“When one door closes, another opens,” former CBS The Early Show weatherman/anchor Mark McEwen tells The Detroit News‘ Kimberly Hayes Taylor. “The first part of my life was TV and radio, the second part is helping people overcome this malady of strokes. I can still talk. I give speeches, I tell people it’s hard, but you do the work. You can come back.”
McEwen’s new book, Change in the Weather: Life After Stroke, comes out tomorrow. It tells the story of his recovery after surviving a stroke in November of 2005 while on an airplane. “I couldn’t talk, couldn’t swallow,” he says. “I had to learn to walk again.”
He’s also had to switch from being right-handed, and use his left hand instead to write. “You need to be stubborn if you mean to make yourself whole following a stroke,” says McEwen.
McEwen says he wants others to learn from his experience by never taking life for granted. “You can be here today and gone tomorrow. You think you’re invulnerable and you’ll be here forever. Things happen to other people, they don’t happen to you. I’m here to say they can happen to you. I don’t wish that on anyone.
“But if it does happen to you, get back up. Life is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. These are the cards we are dealt, so let’s play cards.”