As the title suggests, this is the true story of Antonio Iannella’s brush with death when at the young age of thirty-eight, he had a stroke while on a family holiday.

The story of his recovery is detailed and gives the reader a genuine idea of what having a stroke is like but more importantly what happens in the recovery stage.

He details the moments before and after the stroke and the trauma of being in a foreign country dealing with a language barrier as if what happened wasn’t enough to contend with. As you could imagine those obstacles would cause inordinate stress.

Taking us behind the scenes, Iannella shows us in detail the remarkable people who worked on his recovery. He had been unable to walk, could barely talk and effectively paralysed from the neck down. The occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech pathologists as well as the rest of the medical doctors and nurses were numerous but integral to his recovery. It gave me a thorough appreciation of the amazing people in our medical system.

This is a book of enlightenment which is also filled with useful information and inspiration. Iannella doesn’t take himself too seriously either as there are some quite genuine laugh-out loud bits as he nicknames his helpers, and makes light of some of the more serious issues he faces.

“Wrapped like a burrito, I was suspended above my bed. … hanging mid-air like an Italian salami my dad would tie to the rafters.”

There are metaphors for just about everything and maybe a bit too many but sometimes they’re needed to lighten the darkness of his horrendous experience.

It’s a well written and hopeful story. Give this one a go.