At a Stroke: Diary of a Recovery
Stephen Trombley
language
(Worldview Pictures, Sept. 17, 2018)
In 2017, at the age of 62, the writer and film-maker Stephen Trombley left his native America for a simpler life in rural France. He found a little place in the southwest, but after only five months he was struck down by a stroke that left his right arm paralyzed and his brains scrambled. While he was in hospital his relationship failed. Alone, broke, and with only a schoolboy’s grasp of the language, Trombley found himself completely dependent on the French medical system. As soon as he was able, Trombley started keeping a diary, recording his long and painful journey from the land of the well to the land of the disabled and, he hoped, back again. The result is a candid, vivid, often darkly funny and ultimately uplifting account of medical catastrophe and survival far from home. Essential reading for anyone who has had a stroke, or who lives with someone recovering from a stroke, it is a classic of its kind.