Battling Back from a Brain Injury

[T]ransportation accidents and falls, particularly among the elderly, are leading causes of TBI, and one serious head injury can be devastating. Karl Weisgraber is a retired biochemist who worked on cardiovascular and Alzheimer's research at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. In October of last year, he was on a ladder doing work on the side of his house when he fell and smacked his head on a rock, suffering a severe traumatic brain injury. The 71-year-old Walnut Creek man spent three weeks in a coma and, through therapy, had to relearn how to walk, read and write. He is greatly appreciative of the staffs at San Francisco General and California Pacific Medical Center who worked with him, and of his wife, Judi.

"I don't remember falling at all. Then I started very, very slowly to start remembering things. It's improved since then by a tremendous amount. When I started remembering, I couldn't walk, I couldn't sit without falling out of the chair. People were having trouble understanding what I was saying. I was in bad shape, but they got me to the point where I got better. There was a possibility I was not going to make it when I first got there - that's the kind of shape I was in.

"An important thing is you never give up. You try to do whatever your therapist or doctor is telling you to do. I was so far away that it would be easy for someone to say, 'This is it for me.' But I never said that. I wanted to try, and I wanted to push myself.

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Battling Back From a Brain Injury