Found It All in Las Vegas
"A brisk, engaging book that captures the complexity, pain, and poignancy of family relationships… I love it!" — Dr. Elizabeth DeNoma
108 Days told the story of fighting to save a life. 108 Decisions is the story of what happens after you win.
When Curtis comes home from the hospital, the battles are just beginning. Years of cognitive and medical complications. A fight through the system to secure the lifetime benefits he is entitled to — and then, just when they prevail, the insurance company sues him anyway. Through it all, Lisa writes 108 Days, launches her patient advocacy work, appears in a documentary, and keeps showing up to tell a story that still makes her cry every time.
Then, ten years after surviving the unthinkable together, Curtis divorces her. What follows is something nobody prepares you for — the strange, disorienting freedom of starting over in your forties. Equal parts heartbreaking, hilarious, and unexpectedly liberating. 108 Decisions is for anyone who has ever wondered what comes after surviving. It is honest about all of it — the grief, the grit, and yes, the sex.
As Seen In
Lisa's fight to expose the failures of the American healthcare system doesn't stop at the page. She appears in the critically acclaimed documentary Money Driven Medicine — available on Prime Video — which pulls back the curtain on a healthcare system driven by profit over patients — and features real voices like Lisa's who lived the consequences firsthand. Her IMDb credit stands as a testament to her tireless advocacy for patients' rights.
In the Media
Press & Reviews
108 Days is a courageous, frank and informative account of what can go wrong when you're a patient in a hospital. Surprisingly, it is also a great read — funny, outraged, and simply dumbfounded.
Maggie Mahar — Money Driven Medicine
A provocative and powerfully written book. I was not able to put it down until I finished it. Lisa's efforts to challenge health care organizations is compelling.
Renee Kearby, RN
The hard and cruel realities she chronicles are startling and eye-opening.
City Life Magazine
Highly recommended as a real-life medical thriller — an engaging and riveting story line from first page to last!
Midwest Book Review
This should be required reading for all medical students. For anyone who reads this, it just might save your life.
Rose — Texas Reader
This book should be read by every person in the hospital system — it touches the very essence of the work done in a hospital.
Douglas Dotan, MA, CQIA — President, CRG Medical
Organizations that certify hospitals should be very interested in this book. I found this book interesting, sincere and focused on the patient's well-being and very well written.
Michael Goergen, President — Merit Laboratories, Inc.
Meet the Author
Lisa Lindell is the author of two powerful true-story books. Her first, 108 Days, details her family's journey through the shockingly incompetent medical system they are forced to navigate after her husband's hospitalization with a severe burn injury at Memorial Hermann Hospital – Texas Medical Center.
In the wake of its publication, Lindell becomes an outspoken patients' rights activist, authoring articles on the subject — including a piece published in The Hospitalist and a feature in Redbook and Health magazines — appearing in the documentary Money Driven Medicine (available on Prime Video), and agitating for legislative reform.
Her second book, 108 Decisions, is a brutally honest account of the ups and downs of life after the hospital — the search for love, stability, and meaning in mid-life.
"Are you fighting to survive your injury? Or your hospital stay?"
She hopes her stories motivate, comfort, educate — or simply entertain. Lisa resides in Texas.
