Friday, August 18, 2017

Book Review of The Defiant Mind: Living Inside a Stroke by Ron Smith

This is a superbly-written book about the experience of a stroke, a "carpet bombing of the brain", and its psychological, physical and emotional aftermath, including early warning symptoms, the hospital experience, and returning to home life. It is such a remarkable contribution to our understanding of many things in this world, hence my tagging of it with "wisdom" as well as psychology and stroke recovery. The author typed the manuscript using the index finger of his left (non-dominant) hand, which, at over 300 pages is a testament to his determination, lucidity, and the rock-solid love and support of his wife in particular.

The only other book I've read about being trapped "inside" a stroke is the devastating "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, who dictated his slim masterpiece by blinking one eye while his editorial assistant showed him letters of the alphabet. Imagine that. Take your time. Ron Smith (full disclosure) edited one of my novels in 2010 during his busy life as a publisher, editor, and university English professor. He is also the author of books of poems, short stories and a major biography. His work has been translated and he has served as a visiting professor of English in several other countries. Which is to say, his fine mind, before and after the "brain attack", and his love of reading and books propelled him through the rubble of the ischemic stroke, the attack on his brain stem. Writing this book, claiming his memories especially, became a necessary part of his therapy, as vital as learning how to roll over in bed, to walk after learning how to wheel a chair, to sort out the tangle of his thick, disobedient tongue and sagging mouth muscles to speak to his beloved family.

There is humour here too, alongside its earthly cousin, despair, amid the analyses of how stroke survivors are treated. The essential point is: all strokes are different and all are experienced differently and furthermore, each survivor needs to be heard. Most of the therapists, doctors, nurses and hospital staff, including a perfectly lovely man who cleaned the wards, are generously portrayed as skilled, empathetic, and very caring but of course, there are always a few negative-thinking individuals who have chosen the wrong occupation. We learn about an older man in his eighties who could not speak after his stroke but who tapped the side of his hospital bed with his able hand. He seemed frustrated when family and staff treated his tapping as some sort of uncontrollable spasm until finally somebody realized he had used Morse code in WW2 and he was using it again, trying to communicate with them. The quest to communicate is so intense with locked-in afflictions of all kinds because the loneliness and depression is just as intense of course. We are privy to this subjective experience, rarely explored, thanks to this book.

Highly recommended to anyone who works in any capacity in hospitals, rehabilitative medicine, community nursing, and to families where a member has been felled by a stroke. But also, like Jean-Dominque Bauby's book, this brilliant book deserves a wide international audience because it is so beautifully written, so compelling and so hopeful, ultimately, about new medical techniques and the wonders we are still discovering about how the brain heals and creates new pathways. It's also a book about the importance of love and emotional support, about a healing connection to nature and the serendipity of the right healers coming into his life at just the right time. Ron Smith is a lucky man, despite the stroke, and his strength of character and sheer determination to communicate has contributed an outstanding book.