Smiling Again: Coming Back to Life and Faith After Brain Surgery

“When I woke up. . .I quickly became aware that gliding through brain surgery recovery was not the big plan. Pain, paralysis, and single-sided deafness loomed ahead.”
Sally Stap was in the midst of a busy and successful 25-year career in Information Technology, juggling the usual concerns about job, daughters, and life, when the unthinkable happened: she was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, a benign but large brain tumor.
Written with a poignant blend of honesty, dry humor, faith, and inquisitiveness, Smiling Again is a story of the persistence of life and beauty in spite of pain. Sally recounts the shock of diagnosis, a long and painful recovery from invasive brain surgery, her eventual retirement due to disability, and ultimately contentment and acceptance of a new life journey.
For caregivers and survivors, Sally shares practical lessons and tips that will help you find your own signposts of faith along a treacherous but ultimately exhilarating journey, including:
- Be optimistic, but don’t discount possible outcomes just because they don’t sound fun.
- Allow yourself to grieve because there is a new you.  
- A sense of humor will give you a better temperament than frustration.
Whether you are a brain tumor survivor or are facing another experience that has brought you to the end of yourself, Sally’s experience shows that even when the worst happens, God is present and visible in sometimes unexpected ways. The future you may not be the same as the old you, but it can lead you in new and rewarding directions.

Sally Stap is a writer living in Michigan. She began her writing career after brain surgery and a long, ongoing recovery brought her Information Technology career to a halt. During her years as an IT consultant, Sally published magazine articles on outsourcing and pharmaceutical regulatory issues and spent a considerable part of her career interpreting information technology jargon for business organizations through written documentation and oral presentations. Struggling with head pain, facial paralysis, and single-sided deafness, she turned to writing to capture her experience. Her right brain, subservient to her left brain throughout her career, now regularly finds a voice through writing, as Sally strives to interpret her emotions and experiences through words.
Sally is a member of the Kalamazoo Christian Writer’s critique group and the Wordweavers and FaithWriters organizations near her home in Michigan.