Recovered or recovering: negotiating rehabilitation after stroke

The role of narrative discourse has been increasingly recognized as crucial to all partners involved in the rehabilitation process after acquired brain injury. Particularly within the family, narrative offers an experiential space for meaning-making. To better understand this joint meaning-making process, a narrative-discursive methodology was used to analyze a family's conversation that took place 1 year after the mother had a stroke. In one narrative, a particular incident was used to illustrate that the mother has recovered; in another narrative, the same event was used to demonstrate that the mother was still recovering. The 2 narratives are associated with different rights, responsibilities, and rehabilitation trajectories. To holistically understand the rehabilitation process, health professionals need to be aware of the often hidden narrative meaning-making processes that take place within the family.