Avrel Seale – författare

Most would not expect a book about a stroke to be entertaining, but this memoir will force you to laugh through a tragedy, then cry, then laugh again.Avrel Seale was fifty, did not smoke or drink, had low blood pressure, and had hiked more than two hundred miles the year a stroke nearly ended his life. In an instant, he was teleported into the body of an old man - unbalanced, shaky, spastic, and half-paralyzed. Overnight, he was plunged into a world of brain surgeons, nurses, insurance case managers, and an abundance of therapists.Beginning three weeks before his stroke to set the stage, Seale leads us through the harrowing day of his stroke and emergency brain surgery with minute-by-minute intensity. We then follow him through ICU, a rehab hospital, and a neuro-recovery group-living center, where we meet a memorable cast of other stroke survivors and also those recovering from auto accidents and gunshots. Finally home, Seale leads us through a new life of firsts, including returning to work, to driving, to playing guitar, to camping, and even to writing a book - all with one hand.What emerges from his humor ('elegant but devastating') is a revealing critique of the hospital experience, the insurance industry, and rehab culture. And his nothing-off-the-table quest for recovery shows both the sobering struggles and inspiring possibilities of life after a stroke in twenty-first century America.

Writer and weekend outdoorsman Avrel Seale had always dreamed of boating down a river to the sea, but he had never found the right boat, the right river, or the right opportunity. Then, at age fifty, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage, depriving him of the use of one arm. But, as he writes, “dreams are stubborn things,” and less than two years after his stroke, he was again mulling such a trip. With the recruitment of a lifelong friend and the purchase of a two-person pedal kayak, he set out to journey down the Nueces River in South Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.The resulting memoir is a study in perseverance and problem solving, set against the backdrop of an underappreciated river. Seale must overcome numerous physical, mechanical, and logistical challenges even to get to the launch. Then he and Wade Walker set out to descend the Nueces, once considered by Mexico to be its border with the United States. Today, the Nueces (Spanish for nuts) is a twisting ribbon of prehistoric beauty, lush and wild, secretly flowing just out of view of the cotton towns, truck stops, and wind farms that line the highways of Texas’s coastal plains.