STROKE: From Crisis to Victory

Comprehensive, easy-to-understand guidance to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of stroke--structured around the case of 47-year-old Andy Robertson, who suffered a serious stroke with some residual handicaps. With explanatory digressions, Lavin follows the Robertson family ordeal step-by-step from risk factors and portents (R. was overweight, had high blood pressure, and experienced episodic dizziness) through the unanticipated stroke itself--Robertson's wife found him unconscious in bed, after over 15 hours of sleep--to rehabilitation: in this case, speech, memory, and physical therapy. Affected readers can identify sufficiently with the Robertson case to make the medical detail more accessible than in the usual exposition. Lavin is upbeat yet realistic: with proper treatment, the lasting effects of a stroke can be negligible--but families may find they have to fight for what really should be standard in the treatment of stroke victims. (Many hospitals, he points out, are not nearly aggressive enough in preventing complications and beginning rehabilitation.) Stroke prevention and treatment have made considerable progress of late--which Lavin puts at the reader's fingertips.