@nachtness—
In reality,
brains require significant infrastructure, and that technology might not exist in this fictionalized world; it would, after all, be on a par with just
curing her body. Also, in reality, the problem of duplicating
minds in software is
much further from solution than journalists and other hucksters would have us believe, and that technology might not exist in this fictionalized world.
But the story might wave-away such issues, and offer us the mother's brain transplanted or mind duplicated in the next or last chapter.