Stroke

A 5% Chance of Survival

By Ricky Monahan Brown

2019

First Published

4.15

Average Rating

220

Number of Pages

6H43M

Audio Length

The day after losing his job in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Ricky suffers a catastrophic haemorrhagic stroke. Fortunately, his girlfriend Beth is nearby. A few minutes later, the unconscious Ricky is wheeled into Brooklyn's Methodist Hospital with a 5% chance of survival, and worse odds of any type of good outcome. Beth begins an eight-week vigil, grabbing an occasional nap on a waiting room floor. Then Hurricane Sandy does to New York what the haemorrhage did to Ricky's brain. Amid the rubble of a battered city, brain injury, and lost jobs, Beth and Ricky start planning for a future together. After all, this is a love story.

Avg Rating

4.15

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

48%

4 STARS

26%

3 STARS

20%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Ricky Monahan Brown

Author · 2 books

Ricky Monahan Brown suffered a massive haemorrhagic stroke in 2012. Doctors gave him a one-in-twenty chance of a good outcome, where a 'good outcome' would be surviving in a non-vegetative, non-plegic state. The resulting survival memoir, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, became one of The Scotsman’s Scottish Nonfiction Books of 2019. Ricky’s short fiction has been widely published, including in 404 Ink literary magazine and most recently by Lemon Peel Press and Soor Ploom Press. Little Apples will be published in 2022 as part of Leamington Books’ Novella Express series. The live literature and music series he co-founded, Interrobang?! won the Saboteur Award for the Best Regular Spoken Word Night in Britain for 2017. A stroke awareness ambassador for the British Heart Foundation, Ricky lives in Edinburgh with his wife and their son.