Professor Cromer Learns to Read: A Couple's New Life after Brain Injury
by Janet M. Cromer

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Description

When a harrowing heart attack and cardiac arrest robbed Alan's brain of vital oxygen, he lost his abilities to read, write, walk, talk, think, and remember. In a flash, Alan went from being a successful professor of physics to a confused brain injury survivor struggling to relearn everything he once knew. So began seven years of intensive rehabilitation, re-creation, and redefining priorities and goals. Alan also faced the huge challenge of shaping a new identity and life.

Above all, Professor Cromer Learns to Read is a love story about a marriage that transforms and triumphs, but is never defeated by catastrophic illness. In a memoir brimming with information, Janet explores the mysteries and miracles of their new world from her perspective as Alan's wife, Interpreter of the World, and rehab partner. Alan shares his eloquent tour of the shattered and healing universe inside his brain as few people can.

Alan and Janet's story shows the reader that it is possible for a person with an injured brain to continue to heal and improve for years following the injury with the right treatment. It is possible for love to thrive and adapt to changing circumstances. It is possible to build a life filled with meaning and gusto even with a devastating illness.

The couple's process of gracefully and grudgingly accepting the roles of chronically ill person and caregiver will resonate with many families. The universality of their situation transcends age and diagnosis to salute the human spirit.

 Here is what prominent members of the brain injury and family caregiver communities are saying about the book:

"Captures so elegantly and emotionally the roller coaster ride of experiencing a brain injury. I found myself eager to turn each page, cheering on the little accomplishments and grieving with her at the very complicated loss and grief that accompanies this devastating life change. Cromer takes us beyond the injury and into recovery, which, while painstaking, never fails to help us understand the beauty and grace in little things and to cherish what we do have." 

Lee Woodruff, co-author of In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing, and author of Perfectly Imperfect.

 "With daring honesty, compassion, and intense love, Janet Cromer has given many readers a gift. Professor Cromer Learns to Read will serve anyone interested in the difficult journey of recovery after an acquired brain injury, understanding the huge commitment required of a family member in this recovery, and navigating and overcoming our healthcare and human service system. This book provides the details of what it takes to undertake the awesome roles of survivor and caregiver."
Marilyn Spivak, Co-Founder, Brain Injury Association of America

"Professor Cromer Learns to read is an intellectual and emotional road map for anyone who has, is currently, or may in the future navigate the swampy waters of caregiving for a loved one with a serious disability. It is the compelling story of love and struggle in the midst of illness, of strength and frailty if the human spirit looking straight into the eyes of the beast. A starkly honest and forthcoming account of the ups and downs of their lives following the transformation of Janet's husband by brain injury following a cardiac arrest. Extremely well-written, I could not put it down."
Mel Glenn, MD, Director of Out-Patient and Community Rehabilitation, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

"During the seven years of Alan Cromer's entry into the worlds of brain injury, dementia, and Parkinson's disease, his wife, an experienced psychiatric nurse, is there to observe and report upon the initial crisis in an airplane, the long rehab in which her professor husband learns once again to read and write, and his death at age seventy. She also observes the changes in herself as she adjusts to life as a caregiver in a new kind of marriage. "The original Alan was not coming back," so how to survive? Janet Cromer answers this question for herself and offers her strategies to others in her situation in this extensive examination of one well spouse's life."

Maggie Strong, Founder of the Well Spouse Association, author of Mainstay: For the Well Spouse of the Chronically Ill.

Janet Cromer has written a valuable, detailed account of the nitty gritty of caregiving for a spouse through four major progressive, destructive diseases from heart attack and accompanying brain injury to Parkinson's disease. An "insider" on two counts- as a professional, psychiatric nurse and therapist, and as a spousal caregiver- she writes from both points of view, of how the ravages of her husband's illness took over his life; and of how as his caregiver, she went through rolling grief (repeated mourning) and some very difficult readjustments in their relationship and intimacy. This is a book that works on two levels: for the professional caregiver and spousal caregiver. For the former, it cannot but help to increase the empathy for, and admiration of the spousal caregiver supporting their loved one. As for the latter, as a former spousal caregiver, her descriptions of her ambivalent emotions, joys and travails, ring absolutely true.

Richard Anderson, Board and Executive Committee Member; Immediate Past President, Well Spouse Association