/ Personal Health

By HARRIET GROSS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Stroke! Shock! And then ... what? For Berenice Kleiman, strength to battle the beast that attacked her husband without warning almost five years ago.

Herb Kleiman survived his debilitating stroke, but "our world today is totally unrelated to the past," Mrs. Kleiman writes in her account of their journey.

"I have lost—temporarily or permanently—my mate, best friend, and business partner."

In the painful years since, "I've driven my husband and myself in a continuing effort to further his recovery. The process seems frustrating, agonizingly slow, and sometimes beyond our capabilities. But we keep going because the alternatives are worse."

Mrs. Kleiman's account starts with a timeline: from July 14, 2001, the day of Herb's stroke and hospital admission, to completion of the book's first draft almost exactly three years later.

In the brief, readable chapters that follow, virtually everything is covered, from stabilization of a stroke victim's initial medical condition to at-home nightmares of feeding and toilet functions, from dollar costs to the high price paid by the caregiver. Every chapter ends with "Lessons Learned," full of honest, practical advice. The last chapter concludes: "Survival builds on hope. You can't give up. And recovery requires a cosmos. A vast community of resources, love and support buoy our own small efforts."

Herb Kleiman was a healthy 66 when he suffered the stroke. He and Berenice had been married almost 40 years, ran their own marketing-public-relations firm, had a happy home life, children and grandchildren.

A mini-album of family pictures humanizes the situation and makes it even more real. "Was it worth the time and trouble to not 'warehouse' me?" Herb asks, in one of many comments his wife drops in text, in bold type so they can't be missed.

Mrs. Kleiman made the decision to bring her husband home to recover. At first he was passive, sometimes even hostile. But finally there came a breakthrough. This was his birthday message more than two years after his stroke:

"Life changed much for you, too, on July 14, 2001. It was abrupt and drastic, about as sharp as you could handle without losing your own sanity. Let's face it, I'll never be the same again.... But you have responded with loving kindness and taken it upon yourself to be my continuing caretaker. Another woman might have committed me to an institution....You chose to take on the much more difficult task of caring for me completely."

And she responds, to Herb and to readers: "Life will never again be the same as it was before the stroke, but I don't see my husband as less of a man than he was before."

One Stroke, Two Survivors

The Incredible Journey of Berenice and Herb Kleiman

Berenice Kleiman, with comments by Herb Kleiman

Cleveland Clinic Press, $24.95