You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
C. C. Dahlberg and J. Jaffe: Stroke: A Doctor's Personal Story of His Recovery
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.
PERMIT ME THE LIBERTY of beginning with my conclusion. This is a book that will prove of interest and value to many readers. There are friends and colleagues who will be better informed as to the facts of Clay Dahlberg's illness, his progress toward recovery and where he is now. And there are people in many different disciplines, struggling to care for and work with stroke patients, who will come away with a clearer view of the process from the inside. There are recovered stroke patients themselves, now numbering more than two million, who will resonate to Clay's struggle to regain his health. There are generations of medical students, internes and residents who can learn something about the human dimensions of this illness which, because it is so common, lacks some of the esoteric appeal that the more exotic illnesses have for the neophyte in medicine. Finally, there is the general public who will respond with appreciation and interest to the candidly self-disclosing style of Clay and to Joe's lucid explanatory chapters dealing with the structure of language and the nature of aphasic disturbances.
Having spent five years working with stroke patients and having known more than three hundred of them I have an abiding interest in the changes they experience and the way that they cope with them. Pursuant with that interest I have sought out many personal accounts. In recent years I have read several such reports but never thought any would come up to the level of frankness, insight and poignancy of Eric Hodgins' Episode: The Story of an Accident Inside My Head. This book by Clay Dahlberg and Joseph Jaffe, although