Kristin Tracy Porter

Kristin Tracy Porter was a twenty-two-year-old college senior with graduation in sight and her future mapped out in her planner. That night, a malformation she never knew she had ruptured deep in her brainstem. Doctors told her family she had about five minutes to live.

She survived, locked inside a body that could not move or speak. Her first word, spelled out one hand squeeze at a time on her sister's alphabet chart, was "hairball." A neurologist told her she would never walk again and would be institutionalized for life. Instead, she earned two master's degrees, built a career in college disability services, and, twenty-one years after the stroke, ran her first 5K.

After the Shatter: Reshaping the Face of Healing (Gift an Author Publishing) follows her through rehabilitation, graduate school, the loss of two close friends, a stem cell treatment that seemed to work until it didn't, and an unexpected turn toward faith and holistic healing, in chapters with titles like "Miracle My Ass" and "Needles, Nuns, and a Little Woo-Woo."

"This is not about despair, and it is not about triumph neatly tied in a bow," Porter writes. "It is about interruption."

The book arrives one week before World Stroke Day on October 29. According to the CDC, someone in the United States has a stroke every 40 seconds. Porter, who holds a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling, is available for interviews on stroke at any age, disability and dignity, perfectionism, faith, and building a full life after the plan changes.