Author & Patient Rights Advocate
LisaLindell
True stories that motivate, comfort, educate — and simply entertain. From Texas, to the hospital, to Las Vegas and back.
Author & Patient Rights Advocate
True stories that motivate, comfort, educate — and simply entertain. From Texas, to the hospital, to Las Vegas and back.
Watch the Story
"In the loss I found myself — and it has been the ride of a lifetime."
The 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 called 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 came home from the hospital, the battles were just beginning. Years of cognitive and medical complications. A fight through the system to secure the lifetime benefits he was entitled to — and then, just when they prevailed, the insurance company sued him anyway. Through it all, Lisa wrote 108 Days, launched her patient advocacy work, appeared in a documentary, and kept showing up to tell a story that still made her cry every time.
Then, ten years after surviving the unthinkable together, Curtis divorced her. What followed was 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.
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
As Seen In
Lisa's fight to expose the failures of the American healthcare system didn'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.
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 were 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 became 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.
She hopes her stories motivate, comfort, educate — or simply entertain. Lisa resides in Texas.