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

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

Kevin Lowe: This is episode 393 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: I'm, of course, your host, Kevin Lowe. And my friend, I'm excited you're here.

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

Kevin Lowe: Here is my interview with Kelly Tuttle.

Podcast Theme Music: I got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind...

Kevin Lowe: I have the pleasure of being in the studio with none other than Kelly Tuttle.

Kevin Lowe: Kelly, welcome to the podcast.

Kelly Tuttle: Hello, Kevin, and thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, man, I am so excited 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 this major topic of a traumatic brain injury.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kevin Lowe: Like, what were you doing? What was life like for you?

Kevin Lowe: And we'll kind of start from there.

Kelly Tuttle: Okay. Before the crash, I was extremely active and busy person.

Kelly Tuttle: I had a ton of energy. I annoyed people around me with my energy.

Kelly Tuttle: And I was studying martial arts.

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

Kelly Tuttle: On Fridays, I was teaching a women's beginner Brazilian jiu-jitsu class.

Kelly Tuttle: I was involved in my profession.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 and was really involved with that.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: So, yeah, that was me before. Now I'm a sloth.

Kevin Lowe: So we went from a cheetah to a sloth if we're going to stick with animals. Yes. Yes.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, my goodness. I love your sense of humor. It is the best.

Kevin Lowe: So if that was life before, what happened?

Kevin Lowe: Talk me through kind of the events that when your accident and kind of when was this? in terms of timeline in your life when this accident occurred and exactly what happened?

Kelly Tuttle: So I was driving home after work, was heading to my karate class because I was in intense training to test for my third degree black belt.

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: Ambulance was called, a car was smoking.

Kelly Tuttle: And I thought, I can shake this off.

Kelly Tuttle: I'll just shake this off. I'll be better in a couple of weeks and I'll just go on with life.

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

Kelly Tuttle: So anybody listening, go to the emergency room.

Kelly Tuttle: 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, I wasn't acting right, and said, made me commit to seeing my general practitioner the next day.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: I was dying of headaches, fatigue, irritability.

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

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

Kevin Lowe: Oh, no.

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

Kevin Lowe: Oh, wow.

Kelly Tuttle: Yes. And so my cuss brain thought, well, what we'll do is we'll not tell the doctor.

Kelly Tuttle: We'll just keep going on with life and just take a nap halfway in between home.

Kelly Tuttle: I mean, in my car.

Kevin Lowe: Totally reasonable.

Kelly Tuttle: So bad. So bad. Do not support sleeping in your car on the side of the road.

Kelly Tuttle: That was how my brain was working. And so then I went to lunch and met up with a colleague.

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

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: And so I mentioned, yeah, I fell asleep at the wheel the other day. And she's like, what?

Kelly Tuttle: And I'm like, yeah. And so now I just take a nap in between.

Kelly Tuttle: And she's like, wait a minute. She's like, that is not right.

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

Kelly Tuttle: I hadn't had a brain scan.

Kelly Tuttle: I hadn't been referred to a neurologist. and I hadn't seen a physical medicine and rehab doctor, a physiatrist.

Kelly Tuttle: So I promised that I would do those things. And so I got a brain CT and it was normal. There was nothing.

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

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: And once I saw that doctor, she knew right away that I had diffused axion injury.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And when you have a concussion, those get severed.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And you have a lot of neural inflammation and cascade of biochemistry stuff going on.

Kelly Tuttle: So after seeing her, she took me off work for three months.

Kelly Tuttle: And I did speech therapy, physical therapy, neurophysical therapy.

Kelly Tuttle: And I just started to get onto the right road of recovery.

Kelly Tuttle: Because before that, I was on the wrong road.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah.

Kelly Tuttle: Obviously, I fell asleep on it.

Kevin Lowe: Obviously. Yes.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. So Kelly, I'm curious. So going back to the accident itself.

Kevin Lowe: So did you not sustain any like physical injuries?

Kelly Tuttle: Oh, yeah, I did. I had a bruise and swelling on my forehead from the release of the airbags.

Kelly Tuttle: I had chest contusion from the seatbelt in the airbags. I had a wrist injury.

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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 yeah so besides for oh and whiplash, horrible whiplash wow yeah now.

Kevin Lowe: In terms of your head though it didn't hit anything besides for the airbag

Kelly Tuttle: Correct correct okay and the 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.

Kelly Tuttle: So that's called acceleration-deceleration.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And that's how the injury and the damage occurs.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

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

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

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: Exactly. And that is something that does happen to brain injury survivors.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Like they will fall down the stairs and break their arm or their leg.

Kelly Tuttle: Or in a car accident like my own, they'll have really bad whiplash.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And myself I can 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Because people go back to work and they're like, I can't focus.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: It's that they're interchangeable. A concussion is a brain injury.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Interesting.

Kelly Tuttle: Interesting.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: Exactly. Exactly. And like some people will say, well, I have brain fog.

Kelly Tuttle: Well, that's brain damage.

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah. 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: But the terms in clinical are interchangeable.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Now, how long after the accident did they finally diagnose you with having a traumatic brain injury?

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

Kevin Lowe: Wow.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: And the reason why is there's a lot of misunderstanding about brain injury.

Kelly Tuttle: In the medical community and in the non-medical community, you know, community that like, you know, people who are not in healthcare.

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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 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 health care.

Kelly Tuttle: And so unfortunately, you may run into a provider that says, oh, you should be better in two weeks. And you're not.

Kelly Tuttle: And they say, well, that's not really your concussion. That's your anxiety.

Kelly Tuttle: Or, well, you know, it's been two years. You're not going to get any better.

Kelly Tuttle: This is what you have to get used to. And all that stuff's not true.

Kelly Tuttle: But unless you're lucky and you run into someone like me, who's like passionate about brain injuries, you're not going to get the right information.

Kevin Lowe: 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?

Kelly Tuttle: Well, I realized that I wasn't crazy. I thought I was going crazy.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: I lost myself of inner peace.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah, not nuts.

Kelly Tuttle: It's because my brain is broken. And so then my communication with the people around me changed. It's just 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.

Kelly Tuttle: Can I just have a moment to, you know, focus on whatever I was trying to do?

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah. Yeah. So it makes a big, big difference.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. So what did you end up doing as far as treatment to try to help this?

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 going to be difficult to control your headaches your post-concussive headaches and you're going to feel off balance and that could be put you at risk for another fall.

Kelly Tuttle: The other thing is to have your eyes checked. So start off with an optometrist just to see if your prescription has changed.

Kelly Tuttle: And that's just the issue because you can have blurry vision.

Kelly Tuttle: You can have double vision. You can have issues with difficulty reading.

Kelly Tuttle: And if your optometry visit is 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And you do need a referral to see an ophthalmologist. and 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.

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: So say you have sound sensitivity, You can use noise counseling.

Kelly Tuttle: Earbuds or headphones to help you concentrate and focus better at work.

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 okay.

Kevin Lowe: 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

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

Kelly Tuttle: So definitely moving is, and the moving can just be walking.

Kevin Lowe: Okay.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: Because some people after a head injury, and I did have this, will have exercise intolerance.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 and tolerance so they can go right back to what they were physically doing before their head injury.

Kelly Tuttle: And then some people are unable to do that. And if you're unable to do that, then you're going to have to increase it slowly.

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

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: Exactly. So I usually recommend starting out with the, with the date and then writing how well you slept.

Kelly Tuttle: Sleep's really important for the brain to, to heal.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 stressful information that came in that day.

Kelly Tuttle: So it helps with emotional control and mood modulation.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: So sleep's really important. So I recommend journaling, how well did you sleep last night?

Kelly Tuttle: And if you didn't sleep well, why you didn't sleep well and changes you can make to improve your sleep?

Kelly Tuttle: Or is it time to talk to your doctor about getting help with your sleep?

Kelly Tuttle: And then kind of writing down how you're feeling. So did you wake up with a headache or dizziness?

Kelly Tuttle: Did you wake up tired? Do you feel like today's going to be a good brain day or a bad brain day?

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

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: Does someone make you mad?

Kelly Tuttle: 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?

Kevin Lowe: Very very interesting the 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 exactly

Kelly Tuttle: So there 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 would really help with that.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah now obviously this i'm sure this is very dependent upon each person's But asking you personally with your own situation and then others that you've seen, how long can people expect recovery to take?

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 the healing is really accelerated in that two-year period, but it still continues after the two-year period.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And we're starting to learn more about this as more research comes up out about neuroplasticity.

Kelly Tuttle: And that isn't out there on the front line, but it's slowly trickling into clinical practice.

Kelly Tuttle: And neuroplasticity is that if you continue to try to get back to your baseline.

Kelly Tuttle: Your brain won't be the same.

Kelly Tuttle: But in the injured parts, those cells will die.

Kelly Tuttle: They won't come back. But your brain will want to reconnect and go around those spaces.

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

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

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. What about for you personally?

Kevin Lowe: What was that recovery journey like for you?

Kevin Lowe: How long would you say that it took for you to really start noticing some differences?

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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?

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kevin Lowe: Wow.

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah. And then my third year, I was able to start walking and exercising on the weekends. So that was huge.

Kevin Lowe: Yes.

Kelly Tuttle: The big improvement. And then my fourth year, I was able to start hiking, going on hikes and stuff like that and kind of doing some short travel out of town.

Kelly Tuttle: And then by my fifth year, I started writing my book.

Kelly Tuttle: And I think writing my book was really helpful in my recovery because I had to learn so much. I wasn't a writer.

Kelly Tuttle: I was a nurse practitioner. You know, I was in health care.

Kelly Tuttle: And we don't write. We chart. And it's really bad.

Kelly Tuttle: It's really bad. It's not good reading. 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 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.

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

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

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

Kevin Lowe: 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.

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

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

Kevin Lowe: We just need a pill to take and it will fix it.

Kevin Lowe: But when you just spoke, you weren't talking about days or weeks or months, we just heard you talk about increments of years.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Yes, it's a journey. It's a new journey. It's a new chapter in your life.

Kelly Tuttle: A lot of brain injury survivors, they feel like that they died the day of their brain injury and that they are somebody new and it is a process.

Kelly Tuttle: And with that is there's a grieving process, right?

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

Kelly Tuttle: And you really do have to go through that grieving process and you're going to need 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 or typical treatments for those issues and so, It is a process.

Kelly Tuttle: I do talk about it in my book. I call it Letting Go.

Kelly Tuttle: One day, for some strange reason, I wanted to go outside and journal.

Kelly Tuttle: In my journal, I drew a line down the middle of the paper.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And some of these were not healthy either. And so when I compared the two lists, I was like, you know what?

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

Kelly Tuttle: I think this is a better person than I am. And I think that I'm going to live a more fulfilled life.

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

Kevin Lowe: And yes, I mean, that was that was my life.

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

Kevin Lowe: And I wonder if you had to deal with that with with martial arts.

Kelly Tuttle: Yes, yes. I mean, I lived, ate, and breathed martial arts before my car accident, and that loss was significant.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: You are in the moment and that's called mindfulness.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And so I lost that. 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And she recommended adult coloring.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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 going to need to find a way to practice that even though you can't physically do your hobby or your practice yeah.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kevin Lowe: And, and I completely agree.

Kevin Lowe: Now that kind of ties in with, with a 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?

Kevin Lowe: What you know how would you kind of summarize that

Kelly Tuttle: That is a really good thing to bring up kevin yeah so unfortunately brain injury survivors do lose friends yes 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.

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

Kelly Tuttle: And my husband had to quit his job because he had to be, you know, take over the childcare and the house stuff, just so I could, you know, cobble myself together to get to work every day.

Kelly Tuttle: To pay for the roof over our head and I was the carrier of our healthcare benefits.

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: I need to go home and, and rest up and, and get to bed on time.

Kelly Tuttle: So there, there is a lot of that loss, but the people that stay in your life through all that, they're like the best.

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

Kevin Lowe: Yep. Yep.

Kevin Lowe: Yes.

Kelly Tuttle: So there is that. Yeah, there is that loss and it's hard. It's really hard.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad, honestly, that you brought up that whole topic of family dynamics, because, you know, 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.

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

Kevin Lowe: Same thing is what happened to you. It happened to a family and you guys still have gotten through it together.

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

Kelly Tuttle: We've been married now 30 years.

Kelly Tuttle: And so we had a lot of practice with communication and, you know, working as a team before this happened.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Maybe they have angry outbursts. They can, you know, become violent.

Kelly Tuttle: You can lose your job because you get irritable and you say the wrong thing.

Kelly Tuttle: So, yeah, it can be really devastating. Some brain injury survivors will treat their symptoms with alcohol and drugs.

Kelly Tuttle: And there's a huge traumatic brain injury population in people who are in prison.

Kevin Lowe: Wow.

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah. And so, yeah, it is very, very impactful.

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

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. I want to get to your book, but before we do, I hadn't planned on asking you 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.

Kevin Lowe: So obviously I'm going to turn to you to tell me is I have heard that people with traumatic brain injury, they're at greater risk of suicide.

Kevin Lowe: Is that correct?

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: So the injury can also affect 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.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: It could be this really negative spiral.

Kelly Tuttle: And so it's very important to identify somebody who has a brain injury and to monitor them.

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

Kelly Tuttle: You don't know how things are going to play out and the person doesn't know how it's going to 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 yes and if i had a doctor that called me and said hey what's going on that would have been picked up a lot sooner yes and later that you know if if she had followed up bucked me and said,

Kelly Tuttle: hey, how are you doing? Are you back at work? How's it going?

Kelly Tuttle: And if I had said, well, I'm really irritable and the lights are bothering me and 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.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah.

Kelly Tuttle: On accident, you know?

Kevin Lowe: 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 traumatic brain injury.

Kevin Lowe: 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?

Kelly Tuttle: Yeah. So if they're, you know, if they're, if they're irritable, if their personality has changed, if they're not sleeping right, having insomnia or they're waking up in the middle of night?

Kelly Tuttle: If they're not doing well at work or not in school, are they having issues with coordination?

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

Kelly Tuttle: I mean, 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 a brain injury may not want people to know what's going on.

Kelly Tuttle: And so they're they're not just asking, hey, how are you doing?

Kelly Tuttle: Isn't isn't going to suss out if there's an issue.

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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. Okay.

Kevin Lowe: 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 hope but think that what you're sharing today is something that anybody needs to hear who knows somebody who's suffering.

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

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

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

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

Kevin Lowe: Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, speaking of that, I guess, is what prompted you?

Kevin Lowe: Here you are. We've learned. I mean, you're a career woman. You're a wife. You're a mother.

Kevin Lowe: Suffered a traumatic brain injury. And then you decide, you know what?

Kevin Lowe: I think I'm going to write a book.

Kelly Tuttle: Well, I did have some of my friends encourage me to do so.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: I didn't know how I was going to go back to work. I didn't know what my brain needed to support its performance at work.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

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

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

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And after my brain injury, I also was an avid reader before.

Kelly Tuttle: And then after I could hardly read for five minutes without getting a headache, or even I couldn't even remember what I read.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: So 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.

Kevin Lowe: Amazing. And remind me, the name of your book is After the Crash?

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

Kevin Lowe: Amazing. And so that is available for anybody to do on Audible.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Any store, any indie store. You can also get it off my website at kellytuttle.org.

Kelly Tuttle: And yeah, it's at Amazon. You could get an e-book form too off of Amazon if you like to read stuff off your tablets.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, amazing, amazing. Well, Kelly, I guess I would love just to end with asking you for the person who's listening today who maybe they're in the thick of it.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe they're struggling, whether or not it's even related to something like a traumatic brain injury in some other type of medical situation.

Kevin Lowe: It's something that just has them in the thick of it.

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

Kevin Lowe: They want to feel better. They want their life back. They want things to be good again.

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

Kelly Tuttle: I would definitely recommend not looking forward.

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

Kelly Tuttle: Your journal's great. It won't care how many times you cuss at it.

Kelly Tuttle: It doesn't talk back. You can write anything in it.

Kelly Tuttle: 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.

Kelly Tuttle: And that will help sustain you.

Kevin Lowe: I love it. I love it. Kelly, you are an amazing woman. Your story is incredible.

Kevin Lowe: 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 full-heartedly that The conversation today can change somebody's life. And I am honored to have had you on the podcast to share all that with the person listening.

Kelly Tuttle: Well, thank you, Kevin, for having me on. I'm honored to be on your podcast.

Kelly Tuttle: I really love the work you've been doing. It's fantastic.

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

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you. And for you listening today, please be sure that you check out today's show notes.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kevin Lowe: And so whatever your style, links are in the show notes.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

Kevin Lowe: That would mean the world to me. I know it would mean the world to them.

Kevin Lowe: 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.

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

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

Podcast Outro Theme Song: I will not fear the storm, My hope's well defined, I walk by faith, not by sight, I won't be resigned... Rising higher every day, all doubt's left behind 'cause I got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind!