Door County Author Introduces Book for Patients and Caregivers

Madonna Siles shares her surprising successes, set-backs and discoveries from eight years of caregiving in her new book, Eureka! Memories and Motivations: A Strategy for Creating a Healing Home for the Stroke/Brain Injury Patient and Caregiver.

In Eureka!, the author discusses how her enthusiastic and creative, advertising-style approach may help motivate other stroke and brain injury survivors as well as their caregivers. Siles also explains why old-fashioned fun can be a powerful home-style brain rehabilitation tool.

Eureka! Memories and Motivations is the sequel to Brain, Heal Thyself (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2006), which details her friend Eve’s devastating brain aneurysm in 2001, initial recovery in hospitals and rehabilitation institutions and those first months of home caregiving.

In developing her home caregiving approach, Siles began with relaxation and meditation exercises to increase her intuitive communication abilities and sharpen her problem-solving skills. She incorporated concepts borrowed from the12-Step Program to handle crises, everyday frustrations and to control expectations. A student of the subconscious mind, Siles discovered practical applications for the theoretical concepts that the subconscious is the storehouse for all memories and the keeper of a person’s belief and motivation center. Drawing on her experience as a professional advertising copywriter, Siles applied her motivational communication skills to everyday situations and laced her patient communications with memorable, over-the-top emotional appeals.

Eureka! Memories and Motivations (Third Step Press, 2010), $17.95, is available at bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers. It is distributed by Small Press United/IPG. The book is also featured at Eurekamaster.com, where the author, a certified professional life coach, offers more help and support to fellow home caregivers of patients with brain disabilities. Caregiver Siles and survivor Eve currently reside in Sturgeon Bay.