Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #569572 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Released on: 2006-06-13
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Garrison, a 37-year-old Boston-area woman with a great husband and a fine three-year old boy, was busy at work when she suddenly felt "a throbbing pain in the right side of her head... a volcano erupting inside her skull." The next thing she knew, her family was gathered around her hospital bed, and she couldn't feel the whole left side of her body. She'd had a massive brain hemorrhage and had only survived thanks to some very risky surgery. Doctors were divided about why she'd had this stroke; indeed, Garrison spent the next weeks and months fending off a dire diagnosis, vasculitis, from the pseudonymous "Dr. Jerk." Most of the professionals she dealt with were negative, wanting her to accept that she'd never walk again or have a full, satisfying life. But Garrison, with the help of her supportive husband, brothers, parents, friends and a few gifted therapists and doctors, managed an extraordinary recovery. By book's end, she is walking (albeit with difficulties), actively parenting again, trying to sue the makers of the cold syrup that triggered her stroke and giving motivational talks to doctors' groups. Her humorous, tear-jerking, struggle-to-recover-against-all-odds story is a lesson in finding silver linings. (June 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
At 37, Garrison, then the mother of a three-year-old boy, suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage that left her with a physically devastated body and more spiritual resolve than she'd ever had in her life. Armed with a sense of humor that has a real edge to it, she overcame obstacles that would have killed lesser spirits. From the outset, she also knew much more about what it takes to recover than her attending medical professionals, whom she dubs with such tags as Dr. Jerk, Dr. Bleak, and Nurse Doom--monikers that seem deserved for such behaviors as labeling her "in denial" because she refused to accept tacitly the prognostication of total paralysis for the rest of her life. Not medical care's prettiest face, to be sure. Unsatisfied by Dr. Jerk's diagnosis, which would have required a lifetime of chemotherapy, Garrison sought a second opinion. What she got, after the most superficial review of her case, was rubber stamping. But eventually she walked again. Inspirational is too weak a word to describe Garrison's memoir. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Inspiring True Life Story
This is yet another insight into the hellish situation that exists when healthy people become incapacitated and end up in rehab or nursing home situations. (For comparison, read Joni Eareckson's autobiography and Stephen Thompson's Genesis: A Portrait of Spinal Cord Injury. Each one of these author's stories begin in different decades, but all, including Julia Garrison, describe first-hand similar experiences of dealing with a health-care system that is both abusive and neglectful).

If Julia's family hadn't been there for her, including a devoted husband, mother and eight brothers, she would have quickly withered and died in a nursing home. A simple request for tampons was denied, and she was offered adult diapers as a substitute, because the home didn't stock tampons or even pads. It was far easier for the nursing home staff to have a compliant patient in diapers, rather than an ornery, loud and gutsy 37-year-old woman who refused to roll over and accept the cards that fate had laid out for her.

The medical profession will move heaven and earth to save the life of an accident or stroke victim, but then doesn't seem to know what to do with the patients whose lives they have just saved. Julia Fox Garrison, with an insane will to survive, and surrounded by the love of her family, took charge of her own recovery and made her own plans for the rest of her life, the one she would have to live after she was discharged from the hospital and sent home.


Garrison's book is must reading for anyone whose life has been altered by a single event. Life does somehow go on, and the book is blessedly free of the heavy-handed preaching that often accompanies the retelling of tragic true-life stories.

A Sarcastic delight!
What a wonderful view of what it is like to be on the receiving end of patient care. This book opens up a whole new way of looking at life and how people portray themselves. Also it gives you an appreciation for all the things that you may not know your taking for granted. Great book with great heart. Would read it again and again.

From a Stroke Caregiver
Final Stroke I used this book during my research for my novel and found it uplifting. I was a caregiver for a stroke survivor and used my experiences in my fiction writing. I applaud Julia for this fine work.