When Your Spouse Has A Stroke

A stroke can alter two people's lives in an instant. For the person who has had a stroke, simple tasks suddenly become difficult or impossible. For that person's partner, life seems to revolve mostly around the stroke survivor's needs. Such a drastic change naturally requires making many, sometimes taxing, adjustments. In this book, two experts in stroke recovery help couples deal with the impact of stroke on their lives and their relationship. Drs. Sara and Jeffrey Palmer explain how to overcome three major challenges: • providing quality care for your partner • maintaining or rebuilding your relationship • caring for yourself as an individual The book invites you into the lives of real couples who are themselves coping with these challenges. Their experiences model how you can improve essential aspects of your relationship, including communication, roles and responsibilities, and sexuality. A list of practical tips summarizes each chapter, providing a handy reference guide to meeting each day's challenges. More than just a discussion of the medical and practical aspects of stroke and stroke recovery, this book focuses on the emotional, psychological, and social consequences of stroke and the deeply personal side of caregiving. When Your Spouse Has a Stroke will relieve your burden and strengthen your partnership.

At thirty-six years old, Kelly Marsh was a successful businesswoman with roles at the Cincinnati Museum Center and, most recently, chief marketing officer at Thomas More College. Her husband, thirty-nine-year-old Brad Marsh, was a successful entrepreneur and businessman. In Love Stroke, they tell their story after Kelly suffered a stroke August 30, 2009. This memoir narrates the firsthand, chronological views from both the survivor and the primary caregiver, including their life before, the day everything changed, and the first two years of recovery. Kelly and Brad share personal trial-and-error insights from their journey, and they challenge some conventional medical wisdom about what is possible. They also give advice to friends and family on the best way to support their loved one and each other, and they offer useful lessons and resources. Practical and inspirational, the Marshes' story is intended to assist all traumatic brain injury survivors and caregivers, but particularly younger survivors and caregivers as they shape their own destinies in recovery. This book, written by both a young stroke survivor and her husband/caregiver (the roles are not separate), is filled with some great advice for stroke survivors and their loved ones. Despite having taken a full history of Kelly's stroke, and seeing her in clinic on many occasions, I still did not know many parts of her story, and certainly did not know her inner thoughts and emotions. I was fascinated to hear the details from both perspectives, but especially from Kelly and in her own words. Brett M. Kissela, MD, MS, Albert Barnes Voorheis professor and chair, Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Cincinnati

A memoir about how a husband and father's stroke affected him and his family.

"Transformative...[Taylor's] experience...will shatter [your] own perception of the world."—ABC News The astonishing New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover. For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Reaching wide audiences through her talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and her appearance on Oprah's online Soul Series, Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone.

Dyadic coping is a concept that has reached increased attention in psychological science within the last 20 years. Dyadic coping conceptualizes the way couples cope with stress together in sharing appraisals of demands, planning together how to deal with the stressors and engage in supportive or joint dyadic coping. Among the different theories of dyadic coping, the Systemic Transactional Model (STM; Bodenmann, 1995, 1997, 2005) has been applied to many studies on couples’ coping with stress. While a recent meta-analysis shows that dyadiccoping is a robust and consistent predictor of relationship satisfaction and couple’s functioning in community samples, some studies also reveal the significance of dyadic coping in dealing with psychological disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety) or severe illness (e.g., cancer, diabetes, COPD, etc.). Researchers all over the world build their research on this or other concepts of dyadic coping and many typically use the Dyadic Coping Inventory (DCI) for assessing dyadic coping. So far, research on dyadic coping has been systematically presented in two books, one written by Revenson, Kayser, & Bodenmann in 2005, focussing on emerging perspectives on couples’ coping, the other by Falconier, Randall, & Bodenmann more recently in 2016, addressing intercultural aspects of dyadic coping in African, American, Asian and European couples. This eBook gives an insight into recent dyadic coping research in different areas and countries.

Whether caused by illness, accident, or incident, brain injury requires multi-tiered resources for the patient and considerable external care and support. When recovery is sidelined by depression, anger, grief, or turmoil, family members and the support network have critical roles to play and need their own guidance and compassionate therapeutic interventions. Psychotherapy for Families after Brain Injury offers theoretical frameworks and eclectic techniques for working effectively with adult patients and their families at the initial, active and post-treatment phases of rehabilitation. This practical reference clarifies roles and relationships of the support network in interfacing with the loved one and addresses the understandably devastating and sometimes derailing emotions and psychosocial adversities. The content promotes psychoeducation and guided exercises, delineates “helpful hints” and coping tools and proffers multimedia resources to overcome hurdles. Constructs of awareness, acceptance and realism for all parties are woven throughout, along with ideas to enhance the support network’s commitment, adjustment, positivity, hope and longevity. Case excerpts, instructive quotes from caregivers and nuggets of clinical advice assist in analyzing these and other topics in salient detail: The impact of brain injury on different family members. Treatment themes in early family sessions. Family therapy for moderate to severe brain injury, concussion and postconcussion syndrome. Family therapy after organic brain injury: stroke, anoxia, tumor, seizure disorders. Family group treatment during active rehabilitation. End-of-life and existential considerations and positive aspects of care giving. Aftercare group therapy for long-term needs. The hands-on approach demonstrated in Psychotherapy for Families after Brain Injury will enhance the demanding work of a range of professionals, including neuropsychologists, clinical psychologists, rehabilitation psychologists, family therapists, marriage and family counselors, psychiatrists, behavioral/mental health counselors, clinical social workers, rehabilitation specialists such as speech-language pathologists, physical and occupational therapists, and graduate students in the helping professions.

Billions of dollars are spent on stroke-related rehabilitation research and treatment techniques but most are not well communicated to the patient or caregiver. As a result, many stroke survivors are treated with outdated or ineffective therapies. Stronger After Stroke puts the power of recovery in the reader's hands by providing simple to follow instructions for reaching the highest possible level of healing. Written for stroke survivors, their caregivers, and loved ones, Stronger After Stroke presents a new and more effective treatment philosophy that is startling in its simplicity: stroke survivors recover by using the same learning techniques that anyone uses to master anything. Basic concepts are covered, including: Repetition of task-specific movements Proper scheduling of practice Challenges at each stage of recovery Setting goals and recognizing when they have been achieved The book covers the basic techniques that can catapult stroke survivors toward maximum recovery. Stronger After Stroke bridges the gap between stroke survivors and what they desperately need: easily understandable and scientifically accurate information on how to achieve optimal rehabilitation.

This scholarly book focuses on stroke in Africa. Stroke is a leading cause of disability among adults of all ages, contributing significantly to health care costs related to long term implications, particularly if rehabilitation is sub-optimal. Given the burden of stroke in Africa, there is a need for a book that focuses on functioning African stroke survivors and the implications for rehabilitation within the African context. In addition, there is a need to progress with contextualised, person-centred, evidence-based guidance for the rehabilitation of people with stroke in Africa, thereby enabling them to lead socially and economically meaningful lives. The research incorporated in the book used a range of primary and secondary methodological approaches (scoping reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, descriptive studies, surveys, health economics, and clinical practice guideline methodology) to shed new insights into African-centred issues and strategies to optimise function post-stroke.