Closure After Stroke Book
My Playbook for Navigating a New Roadmap for Recovery
You Can Preorder Your Copy Now on Amazon!
đşđ¸ Kindle Available July 4th
Print Editions Paperback | Hardcover September 28th
Audiobook (December)-Bonus Audio Chapters Live Now on Substack!
Introduction
by the Author of the Amazon Best Seller Body in Balance
David Dansereau, MSPT,CAPS
Every 40 seconds in the United States, a life is thrown completely out of balance by a stroke. I know this terrifying feeling intimately, because it has happened to meânot just once, but twice (and perhaps even a third time, but youâll have to read the book).
My journey with stroke began long before I had the clinical vocabulary to understand it. At just 17 years old, while running a fast-moving power-play drill on the ice, I crashed into the hockey boards and temporarily lost all feeling and movement on the left side of my body. My coaches dismissed it as a âpinched nerve,â and because I was a young athlete desperate to keep playing, I ignored it too. It wasnât until much later that I realized I had experienced a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA)âa massive, missed warning sign.
Fast forward to the fall of 2006. At 39 years old, I was working full-time as a physical therapist, managing my own business, married and busy raising three young children under the age of seven. I woke up one morning with a blistering, tsunami-like headache. My left leg went numb, my foot began dragging, and as I reached for the milk in the kitchen, my hand simply dropped it.
I was having a major stroke caused by a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), a hidden hole in my heart.
In an instant, I went from being a healthcare provider to a patient trapped in the very system I worked in. Before that morning, walking was something I never consciously thought about; suddenly, I had to use a metronome in my head just to sequence my gait, terrified of falling while pushing my young kids in their stroller. I was thrust into a frightening âgrey areaâ of care. Discharged with no clear plan to fix my heart defect, debilitating headaches and brain fog, impaired gait and balance, no recovery roadmap or exercise guidelines, struggling to balance my family, my business, my finances, and my own mental health and rehabilitation. I had hit rock bottom.
My unique lived experience as a young survivor and a father, combined with my professional background as a Licensed Physical Therapist and nutritionist, opened my eyes to a devastating reality: our current healthcare system is fundamentally broken when it comes to long-term stroke care. Traditional rehabilitation is treated as a temporary clinical episode. Survivors are typically given a few weeks or months of therapy before insurance mandates run out and they are told they have reached a âplateauâ.
Without ongoing support, structured care, or a continued care pathway plan, survivors experience what I call the âSlinky Effectââan avoidable, devastating backward slide where they lose the hard-won physical progress they made in the clinic.
In 2026, we are STILL sending patients home with missing ingredients and forgotten recipes, leaving them to fall into a black hole of despair or off the dreaded ârehab cliffâ upon discharge.
The magnitude of this problem is escalating. Globally, strokes in adults under 50 have increased by 40-70% in recent decades. Yet, the resources to support this growing demographic of young survivors are dangerously anemic. Through my advocacy work as a patient stakeholder in research with volunteer organizations like PCORI, Tufts Medical Center, Mass General Hospital, the SAYA Consortium (Stroke and Young Adult), the FDA, the American Heart and Stroke Association, Tedyâs Team and Abbott HeartMatesâas well as co-founding the PFO Research Foundation, EnableUs and the Know Stroke PodcastâI have fought to ensure the patient voice is no longer ignored.
In addition, I conducted a survey of Stroke Support Organizations (SSOs), alongside over 200 patient interviews. The results were clear and heartbreaking: these volunteer-led SSOs are a critical lifeline for survivors, but they are struggling financially, and the community need for long-term physical, vocational and mental health support is greater than ever.
This need is not currently being met by the American Heart and Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) and a sustainable funding plan and new national support structure for uniting the survivor community is needed and overdue.
It is time to rethink stroke care. We need to move beyond simply talking about change and actually offer survivors and stroke support organizations agency and a playbook to break down care silos and scale coordinated grassroots service efforts.
To truly fix this broken system, this playbook focuses on treating the entire continuum of care, starting upstream with primary prevention. The reality is that roughly 80% of all strokes are preventable. Yet, we completely fail to provide early education and fund support in our school systems. When I had my stroke, I was deeply frustrated by the lack of resources available to teach my own kids about what was happening to their dad in a non-threatening, age-appropriate way. That is why I launched the Bright Minds initiative. By bringing stroke awareness directly into schools, we can equip the next generation with the knowledge to recognize warning signs and understand brain and body health long before a crisis occurs.
We must also overhaul our downstream aftercare. Currently, our medical system discharges patients with a handful of medications but absolutely no plan for ongoing remote risk factor monitoring or long term mobility decline and fall risk surveillance. We cannot expect survivors to thrive without structured behavior change and rehabilitation interventions post-discharge.
And can we talk about nutrition and how we can directly and immediately improve recovery and long term brain resilience? I ask, why some almost 20 years after my stroke are we still sending stroke survivors home without a plan on how to complement their physical recovery beginning with their forks. How we are fueling our brains and bodies to heal and recover between therapy sessions is still not on many discharge planning menus for stroke. This is as an essential health pillar as water is to life that needs to be introduced for lasting secondary prevention beyond the latest wonder pill breakthrough. Iâve proven in my own practice and group courses, time and again, proper fuel can help survivors achieve balance.
That is why I have built the principles of my Achieve Balance course directly into this playbook. I want to give you a clear roadmap to take charge of your health starting with âyour whyâ, then by balancing âEnergy Inâ with âEnergy Outâ and actively managing vital biometrics like your rest and recovery, blood pressure, blood sugar, lipid levels and through functional mobility scores to really know stroke risks and when your bodyâs check engine light is on. You canât manage what you arenât measuring and we simply arenât moving the needle fast enough in this area of empowering behavior change with biometric data despite all the technology being readily affordable.
If stroke recovery is a marathon and not a sprint, we need to understand how to properly train and fuel for a marathon and Iâll share all my evidence based best training tips with you in my playbook and bonus online learning community at Know Stroke.
Beyond behavior change, Closure After Stroke outlines my proposed blueprint for the future of physical rehabilitation: a technology-enabled, home-based care model. By utilizing wearable technology, advanced digital therapeutics like rhythmic auditory stimulation (music as medicine) and other evidence based emerging technologies paired with remote monitoring, we can safely bring rehabilitation into the living room and truly give the stroke survivor a home field advantage.
This home-first ecosystem dismantles the myth of the recovery plateau, allowing survivors to achieve the volume of meaningful repetitions required to truly rewire the brain long after clinic doors close.
But beyond handing off a clinical playbook, there is a deeper, much more urgent reason why I had to write this book now. It is a reality that forces you to step back and think about what truly matters in this life: the profound impact of stroke on our long-term brain health and cognition. The unspoken truth is that every survivor lives with a ticking âbrain clockâ. This clock not only puts us at a higher risk of secondary events after our first stroke, but it also means we face a significantly higher risk of cognitive deficits as we ageâincluding developing dementia and Alzheimerâs at rates far above the general population.
Our brainâs health is not forever. I knew I needed to write this before my own brain clock is interrupted, so that I can preserve my memories, share the lessons that shaped my recovery, and properly thank the people who saved me.
First, I write to pay tribute to my own father, who lost his life to a brain bleed while fiercely fighting cancer. He left me with a foundational legacy that became my anchor: to always Keep the Faith, believe in mankind and treat people well. I pulled immense strength from his memory during the darkest days of my own rehabilitation, and his spirit lives on in this work. I also present this work to honor my three childrenâwho were all under the age of seven when my stroke turned our world upside down. They also never met their grandfather, so through sharing my memories and lessons and my own fatherâs words in my writing I can pass along and honor his life.
I have followed his advice in sharing my playbook because as he always told me âwhen you see something is broken, step up and fix itâ. Stroke care is broken, and as the son of a bricklayer, Iâm handing off a solid level foundation to fix it in my playbook. It will take a team to do this moving Together Forward.
This book is also to share the stories of the incredible community of stroke survivors, care partners, and support organizations who I am grateful for and support their hard work. I will spotlight their efforts and founder stories, as they have graciously shared their missions with me for this book. Many have also been guests on our podcast. Youâll also be meeting many stroke survivors and hear their inspiring words along with their why, their lessons learned and the recipes and songs that shaped their recoveries as well. The impeccable timing in which I met each one of them in various stages of my healing journey is remarkable.
Finally, this playbook is a profound tribute to my wife, Lisa. She is, and always will be my âWhyâ, my âTrue Northâ, my âStroke Heroâ, my familyâs MVP Goaltender for having blocked so many shots that tried to stop us. She has stood by my side every step of the way on this long journey to finally bring closure to stroke.
Recovery is a lifelong marathon, not a sprint. My goal with this book is to transform you from a passive recipient of a broken medical system into discovering the ingredients and strength within to take charge and become the active âmaster chefâ of your own recovery recipe. No matter where you are on your readiness staircase or climb towards your desired recovery goals, it is my hope that this playbook empowers you to to start or perhaps resume your climb to believe in your health again, maintain your momentum, and realize your ultimate potential.
Every stroke survivor has a story. You are the author of your own book. Letâs turn the page together.
I BELIEVE in YOU and I canât wait to hear your story!
Until we connect in person, stay well, keep the faith and keep moving forward!
Cheers,
David Dansereau, MSPT,CAPS
Be sure to follow along on the book launch and virtual book tour all month long heading into release day đşđ¸(July 4th) on Substack by subscribing below:
If you would like to get on my advanced reader copy list please restack this post and message me below and Iâll send you these details. Thank you!