Geri Strauss DiNardo says she is “16 years young with 49 years’ experience.” You may find her singing a tune and dancing or cheering loudly at football games. Although she can no longer use her left hand the way she once did and limps when she walks, she is so full of life, you might not even notice.

When Mrs. DiNardo was 43 years old, she attended a graduation party for the daughter of a friend.

A couple days prior, she had noticed tingling in her hands and feet as well as blindness in her right eye.

During the party, she found it difficult to swallow and choked on punch, which put her into a semi-comatose state.

She was not sure at the time, but all of those were symptoms of a paralyzing stroke caused by a damaged mitral valve in her heart from childhood rheumatic fever.

Before the stroke Mrs. DiNardo said she was very healthy, always maintained the same weight and never even took as much as an aspirin for a headache. The reality of the stroke was a complete shock.

“The doctors said I would never recover, according to their books,” she said. “They told me to pick out a plot and make preparations.”

Even though one doctor informed Mrs. DiNardo she would never walk or speak in complete sentences again, according to her test results, she was determined to prove to herself, her doctors and her family that she was capable of anything.

“All it takes is the desire to overcome,” she said.

There was a moment when she contemplated suicide. After her eldest son, whom she had not seen in years, traveled home to visit his mother, however, she realized she had a reason to strive for recovery.

She relearned how to speak by talking to herself in the mirror, how to walk with the help of parallel bars and eventually how to drive with the help of someone to remind her where she was and to warn her of red lights.

After rehabilitation and open heart surgery, Mrs. DiNardo discovered she was still sick. This time her gall bladder required surgery.

Although Mrs. DiNardo has nine children, managed a business, danced when she was younger, did some art for her own satisfaction and wanted to be a veterinarian as well as a writer, recovering from a stroke was just about the hardest thing she ever had to do, she said.

After her experience, she wanted to learn as much as possible about what had happened to her. “I fell over myself getting information,” she said. The problem, however was that books from other stroke survivors were so big and overwhelming.

A cardiologist recommended she write her own book and that he would help her get it published.