After The Crash: What No One Tells You About Life After a Traumatic Brain Injury

She knows it all too well because she's dealt with it herself.

But what's amazing about her is well, the knowledge that she brings to help you.

So again, if you are somebody who has suffered your own traumatic brain injury or know somebody who has, today is a conversation that you don't want to miss.

This is episode 393 of Grit Grace and Inspiration.

I'm of course your host, Kevin Lowe.

And my friend, I'm excited you're here.

I'm excited for us to dive into a really amazing conversation with a truly amazing woman.

Here is my interview with Kelly Tuttle.

What's going on, and welcome back to Great Race of Inspiration.

Today I have the pleasure of being in the studio with none other than Pelly Huddle.

Kelly, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_04: Hello, Kevin, and thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I am so excited to uh for us to get to sit down together and hear about not only your story, but honestly, I guess just more so your wisdom that you have to share on on this major topic of traumatic brain injury.

Before we get diving into your accident, your traumatic brain injury, I would love to kind of start things off to get to understand kind of where you were at in life before the accident.

Like what were you doing?

What was life like for you?

And we'll kind of start from there.

SPEAKER_04: Okay.

Before the crash, I was extremely active and busy person.

I had a ton of energy.

I annoyed people around me with my energy.

And I was studying martial arts.

I was training multiple nights a week, a couple hours at a time.

On Fridays, I was teaching a women's beginner Brazilian jujitsu class.

I was involved in my profession.

I in the past was like the president of the Sacramento Nurse Practitioners Association, which is a branch off the California Association of Nurse Practitioners, was really involved with that.

I had an over-hour commute to work, would put in an eight-hour day, drive home, and either do something for my profession or study martial arts or meet friends for dinner and then go home and enjoy a conversation with my family and go to sleep and do it all again.

I was constantly on the go.

Every weekend was booked with doing things with family and friends and travel.

So yeah, that was me before.

Now I'm a sloth.

SPEAKER_00: So we went from a cheetah to a sloth if we're gonna stick with animals.

Yes.

Oh my goodness.

I love, I love your sense of humor.

It is the best.

So so if that was life before, what happened?

Talk me through kind of the events that when your accident and kind of when was this, you know, in terms of timeline in your life, when this accident occurred and exactly what what happened.

SPEAKER_04: So I was driving home after work, was heading to my cry class because I was in tense training to test for my third-degree black belt.

And on the way home, a driver pulled out in front of me and I T-boned the car.

And so there was shattering glass everywhere, the crunch of thunderous metal, people coming out of their house to see what was going on.

Ambulance was called, my car was smoking, and I thought, I can shake this off.

I'll just shake this off.

I'll be better in a couple weeks and I'll just go on with life.

And I didn't go to the emergency room, which I should have.

So, anybody listening, go to the emergency room.

Don't do as Kelly did.

And I went back to work the next day, and my colleagues who are registered nurses and nurse practitioners were quick to identify that I wasn't speaking right, uh, wasn't acting right, and said made me commit to seeing my general practitioner the next day.

And I saw my general practitioner, I was diagnosed with a concussion and told, and basically left feeling I'd be okay after two weeks, took a couple weeks off from work.

After that, I tried to get back into life and really was pushing the martial arts training, going to work.

I was dying of headaches, fatigue, irritability.

I was grumpy, saying things that I normally wouldn't say, said the F-word a lot.

And then one day on my way home, I fell asleep at the wheel, Kevin.

SPEAKER_00: Oh no.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

And I woke up just in as my car bounced off the road just in time to slam the brakes before my car ran into a tree.

SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04: Yes.

And so my cuss brain thought, well, what we'll do is we'll not tell the doctor, we'll just keep going on with life and just take a nap halfway in between home.

I mean, in your in my car.

SPEAKER_00: Totally reasonable.

SPEAKER_04: So bad.

So bad.

Do not support sleeping in your car on the side of the road.

That was how my brain was working.

And so then I went to lunch and met up with a colleague.

And fortunately, she was a nurse practitioner and she worked in neurology at the time.

I was a nurse practitioner working in cardiology at the time.

unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_04: And she was curious about my recovery because she knew I'd had a concussion.

And so I mentioned, yeah, I fell asleep at the wheel the other day.

And she's like, What?

And I'm like, yeah.

And so now I just take a nap in between work and home.

And she's like, wait a minute.

She's like, that is not right.

And then she just rattled off all these things I needed to do.

I hadn't had a brain scan.

I hadn't been referred to a neurologist, and I hadn't seen a physical medicine and rehab doctor or phasidrist.

So I promised that I would do those things.

And so I got a brain CT and it was normal.

There was nothing.

I saw a neurologist, and honestly, the visit wasn't very helpful.

But when I saw a physical medicine rehab doctor, now they take care of people with brain injuries and spine injuries.

And so they're the person you want to see if you have a brain injury.

And once I saw that doctor, she knew right away that I had diffuse axion injury.

And that's what happens when the uh neurons, the cell, the brain cells in your brain, they have little connecting tendrils to each other.

And when you have a concussion, it those get severed.

And when that those are severed, then the cells die, and that part of your brain stops working.

And you have a lot of neuroinflammation and cascade of biochemicry stuff going on.

So after seeing her, she took me off work for three months, and I did speech therapy, physical therapy, neurophysical therapy, and I just started to get onto the right road of recovery.

Because before that, I was on the wrong road.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: Obviously.

I fell asleep on it.

SPEAKER_00: Obviously.

Yes.

Wow.

So Kelly, I'm curious.

So going back to the accident itself, so did you not sustain any like physical injuries?

SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah, I did.

I had uh, you know, tip, I had a uh bruise and swelling on my forehead from the release of the airbags.

I had chest contusion from the seatbelt in the airbags.

I had a wrist injury.

The airbags had ripped open my right wrist a little bit, and I had a huge swelling and burn rash.

And then I had lower back, hip, and knee pain because I slammed on my brakes and that and I was standing on my brake pretty much when the impact happened.

But fortunately, I didn't break anything, just a lot of muscle and ligament strain.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So besides for the Oh, and whiplash.

Whiplash.

SPEAKER_04: Horrible whiplash.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Now, in terms of your head, though, it didn't hit anything besides for the airbag.

SPEAKER_04: Correct, correct.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_04: And the re so this is how it happens.

The brain is not fixed in the skull.

It floats a little bit.

And so when the body or the head is moving along and is suddenly struck or stopped, so that's called acceleration-deceleration.

The brain inside your head actually slams into the front of your skull and then slams into the back of your skull and goes back and forth.

And that's how the injury and the damage occurs.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

You know, because it's, I mean, the injury, I mean, the the accident itself, I mean, you think of, I mean, it wasn't like you, I don't know, rolled the car.

I mean, basically, you had quote unquote minor injuries, we could say, for a massive car accident.

And yet what has us talking today is about an injury that you didn't even realize you had until later on, which is kind of fascinating.

SPEAKER_04: Exactly.

And that is something that does happen to brain injury survivors.

So usually when someone gets a concussion, they also will have another injury.

Like they will fall down the stairs and break their arm or their leg or in a car accident like my own, they'll have really bad whiplash.

Whiplash is a good, if you have whiplash, that's a good suggestion that you also have a concussion.

And myself, I could attest to my biggest focus is getting my injuries healed and then my neck.

And you really don't know the kind of the impact of the concussion is going to have on you until you really get back into life.

And that could be, you know, if if you are a stay-at-home parent, being home alone with the children and managing getting to school on time, staying on top of appointments and things like that.

Or it could be the person who returns to work and you start using your brain where you have to fix things or pay attention during a chaotic environment that you're used to working in.

And that's when the symptoms kind of really blow up and be and come into the picture.

Because people go back to work and they're like, I can't focus, I don't have motivation, I'm irritable, I'm snapping at people, I'm forgetting things, my speech is slurring, the lights are too bright, the sounds are too loud.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, what is the difference, I guess, between somebody having a concussion and somebody having a traumatic brain injury?

SPEAKER_04: It's that they're interchangeable.

A concussion is a brain injury.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Okay, then.

I mean, we hear concussion all the time, but when you think of it in terms of traumatic brain injury, you kind of realize that it's the severity of a concussion.

SPEAKER_04: Exactly.

Exactly.

And like some people will say, Well, I have brain fog.

Well, that's brain damage.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: Brain's not working, it's been damaged.

So there are some terms that we do use that kind of soften the blow of what has actually happened.

Sometimes I'll use the term head injury because sometimes people aren't ready to hear that they have a brain injury.

But the the terms in clinical are interchangeable.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, how long after the accident did they finally diagnose you with having a traumatic brain injury?

SPEAKER_04: I wasn't told I had a traumatic brain injury until I was six months out.

SPEAKER_03: Wow.

SPEAKER_04: And that's really bad.

You shouldn't allow a patient to go out six months struggling without letting them know what's going on and setting them up for supportive strategies and care.

SPEAKER_00: And and I guess especially when I think of it is the fact that I mean, you were already in the medical field.

I mean, in the fact of, is that something that's common for people to have go undiagnosed for a long period of time, or is that more of a rare thing?

SPEAKER_04: I would hope that it is rare, but I think it's more common than rare.

And the reason why is there's a lot of misunderstanding about brain injury in the medical community and in the non-medical community, you know, community, the like you know, people who are not in healthcare.

Even when I worked in cardiology, I was aware of strokes and traumatic brain injuries.

But, you know, when you think of that, you think of the severe cases, right?

You don't think of the mild case, the mild traumatic brain injury that could be just as impactful on somebody's life as a severe brain injury.

And then the other thing too that I learned which was interesting, is that it there's a new specialty in medicine that is brain injury, let's see, or I should say it's concussion medicine, it's brain injury medicine.

And these are physical medicine and rehab doctors that are doing extra training to specialize in concussion and traumatic brain injury.

And this is like less than five years that this has been kind of going on.

So it is unfortunate that a a lot of people who do have concussions or traumatic brain injuries will not be diagnosed because there just isn't that knowledge out there on the front lines of healthcare.

And so unfortunately, you may run into a provider that says, Oh, you should be better in two weeks, and and you're not, and they say, Well, that's not really your concussion, that's your anxiety.

Or, well, you know, it's been two years, you're not gonna get any better.

This this is what you have to get used to.

And now all that stuff's not true.

But if you unless you're lucky and you run into someone like me who's like passionate about brain injuries, you're not gonna get the right information.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

So when you finally got the diagnosis, how did things change for you at that point in terms of maybe treatment or just life in general?

What happened at that point?

SPEAKER_04: Well, I realized that I wasn't crazy.

I thought I was going crazy.

I was like, I would be doing my martial arts and I would like tell my foot to move forward and it would step back.

I was irritable and I was talking over people in conversation and argumentative and pushing my point, which I never normally wouldn't do.

I lost myself of inner peace.

And so once I figured out it was because I had a brain injury, I was like, oh, oh, okay.

Yeah, not nuts.

It's because my brain is broken.

And so then my communication with the people around me changed.

It's like whenever I got grumpy or snapped or whatever, I'd go, I would be able to say, Oh, I'm sorry, that was my brain talking, not me.

Um can I just have a moment to, you know, focus on whatever I was trying to do?

Yeah, yeah.

So it makes a big, big difference.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So what did you end up doing as far as treatment to try to help this?

And and I and I guess in with that question is what kind of treatments are available for people?

SPEAKER_04: If you're having cognitive symptoms or speech symptoms, like you're having difficulty with planning, with focusing, learning, reading, or finding your words, you need a referral to a speech therapist.

If you have any other injuries, such as whiplash, you need a referral to physical therapy because if your whiplash isn't taken care of, it's gonna be difficult to control your headaches, your post-concussive headaches, and you're gonna feel off balance, and that could be put you at risk for another fall.

The other thing is to have your eyes checked.

So start off with an optometrist, they just to see if your prescription has changed, and that's just the issue because you can have blurry vision, you can have double vision, you could have issues with difficulty reading.

And if your optometry visit is that you're told your eyes are fine then, and you're having double vision or eye pain or anything like that, you need to see an ophthalmologist, and you do need a referral to see an ophthalmologist.

And then if you're still struggling, you're feeling off balance, you're having difficulty with light sensitivity, difficulty with reading, you're not able to read off the laptop as long as you used to before your head injury, then consider seeing a behavioral optometrist, and they can look and see how your eyes are functioning together and how they're communicating with your brain.

Those are some of the things that I think of off the top of my head.

Now, things that you can do independently are start journaling.

I'm a big proponent of journaling because it'll help you get figure out what your symptoms are and what makes them better and what makes them worse.

So you can limit the things that make them worse.

So, say you have sound sensitivity, you can use noise counseling, earbuds, or headphones to help you concentrate and focus better at work.

And then I also recommend an anti-inflammatory nutrition and exercise.

You don't want to seclude yourself in a dark room.

You can do that for the first 48 hours, but after that, you should start getting out, moving around, because the more you exercise, the better the brain is able to clear out the dead cells and start rebuilding new connective highways in your brain.

And then I also recommend practicing mindfulness.

After a head injury, a lot of people get stuck in their heads and they're alone in their heads with ruminating thoughts and negative thoughts and feelings of failure and worthlessness, loneliness.

And mindfulness will help you get out of your head and into the present moment, and that helps with the healing too.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Now, in terms of things like what you described of like being at karate training, and like you try to kick your foot forward and it goes backwards, or you spontaneously busting out with the F-word.

Like what helps with that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_04: So exercise will help the brain and the body reconnect over time.

So definitely moving is and and the moving can just be walking.

SPEAKER_03: Okay.

SPEAKER_04: Simply just going out for a walk, walking, trying to get a little walk every day, and then slowly increasing your exercise as you tolerate it.

Some people, after a head injury, and I did have this, will have exercise intolerance.

Before my car accident, I was able to train a couple hours with no problem.

And then after my crash, I could only do like a kata for two minutes, and then I was short of breath and had a pounding headache.

And so you just have to, depending on where you're at, like some people they don't have that exercise intolerance.

So they can go right back to what they were physically doing before their head injury.

And then some people are unable to do that.

And if you're unable to do that, then you're gonna have to increase it slowly.

You may have to work with a physical therapist to figure that out, or your general practitioner, your brain injury specialist.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Okay.

One other question.

When you speak about the journaling, do you encourage just journaling in general or specifically focusing on being sure that you're journaling about like how you felt that day, what you know impacted you, what went well, what didn't go well.

SPEAKER_04: Exactly.

So I usually recommend starting out with the with the date and then writing how well you slept.

Sleep's really important for the brain to heal.

A lot of people think that the brain isn't doing anything when you sleep, but that's actually when it really goes to work.

Cleaning house, downloading memories, softening stress, stressful information that came in that day.

So it helps with emotional control and mood modulation.

That's when the lymphatic kind of part of the brain opens up and really just flushes out the brain and cleans out toxins and radicals and things like that.

So sleep's really important.

So I recommend journaling how well did you sleep last night?

And if you didn't sleep well, why you didn't sleep well and changes you can make to improve your sleep, or is it time to talk to your doctor about getting help with your sleep?

And then kind of writing down how you're feeling.

So did you wake up with a headache or dizziness?

Did you wake up tired?

Do you feel like today's going to be a good brain day or a bad brain day?

And then putting down like a list of one to three things you want to accomplish during the day.

And then at the end of the day, journaling and just saying, like, well, how'd the day go?

Did something, did you have a bad conversation with someone at work?

Did someone make you mad?

And then what led up to that?

And then reflecting on, well, if this happens again, what tools or strategies that I got from my speech therapist or my counselor or my psychologist that I can use to help cope with that in the future and have a better outcome.

SPEAKER_00: Very, very interesting.

The uh the journaling is something I never would have thought of.

And yet it makes sense on so many levels of not only having this thing to track, but also I would imagine just the process of writing is another way of just working the brain.

SPEAKER_04: Exactly.

So there it yes, there is research that supports that the act of writing is something that helps prevent dementia and it really reconnects the brain and stimulates creativity and and things like that.

So the writing of the journal is very important.

And you know, sometimes you'll have loss of coordination, and that will help, you know, find coordination after a brain injury, and that'll would really help with that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Now, obviously, this I'm sure this is very dependent on each person's situation, but asking you personally with your own situation and then others that you've seen, like how long can people expect recovery to take?

SPEAKER_04: So it's yeah, like you said, it's different with everyone.

Not everyone has the same symptoms.

And what we often say is once in in healthcare, once you see one traumatic brain injury, you've seen one traumatic brain injury.

So everyone is is different.

But normally I will tell my patients, well, you should get better, you know, in a couple months, but some people don't see recovery for six months to two years.

But even after the two-year point, there is still improvement in function.

It's just really subtle and the improvements are really far apart.

Whereas it's the healing is really accelerated in that two-year period, but it still continues after the two-year period.

So I like to remind my patients not to lose hope after that two-year anniversary.

And we're starting to learn more about this as more research comes up about neuroplasticity, and that isn't out there on the front line, but it's slowly trickling into clinical practice.

And neuroplasticity is that if you continue to try to get back to your baseline, your brain, this your brain won't be the same, but and the injured parts, those cells will die, they won't come back, but your brain will want to reconnect and go around those spaces.

And the the more you take care of your brain, support your brain health, do the things you love and enjoy, the brain will reconnect.

Now it won't be the same, you know, but it will be better.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Wow.

What about for you personally?

What what was that recovery journey like for you?

Um how long would you say that it took for you to really start noticing some differences?

SPEAKER_04: When I started noticing, you know, that's the other thing about the journal, is you can look back and see how far you've come.

And I don't know exactly when it was, but I went back to kind of read my journal.

But right after my car accident, I couldn't make coffee and toast at the same time for breakfast because I would start the toast and then forget it was there, and then I would make my coffee and then I would sit on my couch and go, Why am I hungry?

Or I would remember my toast and forget my coffee.

I would leave the coffee cup somewhere in the house and I couldn't find it.

And my husband's like, Why is there all this dried bread in the toaster?

You know, I was back at work full-time, probably six months after the car accident.

So yeah, I went from not being able to make toast and coffee to being able to return to work within the six months.

Now it wasn't perfect because the first two years that I went back to work, all I did was sleep.

If I wasn't at work, I was sleeping.

So I would go to work, I would come home, I would take a two-hour nap, I would get up for an hour and eat, get ready for work the next day, and then go back to sleep.

And then on the weekends, I slept 12 to 14 hours and sometimes taking a two-hour nap in between that, just so I could go back to work on Monday.

And that's how I spent my first two years.

unknown: Wow.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

And then my third year, I was able to start walking and exercising on the weekends.

So that was huge.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_04: A big improvement.

And then my fourth year, I I was able to start hiking, going on hikes and stuff like that, and kind of doing some traveling, uh short travel out of town.

And then by my fifth year, I started writing my book, and I think writing my book was really helpful in my recovery because I had to learn so much.

I wasn't a writer, I was a nurse practitioner, you know.

I was in healthcare, and we don't write, we chart, and it's really bad.

Uh it's really bad.

It's not good reading.

Uh so I had to learn a lot about writing and marketing and technology and sharing documents on Google and all that stuff.

And I've continued to do so since.

And I feel like that has really helped with my healing and my the way I function.

I my speaking's better, but you know, every once in a while you'll hear me slur my words, or not, or I'll lose my train of thought, or I can't find my word.

And I'm not back to my martial arts training because I don't have um the energy for that.

But I'm back to start, you know, starting to exercise.

So it has been a long journey, and I'm just gonna keep working at it and improving it, and you know, enjoying life as best as I can with the things that I have.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

I think something that I want to definitely draw attention to is the fact that I'm going to assume most times it's a slow process.

We live in a world where we want everything as soon as possible.

We live in a world where we think everything is is fixable.

We just we just need a pill to take and it will fit all.

But when you just spoke, you weren't talking about days or weeks or months.

We just heard you talk about increments of years.

And I can't help but think we have to draw focus to that is the fact of it is a slow, ongoing process.

SPEAKER_04: Yes, it's a journey.

It's a new journey, it's a new chapter in your life.

A lot of brain injury survivors, they feel like that they died the day of their brain injury and that they're somebody new.

And it is a process.

And with that is there's the grieving process, right?

Because you lost some health advantage you had before, whether it was your energy or your focus or your vision.

And you really do have to go through that grieving process, and you're gonna need your your family, your friends, the support of probably talk therapy, psychologist, a psychiatrist.

Like if you're having difficulty with your mood management or your sleep, a psychiatrist is the best person to go to if you're failing the first line are typical treatments for those issues.

And so there is it is a process.

And um, I do talk about it in my book.

I call it letting go.

And what one day, for some strange reason, I wanted to go outside and journal.

And in my journal, I I drew a line down the middle of the paper, and on the left side, I put all the things I lost, like or that were important to me before that car accident.

And then I created a list of all the things I'd gained from my brain injury, and so some of those things were like a more slower pace, more mindful, present lifestyle, more compassion and understanding for others around me, just enjoying and embracing a simple life.

And then when I looked at the list of who I was before, you know, I was like, you know, that some of these things are not important to me anymore.

And some of these were not healthy either.

And so when I compared the two lists, I was like, you know what?

I really like who I've become after this brain injury.

I think this is a uh better person than I am, and I think that I'm gonna uh live a more fulfilled life.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

A question that I just thought of when you were going through that is coming from my perspective of when when I went blind, I grew up riding uh dirt bikes.

And oh yeah, fun.

Yes, and I mean that was that was my life.

And so I have had to grieve the loss of of that.

And uh I wonder if you had to deal with that with martial arts.

SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.

I mean, I lived ate and breathed martial arts before my car accident, and that loss was significant.

And the thing, too, that you and I both lost, I wanted to point this out to your listeners, is when you dirt bike or when you do martial arts, or you play tennis or ski, you are in the moment, and that's called mindfulness.

You are focused on what your body feels, how the turn of the dirt road feels, the bump, the jump, you know, those kinds of things.

You're not worried about other stuff.

You're not you're not listening to the negative thoughts in your brain, or or you're worried about what's going on at work.

You're just there in the moment.

And when you lose that, not only do you lose that hobby, that love, that passion, but you lose that practice of mindfulness and being in the moment.

And when you're recovering from whatever it is, it could be an injury or an illness, you have to find a way to get that practice back because mindfulness and getting out of your head is so important to your recovery.

And so I lost that.

Um, and I was talking about that loss with a counselor, and she said, Yeah, you've lost your mindfulness practice because I was talking about the loss of sense of peace inside of me.

And she recommended adult coloring.

And I was like, What?

Wow, this is cool.

So I went and I started doing adult coloring, and I was able to practice to relearn how to be in the moment, that mindfulness, that sense of getting out of my head, not listening to the negative swirling of thoughts and voices, and getting more in touch of the present moment, where I was, gratitude for the things I had.

So if you lose your hobby, your passion, or whatever it was, whether it's dirt biking or martial arts, when you're in your recovery, you're gonna need to find a way to practice that, even though you can't physically do your hobby or your practice.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah, I love that.

And I I don't know that I've ever even really thought of it in that way before, but it makes total sense.

And and I completely agree.

Now, that kind of ties in with the question I wanted to ask you is what was the kind of like the short-term and the long-term like impact on your relationships, on friendships with your career.

What you know, how would you kind of summarize that?

SPEAKER_04: That is a really good thing to bring up, Kevin.

Yeah.

So unfortunately, brain injury survivors do lose friends.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_04: And because that, you know, you can't keep up.

So I lost a lot of my martial arts training partners.

I have a handful still in my life, and I treasure them.

And my kids lost out on play dates because I didn't have the energy to socialize and to take them to their martial arts training or to you know any parties or get-togethers.

I missed out on my children growing up that first two years because I slept all the time.

And my husband had to quit his job because he had to be, you know, take over the child care and the house stuff just so I could, you know, cobble myself together to get to work every day to pay for the roof over our head.

And and I was the carrier of our health care benefits.

So, and even now, this day, I can't network with people at work.

Like if they want to meet after work, like say for drinks, I can't go because I'm exhausted at the end of the day.

I need to go home and and rest up and and get to bed on time.

So there is a lot of that loss.

But the people that stay in your life through all that, they're like the best.

They're the ones you can call at three in the morning to get you bailed out of jail.

SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: So there is that, yeah, there is that loss.

And it's hard.

It's really hard.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

I'm so glad, honestly, that that you brought up that whole topic of of family dynamics, because you know, I I've I've always said with you know what happened to me that I say what happened to me didn't just happen to me, it happened to a family.

And and when I listen to you just talk, I say it's the same thing for her.

Same thing.

It is what happened to you, it happened to a family.

And you guys still have gotten through it together.

SPEAKER_04: Yes, yes.

And I think, you know, it I have a really great husband, and it was really, you know, yeah, I don't know if this I should say fortunate, but it was fortunate that this happened, you know, really late into our marriage.

We've been married now 30 years, and so we had a lot of practice with the communication and you know, working as a team before this happened.

And, you know, some people, when this happens, they do they lose their marriage because of the personality changes.

Maybe they have angry outbursts, they can, you know, become violent, you can lose your job because you get irritable and you say the wrong thing.

So, yeah, it can be really devastating.

Some brain injury survivors will treat their symptoms with alcohol and drugs, and there's a huge traumatic brain injury population and concert and people who are in prison.

SPEAKER_03: Wow.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

And so it, yeah, it is very, very impactful.

And, you know, like I said before, it's very impactful for those who have severe brain injuries, but it can be super impactful also for those who have just a mild traumatic brain injury.

So none of that stuff should be ignored.

It should be, you know, it should be monitored.

Normally, when I have a patient that has a new concussion, I follow up with them within a couple weeks and then a month, and then every three months, and every six months, and then uh every year after that, depending on how impacted they were by their concussion.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I want to get to your book, but before we do, I I hadn't planned on asking this question, but just the direction of our conversation, I wanted to bring it up is, and I don't even know if this is true, so obviously I'm gonna turn to you to tell me.

Is I have heard that people with chronic brain injury, they're at greater risk of suicide.

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_04: Yes, very much so.

You're at higher risk if you have a history of mental health illness before the injury, but the injury can also cause mental health issues because the brain isn't functioning the way it's supposed to.

So the injury can also affect your the way your brain manages your hormones and the distribution of the chemicals such as serotonin and things like that in the brain.

And so that's why it increases your risk of developing anxiety or depression.

And then throw on top of that, say, loss of friends, loss of work, loss of ability, loss of a marriage, starting to drink, starting to do drugs.

It could be this really negative spiral.

And so it's very important to identify somebody who has uh brain injury and to monitor them.

Their general practitioner should be monitoring, just like someone who has high blood pressure or who's had a stroke.

You don't know how things are gonna play out, and the person doesn't know how it's gonna play out, they shouldn't be out there on their own figuring this out because they don't have a brain that works right, right?

So they don't think right, like me.

Oh, let's sleep at the side of the road.

You know?

SPEAKER_03: Yes.

SPEAKER_04: And if I'd had a doctor that called me and said, Hey, what's going on, that would have been picked up a lot sooner.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

SPEAKER_04: And later that, you know, if if she had followed up to me and said, Hey, how are you doing?

I knew you're back at work.

How's it going?

And if I had said, Well, I'm really irritable and the lights are bothering me.

I'm getting tired at the wheel, then I could have been prevented from falling asleep at the wheel.

I mean, I could have killed myself.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: On accident, you know.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly.

Of course.

Now, for somebody listening who's maybe a family member or a friend of somebody who they know who is suffering from a traumatic brain injury, is there any type of signs, signals, anything that they should look out for with their friend, their family member of signs that maybe they need to try to get them help?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah.

So if they're, you know, if they're if they're irritable, if their personality is changed, if they're not sleeping right, um, having insomnia, or they're waking up in the middle of the night, if they're not doing well at work or not in school, are they having issues with coordination?

Do you see them kind of walk into walls or doorways?

I mean, all there's a lot of symptoms that if you watch for them, you can pick them up.

But the other thing too is that you know, the person with the brain injury may not want people to know what's going on.

And so they're they're not just asking, hey, how are you doing isn't isn't gonna suss out if there's an issue.

You have to just kind of watch their behavior and how they act and things like that to kind of pick that up.

But what would be really helpful is just becoming aware of the multiple symptoms of brain injury and just to kind of watch for those symptoms and to ask about those symptoms.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, wonderful, wonderful.

My hope already in our conversation today is that somebody listening today is either getting immense value or they know somebody who they are already ready to share this episode with, because I can't help but think that what you're sharing today is something that anybody needs to hear who knows somebody who's suffering.

Because I mean, this is all such amazing, amazing information that you're sharing.

So I just right away want to thank you so much for it.

SPEAKER_04: Oh, it's my pleasure, Kevin, because I don't want what happened to me to happen to others.

I don't want people to feel like that they're alone, and I want them to know there is hope.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Well, speaking of that, I guess, is what prompted you?

Here you are, we've learned.

I mean, you're a career woman, you're a wife, you're a mother, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and then you decide, you know what?

I think I'm gonna write a book.

SPEAKER_04: Like well, I I did have some of my friends encourage me to do so, but why I wanted to write my book was because the two weeks that I was supposed to return to work after my time off for three months, I was freaking out.

I didn't know how I was gonna go back to work.

I didn't know what my brain needed to support its performance at work, and I scoured tons of books and online sources, and I was super anxious, and I didn't want anybody else to go through that.

So when I decided to write a book, I didn't want to write a book just about brain injury or my story.

I wanted it to help people get in quickly in one spot the tools and strategies they would need to help them go back to work and to go back to school and to get back into life.

So it was really important that my book was quick to the point with strategies that can be implemented right away for the brain injury survivor.

And after my brain injury, I also was an avid reader before, and then after I could hardly read for five minutes without getting a headache, or even I couldn't even remember what I read.

And so it was important for my book to be on audible so that people could listen to it and not have to read it too.

So wow.

Those were two important things.

It had to be quick to the point for strategies that can be implemented and it needed to be on audible.

SPEAKER_00: Amazing.

And remind me, the name of your book is After the Crash?

SPEAKER_04: Yes, After the Crash, How to Keep Your Job, Stay in School, and Live Life After a Brain Injury.

SPEAKER_00: Amazing.

And so that is available for anybody to do on Audible.

And if they wanted a regular copy, where could they go?

SPEAKER_04: Any store, any indie store.

You can also get it off my website at kellytuttle.org.

And yeah, it's at Amazon.

You could get it in ebook form too off of Amazon if you like to read stuff off your your uh tablets.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Amazing, amazing.

Well, well, Kelly, I guess I would love just to end with asking you for the person who's listening today, whom maybe they're in the thick of it, maybe they're struggling, whether or not it's even related to something like a traumatic brain injury, it's some other type of medical situation, it's something that just has them in the thick of it.

And maybe they're maybe they're at that point where they're just frustrated.

They want to feel better, they want their life back, they want things to be good again.

Do you have any kind of last kind of message of hope to give them to keep them going?

SPEAKER_04: I would definitely recommend not looking forward.

So the journaling, like I said, I'm a big proponent.

Your journal's great.

It won't care how many times you cussed at it, it doesn't talk back.

You can write anything in it.

But the nice thing is, is when you're having those days where you're losing hope, you're frustrated, you're angry with your progress of your healing, you can look back on day one and see how far you've come.

And that will help sustain you.

SPEAKER_00: I love it.

I love it.

Kelly, you are an amazing woman.

Your story is incredible.

Thank you.

And just the insights that you shared today, I truly hope it reaches the right person at the right time because I believe fullheartedly that the conversation today can could change somebody's life.

And I um am honored to uh have had you on the podcast to share all that with the person listening.

SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you, Kevin, for having me on.

I'm honored to be on your podcast.

I really love the work you've been doing.

It's fantastic.

Thank you for share letting me share my story with your listeners.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you.

And for you listening today, please be sure that you check out today's show notes.

I will leave links to all of the information that Kelly just shared with us so that you can get a copy of her book, whether on Audible or one of those old school books where you actually pick it up and read it in the hand.

So, whatever your style, links are in the show notes.

The most important thing that I want you to do right now is if there is somebody you know in your life, in your world, who you know that they themselves or somebody they know is going through something, whether a traumatic brain injury or just some type of medical issue, go ahead and share today's episode with them.

That would mean the world to me.

I know it would mean the world to them.

And I feel like that's the best thing that any of us can do is just to show somebody we care enough by sharing something with them that we think can help.

So, with that said, my friend, I'm of course your host, Kevin Lowe, and this was another episode of Grit Grace and Inspiration.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I look forward to seeing you next time.