A Change of Plans

... . The book is an awakening, for the reader, about the personal pain and social consequences of the often unspeakable and therefore invisible impairments stroke survivors must deal with.

The stories alert us, for example, to how not being recognized as disabled can have an impact on self-image and on rehabilitation. Each profile is one survivor's perspective on a particular theme such as anger, helplessness or depression about being misunderstood, or about accepting what could well be lifelong dependence.

By book's end, the reader has a complete picture of the range of problems survivors of hemorrhagic stroke must deal with. Of interest to the general reader is that many of these difficulties, such as persistent fatigue and subtle cognitive impairments, are also true of any long-term illness or disabling condition.

Of particular interest to me, as the survivor of traumatic illness and as an older women made even more aware of the frailties of the human body, is that Stone illustrates how the powerlessness and invisibility of a disabling illness have a unique impact on women, who are socialized to accept ineffectiveness and erasure as normal, long before illness strikes. This inevitably shapes the ways women come to acknowledge (or not), how stroke, or any condition that reduces or eliminates her hard-won skills and social roles, will remake who she is.

How important it is to tell our stories.

There is a growing academic literature about the experience of surviving stroke, but this literature rarely highlights the issue of gender. When women's experiences are discussed, they tend to be subsumed under those of men. A focus on women only is a way of positing women's experiences, rather than men's, as normative, and allows both women and men to appreciate what surviving stroke can look like from women's points of view. In this work, the author has assembled 11 stories of women who have survived hemorrhagic stroke, and documents their experiences. This collection is a contribution to literature not only about women's health, but also, and more importantly, about women's life experiences.