Eureka! A Strategy for Creating a Healing Home for the Stroke / Brain Injury Patient and Caregiver

PRLog (Press Release) - Feb 21, 2010 -
One sunny October afternoon, 56-yr.old Eve was knocked to her knees by a blinding, stabbing pain that shot through her head. After two emergency brain surgeries in the next 48 hours, it appeared that Eve had survived her near-fatal brain hemorrhage. For the next six months, Eve's health insurance covered most of her physical, cognitive, speech and emotional rehabilitation therapy in various hospitals and institutions. However, the medical/insurance complex did very little to teach her friend, Madonna Siles, how to be a 24/7 home caregiver and brain rehabilitator for Eve.

     When the insurance ran out and minimally functional Eve came home, the overwhelmed caregiver wanted to run away. No one had given Siles much hope that she could do anything to help Eve. Frustrated and depressed, the lonely caregiver began a daily self-help program to control her fear and stress. Surprisingly, this process helped the patient’s recovery, too.

     Siles shares her successes, set-backs and discoveries from eight years of caregiving Eve in her new book, Eureka! Memories and Motivations.

     In developing her home caregiving approach, Siles began with relaxation and meditation exercises to increase her intuitive communication abilities  and sharpen her problem-solving skills. She incorporated concepts borrowed from the12-Step Program to handle crises, everyday frustrations and to control expectations. A student of the subconscious mind, Siles discovered practical applications for the theoretical concepts that the subconscious is the storehouse for all memories and the keeper of a person’s belief and motivation center. Drawing on her experience as a professional advertising copywriter, Siles applied her motivational communication skills to everyday situations and laced her patient communications with memorable, over-the-top emotional appeals.

In Eureka!, the author discusses how her enthusiastic and creative, advertising-style approach may help motivate other stroke and brain injury patients as well as their caregivers. Siles also explains why old-fashioned fun can be a powerful home-style brain rehabilitation tool.

     According to Lawrence J. Beuret, M.D., “Eureka! has opened the portal to the next level of rehabilitation — a level only the caregiver with intimate knowledge of the patient can provide.”

     Eureka! Memories and Motivations is the sequel to Brain, Heal Thyself (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2006), which details Eve’s devastating brain attack in 2001, initial recovery in hospitals and rehabilitation institutions and those first months of home caregiving.

     Eureka! Memories and Motivations (Third Step Press, 2010), $17.95, is available at bookstores, Amazon and other online retailers. The book is also featured at EurekaMaster.com, where the author, a certified professional life coach, offers more help and support to other home caregivers of patients with brain disabilities.