In April 1997 John Quann, 59 years old and in excellent health, suffers a catastrophic stroke. Following an emergency craniotomy, he remains paralyzed on his right side, unable to understand or communicate.
By His Side - Life and Love after Stroke is a courageous story of determination, hope, patience and love as he and his wife Eileen work together to recover. After coping with the initial terror of the stroke, they are faced with the challenge of living with and recovering from aphasia, a communication disorder that affects a person's ability to understand, speak, read or write.
Written with honesty and humor by the spouse, this book explores the difficult decisions that must be made and the wide range of emotions experienced by the spouse-caregiver. While offering hope, encouragement and practical advice, ultimately this is a love story about a husband and wife who fall in love after the stroke. As both parties grow and change together, they discover that who they have become is far more important than what happened to them.
Unlike other books on the subject that focus on the physical disabilities of a stroke, it describes how they dealt with aphasia, the personal aspects of which are rarely documented since its victims are often unable to tell the story, yet aphasia is a fascinating and bizarre aberration of the mind that affects more than one million Americans, with 85,000 new cases occurring every year.
