Bob Saget Saved My Life

a TBI Story

March 2022… “It may be CTE. But we can’t know for sure because, currently, it cannot be  diagnosed in life,” the psychiatrist on the screen said. The words sunk in like a punch to the gut. T  felt like her world was coming crashing down. She needed help, but there was none? “I’ve heard  there is a support group for TBI patients at the Mary Lee Foundation. Check into it and see if it  helps. See you next month…” 

Two days before… Bob Saget’s cause of death released to the public…an unwitnessed fall  backwards with enough force at impact to fracture his skull and cause a brain bleed.  

Three months later…“What? Wait? How did I get here?” T thought as she opened her eyes and  found herself in the bathtub. She remembered getting ready to clean the new shield tattoo and  trying to kick off her flipflop. She had been facing the tub and holding on to the sink. Lost her  balance, tried to grab the shower curtain. That was all. Clearly there was a spin in there  somewhere, because she was now facing the opposite direction. While trying to get up, it was  abundantly clear this was another concussion. Her head must have hit the stone wall and that’s  how she got knocked out. 

She went to the bedroom to lay down. In her mind, she saw an image of Bob Saget. Then news  reports of his death. “I must be dreaming,” she thought. Then she sat up quickly, “This is how Bob  Saget died! Blunt force trauma to the head from a fall in the bathroom! He was alone. I’m alone. I  better not stay here!” Fighting a touch of nausea, T jumped in her car and left the house. 

Before she got out of the car at the clubhouse, she texted her son and told him she may need him to  take her to the ER. He was unable because he was at work. She became very upset. T went inside.  From the moment her eyes adjusted to the light, the headache started and continued to mount.  The lights were like giant suns. It sounded like everyone was shouting. “Why were they shouting?” 

Her friend K came up and asked her if she was ok. She clearly was not. T bravely asked if maybe K  could take her to the ER in Luling. She’d get her son to pick her up later. “Of course! I’ll stay with  you if you want,” K offered.  

Twenty minutes later, T was in the ER arguing with the doctor and nurse about what happened and  why they were checking her heart and not her brain. They kept insisting there was no way that she  could know what happened to her and she kept insisting she knew enough because she had been  through this so many times before. Five hours later, she was discharged with a diagnosis of  

headache and a $10,000 medical bill. That was June 18, 2022. 

On Monday, T followed up with her internist who decided she needed to see a neurologist. Several  days later, the referral was made to the same neurologist who had seen T in 2019 and said, “There is  nothing wrong with you. You are a psychiatric case.” Obviously, T was not about to go back to that  doctor. Hopelessness and more symptoms were setting in. 

A little bit after the referral came in, she had another appointment with her psychiatrist. T isn’t sure  exactly how many days later it was, because time started to become irrelevant as pain, confusion,  and other symptoms kept her up when she wanted to sleep and sleeping when she needed to be  awake. Dr. B recognized right away that something had happened. As soon as they finished the  regular business, she asked about it. T tearfully told her about the fall, the rude ER staff, and the  referral to the neurologist who had cut her from service.

Dr. B looked over T’s whole chart scanning for anything she could use for help, “I see you are a  patient of Dr. G in Sports Medicine. Is that right?” T nodded her head. “When we get off this call,”  the doctor continued, “I want you to call him right away. He is a concussion specialist. I will send  him a note and let him know what is going on. When you go to the appointment, take the list of  head injuries you made for me. He needs to see it.” T nodded again. 

T sat nervously in the exam room in Sports Med a few days later. The drive had been exhausting.  “Since when did I have to do so much math just to drive?” she thought – trying to distract herself  from the fear gripping her – praying that it would be Dr. G. himself and not a new doctor. One of Dr.  G’s students came in. To this day, the only things T can remember about her were the look and gasp  she gave as she read the head injury list and whispered, “There really is no way to tell how many  you’ve had?” At some point, she started a comprehensive exam: gait, balance, eyes…, “Follow my  finger,” she said matter of factly.” 

T about threw up then said, “Which one? There are two.”  

“Are you having double-vision?” 

“I guess so. I didn’t realize it.”  

A few seconds later Dr. G walked in looking like he was about to tell someone that they are dying, “T  we are going to stop the exam. There is no point going on with the rest of it because you are too  sick. In fact, you are so sick you need to be in a hospital.” 

Those words boomeranged around her mind for a few seconds. She couldn’t quite understand  what he meant by hospital. Sensing her confusion, he started over, “This is not a little concussion.  You have so many symptoms that we can’t just leave it to chance that they will go away in a couple  weeks. Plus, you’ve had so much brain trauma that each new one takes less and less to cause  significant impairment. You can be either inpatient or outpatient, but we need to get you into a  rehab as soon as possible,” he took a deep breath, “And, you need to stop driving until you are well.  Right now, you are a danger to yourself and others.” That last part felt like he was holding her head  underwater and she needed to breathe. 

The next two months were spent trying to find a rehab that would take her insurance. Life was  becoming more and more difficult. By late June, T noticed that her husband and son had developed  their own language so she wouldn’t know what they were saying. Their language wasn’t the only  problem – she was suddenly cursing!! Reading and writing were almost impossible. She could read  the words, but couldn’t put the meanings together to make sense of the sentences. Also, her eyes  were all squirrely and wouldn’t stay on the line. Math was over. Paranoia, fear, anger, suicidal  hallucinations, and depression clawed at her daily.  

When her husband and son came home from a trip to LA with covid in July, T freaked out and set up  a tent in the backyard. It was a July heatwave. She lived out there for two weeks only going into the  house to use the bathroom and to swab their noses for covid tests. By this point, visual problems  were setting in. She could no longer trust her eyes. She saw all kinds of things that weren’t there – like the curly haired Asian lions sitting up in her tree watching her little camp every single night. But she also couldn’t trust her brain to fill in accurate data after looking at something real either. She  developed a habit of making second looks, because the first one was always wrong. 

Finally, by August, they found a rehab to take her insurance – the Mary Lee Foundation (MLF). This  was the same place she had been going to support group meetings prior to this injury. After a long  and confusing process, they finally decided to accept her. She would have Occupational Therapy,  Speech Therapy, and Physical Therapy one day a week. In the beginning, T’s PTSD made it difficult  for her to pay attention to the therapists – she couldn’t even make eye contact with them. Though  she understood they weren’t going to attack her or have a meltdown on her, it took many weeks to  get past that fear. She also couldn’t figure out how to tell anyone that her mind was blank inside – 

no more chatter, no more pictures, nothing. It was like a sensory deprivation tank in there and it  scared the hell out of her. Even though she struggled at the clinic, at home she knew she had one  shot at getting better and getting her life back. So, as much as possible, she recreated the MLF gym  at home. Everything done at the clinic was repeated every day at home.  

As she started to see improvements, her paranoia drove her to do even more. She had  homeschooled all her children. So, T sat and thought about what early elementary curriculum she  still remembered how to use. It was a gamble, but she pulled out a handwriting workbook, a critical  thinking skills workbook, and a whole bunch of Star Wars graphic novels. Slowly, painfully, she  started working through those. She found apps of all kinds to help with reading, vocabulary,  comprehension, and math. One day, her OT said something to the effect of, “Hey, you need to cool  it. You aren’t the worse case I’ve seen. You will recover. But you need to cool your jets and give  your brain time to heal. You are overdoing it.”  

T admits she doesn’t fully remember what happened next, but she replied, “I only have one shot at  this. I have to get it all done in the time I’m here. I don’t know what is going to happen.”  

After a pause, the OT said, “Are you afraid of something?” T could only nod and look down. After  another long pause, “Are you afraid of your husband – do you think he is going to throw you out?” T  kept looking at the floor. How could she admit that? But, just the week before, she had gotten so  angry at him that she jumped in her convertible and drove three hours to Port Aransas just to look at  the water and the sunset for 30 minutes and then came back home.  

The next week, when T got to OT, there was someone else there to talk to her. When they were  finished, a referral was made to the Hays Caldwell Women’s Center for counseling. During the  intake interview, T remembered they said to ask for a trauma informed therapist. She did and was  assigned a great one. After a few weeks of trauma therapy, she asked her psychiatrist, Dr. B, if it is  possible her brain thinks she is back in 1994 and that’s why she’s suddenly so scared of her  husband and son. Dr. B took a bit to confer with colleagues and they all concluded that it’s possible. T stuck with the trauma therapy even after her time at MLF was over. It helped to get her  brain back in the same time zone as her body.  

Gradually, over many months, things began to improve. All in all, it took 10 months of outpatient  rehab for everything to get sorted. One of the last things T’s OT did was to refer her to Texas  Workforce Vocational Rehabilitation (VR). She said a part time job would help T’s brain. Skeptical, T  moved forward with VR anyway because she had come to trust the therapists at MLF.  

At their first meeting, her VR case manager said, “I can’t figure out what your deficits are. So, I’m  going to send you for neuropsych testing. We can only do what the doctor says. Nothing more.  Only what he says.” T wondered why he stressed that last part so much.

The night came for the testing. T made sure she didn’t miss any of her ADHD meds that day and she  got a Starbuck’s on the way. Dr. F was the embodiment of peace and serenity. It was the first time T  had relaxed on a first-time meeting. As the testing went on he was encouraging – though never  giving a hint of how she was doing. In between tests, he would talk to her about her history and  explain things. Thinking of Dr. F, T said, “It was like he had a key to that closet in my brain where I  keep all the crap and he was taking them out, dusting them off, looking at them, and the putting  them back on shelves in the same closet so it would be easier for me to find them when I was ready  to move them somewhere else.” Turns out she did very well on those tests. So well, in fact, that Dr.  F recommended that VR send her to college.  

At her next rehab appointment, one of the last, she told them what happened. Both OT and Speech  decided it was time to redo the initial testing they had done on the first visit. When they told her the  results, her mind began swimming with questions like, “How could that be?” Initially, she tested K 2^nd grade across both modalities. That day, she was testing 18+ which was as high as they go. It  had been 10 months of hard work. And there was more to come. 

For a short time after leaving rehab, T worked a part time job as an Activities Coordinator for a  small, assisted living center near her home. Eventually, T was accepted to the University of Texas  Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). She started school in January of 2022 and quickly realized work and  school were not going to work for her. Stress makes the symptoms come back, so she quit the job.  UTRGV gave her a scholarship that covers all her university related expenses for the long  semesters. She also has the full support of the Student Accessibility Service on campus. They  have given her certain accommodations like extra time on tests, a screen reader for all texts and  syllabi, and peer counseling for common problems SAS students experience. VR fills in for summer  school and other things that might be needed. Currently pursuing a degree in Addiction Studies, T  goes to school half-time. She isn’t sure if she’ll try to ramp up to full-time because she’s noticed  she so much slower than when she was in college before. Even at half-time, she is pretty sure she’ll  graduate within four years. 

It has been two years since the injury. Most of the overt signs of the TBI have resolved. Some of the  things that are left, like a crazy Star Wars obsession and a new gender marker, are only apparent to  those that knew her well before the accident. T is no longer afraid of her husband and her son. She  

recognizes much of that fear was driven by PTSD and the TBI. Turns out they never made up a new  language, she developed an auditory processing disorder. Basically, her brain can’t keep up with  what the ears send it, so it throws in random words and sounds. Her eyes have the equivalent  problem. T now prioritizes sleep and stress management.  

At her last appointment with Dr. G, he told her, “As much trauma as you’ve had, you are going to  have to keep exercising your brain and doing these things for the rest of your life. If you stop, your  brain is going to want to revert to what it was before you had this last TBI. Be vigilant. Don’t stop.” 

“Bob Saget saved my life. I hope one day his family sees this or,  

maybe I’ll get to meet him in heaven and tell him myself.” – T