After The Crash – Kelly Tuttle

Recovery After Stroke

Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a complex medical condition resulting from a sudden blow or jolt to the head, causing damage to the brain. At its core, TBI disrupts normal brain function, often leading to severe consequences if left untreated. Here, we delve into the depths of TBI, exploring its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment options, and prevention strategies.

Causes of Traumatic Brain Injury

TBI can stem from various incidents, including:

• Accidents: Motor vehicle accidents, falls, and sports-related injuries are common culprits.
• Violence: Physical assaults, gunshot wounds, and combat injuries can inflict significant damage.
• Blast Injuries: Military personnel and civilians exposed to explosive blasts are at risk.
• Penetrating Injuries: Objects penetrating the skull, such as bullets or shattered fragments, can cause TBI.

Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury

The symptoms of TBI can range from mild to severe and may include:

• Physical Symptoms: Headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and loss of coordination.
• Cognitive Symptoms: Memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and confusion.
• Emotional Symptoms: Mood swings, irritability, anxiety, and depression.
• Sensory Symptoms: Blurred vision, ringing in the ears, and sensitivity to light or sound.

Diagnosis and Evaluation

Diagnosing TBI involves a comprehensive evaluation, which may include:

• Physical Examination: Assessing neurological function, reflexes, and motor skills.
• Imaging Studies: CT scans and MRIs help visualize brain injuries and assess their severity.
• Cognitive Tests: Evaluating memory, concentration, and cognitive abilities.
• Patient History: Gathering information about the injury, symptoms, and medical history.

Treatment Approaches

Treatment for TBI depends on the severity and type of injury, and may include:

• Monitoring and Observation: Mild cases may require only observation and rest.
• Medications: Pain relievers, anti-seizure drugs, and antidepressants may alleviate symptoms.
• Rehabilitation Therapy: Physical, occupational, and speech therapy help restore lost abilities.
• Surgery: In severe cases, surgery may be necessary to repair skull fractures or remove hematomas.

Preventing Traumatic Brain Injury

Prevention is key to reducing the risk of TBI. Some preventive measures include:

• Wearing Seatbelts: Properly restraining in vehicles can prevent head injuries during accidents.
• Using Helmets: Wearing helmets during sports activities, cycling, and motorcycling can protect the head.
• Fall Prevention: Installing handrails, using non-slip mats, and maintaining a clutter-free environment can prevent falls.
• Safety Measures: Adhering to safety guidelines at work and following firearm safety protocols can prevent TBI.cols);

In conclusion, understanding TBI is crucial for early detection, treatment, and prevention. By raising awareness and implementing preventive measures, we can mitigate the impact of traumatic brain injuries and enhance overall well-being.

After The Crash – Full Interview with Kelly Tuttle

Kelly Tuttle, a neurology nurse practitioner living with an acquired brain injury stemming from an automobile collision, mirrors that of stroke survivors in many ways. Despite these variances, the impact on daily life remains similar. Kelly’s recent publication, “After the Crash,” serves as a guiding beacon for those traversing the arduous path of recovery from traumatic brain injuries.

Instagram
Kelly’s Website

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction
05:14 Decision-making after a car accident
10:02 What caused the traumatic brain injury
17:55 Common issues in seeing a neurologist
19:25 Physical Medicine Rehabilitative Doctor (PMR)
25:17 Bill’s Book The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened
27:06 Dealing with sensory overload and invisible challenges
33:00 Unknown dangers in contact sports
40:24 Navigating neurofatigue and noise cancellation technology.
50:24 The Book: After The Crash By Kelly Tuttle
1:00:27 Different learning curves
1:06:46 The hardest thing about TBI
1:07:37 What has TBI taught Kelly Tuttle
1:09:36 A piece of advice from Kelly Tuttle

Transcript:

Introduction – Kelly Tuttle

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello, everybody, this is episode 299 my guest today is Kelly Tuttle, a neurology nurse practitioner who is living with an acquired brain injury that occurred not as a result of a stroke but rather from a traumatic brain injury. Also referred to as a TBI, which was caused by a rather dramatic automobile collision.

Bill Gasiamis 0:25
Her story and the challenges she is working to overcome bear a remarkable resemblance to that of a stroke survivor with some distinct differences in the way her diagnosis came to be. But a lot of similarities in how daily life has been impacted by the injury. Kelly recently published her book After the Crash, which is a guide for those navigating the challenging journey of recovery after a traumatic brain injury. Kelly Tuttle, welcome to the podcast.

Kelly Tuttle 0:58
Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to talk to your listeners today.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01
Thank you for being here. You’re not a stroke survivor. And that’s okay. Because we don’t necessarily want everyone to be a stroke survivor who joins us on the podcast. But you are a TBI survivor. You had a traumatic brain injury at some point in your life, can you give us a little bit of an understanding of how that came about?

Kelly Tuttle 1:23
So I was driving home from work down a rural road and the driver pulled out in front of me at the last minute. And I ended up T boning them and being in a big car accident and thought I would shake off the car accident and get back into life. And as time went by, I found that was not the case.

Bill Gasiamis 1:52
So in the collision, how many people were in your car and how many people were in the other car?

Kelly Tuttle 1:58
Fortunately, no one was with me. And I think there was only one person in the other car.

Bill Gasiamis 2:05
I and if you T boned them. Did you touch them on the driver’s side or the passenger’s side?

Speaker 1 2:13
I hit the driver side of the other car I think the driver side.

Bill Gasiamis 2:21
And then what happens then? Do all the emergency services turn up? What’s the scene like after that?

Speaker 1 2:28
I was pretty terrible. Yeah, there’s glass everywhere. My car ended up being totaled, my engine was smoking, people came out from the homes that were along that street, traffic was stopped, and then I did say an ambulance came out, and then the police officers of course investigated the the car crash and since my car was not drivable, it was towed away.

Kelly Tuttle 3:06
I was taken with the police officers to kind of a local cafe to hang out waiting for my husband to pick me up because I was about over an hour away from home at the time so they couldn’t just leave me on the side of the road to wait to get picked up.

Kelly Tuttle 3:28
And I was offered to be taken to by ambulance but because of my nursing background, I did spend some time in the emergency room as a nurse. I just didn’t want to go by ambulance. Which you know, in hindsight was probably not too smart, but 2020.

Bill Gasiamis 3:52
Yeah. Is that because you thought I was not unwell enough? Or somebody else is probably going to need that ambulance that’s in more serious harm than me.

Kelly Tuttle 4:06
No, it was more of I know what happens to people in car accidents they usually get placed on a C spine board and a C collar which is extremely stiff so you can’t move your head and then you’re left on that board in the emergency room until a doctor can come and see you and they do a CT scan of your neck to make sure you don’t have a cervical fracture. And then you get released and examined for other injuries and I didn’t want it. No one did what I did. Please do not listen to what I just did.

Bill Gasiamis 4:53
I’m gonna gotta pick this scab a little further now Kelly. So you’re a nurse how many years in nursing at that stage?

Kelly Tuttle 5:09
Close to 3027 years, something like that.

Decision-making after a car accident

Bill Gasiamis 5:13
And if you turned up on the scene, and there were another two people on that scene that were involved in their collision, and you were just a passerby, you would have said, I’m a nurse, everyone doesn’t do anything, don’t move, lay flat, do this, do that you would have taken control of the situation, you would have made sure don’t move your neck, you would have said all these things, you would have checked out everything.

Bill Gasiamis 5:36
But somehow that doesn’t apply to you. Because and don’t get me wrong, I see this, across all the people who I interviewed their stroke survivors, they might have a whole bunch of different backgrounds. But they never wake up in the morning thinking I’m going to have a stroke today so therefore, I’m going to do all the right things.

Bill Gasiamis 5:57
They always think it’s not going to happen to me. So you know that the procedure to protect the neck to make sure there are no fractures is to potentially save a life, and make sure that a disability doesn’t happen. Make sure that the person doesn’t end up not walking, or not being able to participate in life, etc. There’s a whole bunch of reasons why they do it. Did you feel well enough? And you made a decision based on how you felt that none of those things were necessary? I’m okay.

Kelly Tuttle 6:33
Well, it’s not like I had clear thinking. You know, your adrenaline’s going, you’re working off adrenaline. I’m not sure to this day, if I had lost consciousness. Obviously, in hindsight, I had a brain injury. And all I went into was thinking, not that it was good thinking, I’m not saying it was, I’m going to shake this off, I’m fine, I am gonna go to work the next day, I can’t take time off I was training for my third degree Black Belt in karate, and I’m training for the purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Kelly Tuttle 7:31
So I had a lot on my plate, and I did not have time to sit and relax. But I also don’t think that my thinking was clear. And I’d like to emphasize that. So if a caregiver or our friend sees this happen to a friend, you really should keep a close eye on them. Because they may not be thinking right, their brains not working right.

Kelly Tuttle 7:59
It’s, you know that it’s had an injury. So they’re not going to be making good decisions. Myself, I lost my self-awareness. So I wasn’t aware of my limitations. I kept trying to push myself. I ended up falling asleep at the wheel down the road because I was suffering from Neuro fatigue, which stroke survivors are very aware of.

Bill Gasiamis 8:26
Yeah down the road usually about months later.

Kelly Tuttle 8:31
Yeah, I think a couple Yeah, it was like two or three months later that around that period, I had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Bill Gasiamis 8:41
We’ll talk about that as well then. So you’re tough as nails, you’re Brazilian Jujitsu, you’re 3rd Dan black belt, martial artist. You’re, you know, you’re an alpha personality. I mean, nothing is getting in the way of you shaking this off and walking away and going back to business as normal.

Bill Gasiamis 9:07
It completely makes sense to me. And I get the stories, almost exactly. Identical story for somebody who’s had a stroke, you know, I’m gonna shake it off, I’ve got work to do, I’ve got appointments to get over that stuff to do. Everyone’s got stuff to do everyone’s busy. And they can’t possibly comprehend that this thing is something that they need to attend to the numb leg, or the dizziness, or the sinking feeling in the gut or, you know, these strange things that they’ve never experienced before.

Bill Gasiamis 9:38
They don’t have a reference structure to be able to go, Hey, this is familiar to me. I know what this is. I’m going to do something about it and you might have to be a nurse or you see the other end of it. You see people turn up to the hospital, but you have never been the person who’s becoming the patient.

What caused the traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Bill Gasiamis 10:02
You’re never seeing that part of the process. You’re just seeing the person on the other end of that process. So you’re making the wrong decisions, in hindsight, but the right decisions in your mind at the moment. How do you think you sustained the actual brain injury? Did the airbags go off? Did you hit your head anywhere?

Kelly Tuttle 10:24
Yes, the airbags went off. I had bruising on my forehead. So I knew my doctor could tell there had been an impact. And so you know, when I looked back and was researching brain injuries and how to recover, I realized I had the acceleration-deceleration type injury where the brain when you’re suddenly stopped, will slam against the front part of your skull and then bounce to the back and then maybe a couple more times.

Kelly Tuttle 11:05
But in my car accident, I had not only T-boned the person, but my car twisted, and I think I got a little bit of that torsion-type injury along with that. And so that, as you know, can cause mayhem in the brain. There, I did eventually down the road, I had a specialized MRI and I did notice it did account for diffuse axonal damage.

Kelly Tuttle 11:43
And that’s when the little connections between the brain cells and neurons are severed. And so that that did show up. And I just think kind of, you know, that’s what you would find on that type of injury. So people should be aware of if they have a fall, anything that sudden, you know, sudden stop, you steal it from an acceleration, deceleration quickly. And then any fall that there’s some twisting going on, is going to make recovery a little bit tougher.

Bill Gasiamis 12:23
axon damage, is that localized? Or is it spread over a large area? Do you are you able to sort of know, to what extent that damage has occurred?

Kelly Tuttle 12:35
Not me, I don’t know how to read MRIs. It was just read on the MRI report, and I imagine it is a generalized injury, as opposed to an ischemic stroke where it’s more localized.

Bill Gasiamis 12:53
Okay. So could be a lot more of the brain impacted than what might happen in a bank to the head, that is just direct the director to one location. So for example, if you just hit your head, on, on a window on a car windscreen in a slower collision and collision that wasn’t so dramatic, you might have just had localized damage. But in this case, you’ve not only hit your head forward, but your brain may have hit on the inside at the front of the skull.

Bill Gasiamis 13:31
But also at the back of the skull. And then the twisting also created an additional layer of the challenge of damage to the brain. So when you finally realized that things weren’t right, was that soon after your husband picked you up? How did you finally realize that this collision, I’m not shaking it off? It hasn’t been? What I thought, I’m not going to just walk away from this.

Intro 14:03
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. How long will it take to recover? Will I recover? What things should I avoid? In case I make matters worse, and doctors will explain things that, you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask.

Intro 14:27
If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you’re finding yourself in that situation. Stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com where you can download a guide that will help you it’s called Seven Questions To Ask Your Doctor About Your Stroke.

Intro 14:46
These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke. They’ll not only help you better understand your condition. They’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website. Now, recoverafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.

Kelly Tuttle 15:06
Um, it was the biggest thing that was a trigger was I went out to lunch with one of my nurse practitioner colleagues who was working in neurology. And she was curious about my recovery, and thank goodness. And she asked me how I was doing. And I mentioned that I had fallen asleep at the wheel. And she was like, what? You fell asleep at the wheel? And I was like, Yeah, I fell asleep at the wheel.

Kelly Tuttle 15:37
So now I have to take a nap, you know, halfway in between work and home. And good things. That’s okay. Well, first of all, who thinks it’s okay to slightly close your eyes and put your head back while you’re driving? I did that, you just don’t think clearly, you know? And so, fortunately, she said, that’s not okay.

Kelly Tuttle 16:05
She was very nice about it. But she’s basically like, that’s not okay. You need to get a head CT, I still haven’t had any head imaging at this time. You need to see a neurologist and you need to see a physical medicine rehab doctor, and she said, PMR, I was like, what’s PMR? And she’s like, Oh, it’s a physical medicine and rehab doctor, and I’m like, Oh, okay.

Kelly Tuttle 16:35
And it turns out, you know, I went to school and learned, they were for psychiatrists. And now they’re known as physical medicine, rehab doctors. And as you know, they specialize in injuries to the central nervous system in the brain and spine. So they’re the person you want to see, after a head injury or a stroke. For sure, rather than then a neurologist, people think, oh, I should see a neurologist.

Kelly Tuttle 17:05
Well, I’m a neurology nurse practitioner. And what I learned is that they take care of people with brain diseases like Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy, so they’re not going to be too much help for someone with a brain injury, or a stroke.

Kelly Tuttle 17:25
Because stroke is also like, seriously, the foundation of recovering and preventing a second stroke is a lifestyle, right? You gotta have the exercise gotta eat well, you got to have your numbers looking good. If you have diabetes, that needs to be controlled, if you have hypertension, that needs to be controlled, your cholesterol has to look good. You know, and that’s a lot of lifestyle stuff. And your primary care doctor, your regular physician is very good at helping you with that.

Common issues in seeing a neurologist

Bill Gasiamis 17:57
Okay, this is a really important thing that you’ve just said, because I have so many conversations with people who saw the neurologist, and they’re just perpetually frustrated with the fact that they don’t do anything. And they can continuously complain about the fact that I went to the neurologist, and the neurologist was useless. That can’t be useless. Neurologists know a lot of things about brands but what they are struggling to do is guide somebody on the path towards recovery, like what should I do? How should I do it, etc.

Bill Gasiamis 18:33
That’s the thing that they struggle with. Stroke survivors go there looking for answers thinking that this person will advise them on what might have caused the stroke. If it was an ischemic stroke that doesn’t seem to have a cause, for example, where the damage is what they can do to rehabilitate it.

Bill Gasiamis 18:53
If there’s no information like that then you just don’t seem to be able to do that. We’ve got through now almost, this is probably 298 episodes, and I still haven’t been able to help people with what to do next. If your neurologist can’t help you, so just so we can emphasize it. Stroke Survivors should be seeking out the assistance of a physical, what was it?

Physical Medicine Rehabilitative Doctor

Kelly Tuttle 19:23
Medicine Rehabilitative Doctor PMR is usually what you may hear their title being and they are really good stepping stones to getting you to the right care now. There are different strokes as you are well aware bill, there are people who can get discharged who are discharged to read have facilities because they need intensive care, which I always recommend, if you’re discharging doctors say, you should go to a rehab facility because the, the physical therapy, occupational therapist, speech therapy is so intense, it’s gonna make a difference in your recovery.

Kelly Tuttle 20:24
But if you’re one of those people who has a small stroke, then you will get discharged home. And, you know, if you have a stroke, that doesn’t affect, like, a side of your body, maybe it just affected your speech for a little bit. And now you’re having maybe some cognitive issues with like problem-solving or speaking, then outpatient, we should also see those specialists, like the speech therapists, occupational therapists, the physical therapist.

Kelly Tuttle 21:10
If you do have some mild issues, like some hand weakness, or some leg weakness, your physical therapist is going to help you with that, if you have balance issues, your neuro therapist is going to help you with that they’re amazing also. And don’t miss out on those therapies. They’re so important, and they’re so specific to what’s going on with your brain. So they’re wonderful professionals who have amazing input to provide for you and your family.

Bill Gasiamis 21:51
Yeah, lovely bits of advice there, we’ll make sure that people can go to the show notes and get the lowdown on that and find out if they have somebody near their area, or be able to look for the names and the titles of those people and then see whether or not they can go there. Go to their local Google and search for those types of services if that’s what they need.

Bill Gasiamis 22:19
So your husband has come to pick you up. We haven’t got to the stage where you’ve finally gone home. A couple of months later, a little while later, your amazing colleague says something’s not right. But in that time between the collision and your colleague going hang on a sec. This is not right. Did you go back to life as normal? Was life? Okay? Was there some signs in hindsight that things were not right other than the fatigue?

Kelly Tuttle 22:59
Ah, yes. So I went to work the next day. And my friend, one of my friends drove me. And when I got to a meeting, I was meeting with a large group of nurses. They all noticed that I wasn’t acting right or speaking correctly. We were gonna go take a break. And so I say, Hey, let’s go out and get some Star Track. And they’re like, What, and I was gonna get some Starbucks. And they, you know, we laughed it off, but I did get the you will see your doctor tomorrow.

Kelly Tuttle 23:41
Speech. And I did. My doctor diagnosed me with a concussion and took me off work for two weeks. And I thought, I got this feeling that I was supposed to do better in two weeks, and I can go back to life because remember, I was in I was biting at the bit to keep training for my black belt test. Yeah, and so I was so yeah, I went back to training, working at anything, you know, that I had on my plate at the time I was still trying to address and I found that I had difficulty doing Katas that I had been doing over and over again for 13 years prior.

Kelly Tuttle 24:34
And I tell my foot to move forward it would step back. I used to train for hours and I couldn’t even do a Kata for two minutes without being short of breath and having a massive headache. My husband was helping me train he called out a Kata and the name of the Kata. And I was too mediately do and I wasn’t, you know, remembering the moves or what to do, or I was mixing up the names of things I had been doing for over, you know, 10 years.

Bill’s Book: The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened

Bill Gasiamis 25:17
We’ll be back with my guest in a minute. But first, let me tell you about my new book called The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. When you move past the triggering title, you can read a book, which is about the 10 tools for recovery and personal transformation after a stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 25:37
It tells the story of 10 stroke survivors and the steps that they took, that got them to the stage in their recovery, where from a personal growth perspective, stroke transformed into one of those life experiences that on reflection filled with many opportunities for growth and personal transformation.

Bill Gasiamis 25:56
In the book, there are chapters on nutrition, sleep, exercise, how to deal with the emotional side of stroke tips and tools for mental well-being, and much, much more. To find out more go to recoveryafterstroke.com/book. To grab a copy, just typed my name, Bill Gasiamis to the amazon.com search bar.

Kelly Tuttle 26:17
So those were some signs. I also had difficulty with my memory, I would review one of my patient’s charts in my office and then go to see my patient. By the time I saw my patient, I had forgotten everything I reviewed. And so I had to take notes and carry the paper with me to the room to remember what I had just read. So there is that memory issue. I also started wearing headphones, because the conversations outside my office that I normally was able to filter out I couldn’t handle anymore.

Kelly Tuttle dealing with sensory overload and other invisible challenges

Kelly Tuttle 27:06
And so I started wearing headphones just to kind of block that so I could concentrate. I had light sensitivity and I had dizziness and nausea. Whenever I would work on a computer or scroll up and down on my phone, and I couldn’t watch the TV, it was too bright, it was too loud and things moved too fast on it. So those were a few of the things that happened in the beginning.

Kelly Tuttle 27:48
And then I ended up failing my third-degree black belt, of course, you know. And I was upset about it. And my normal personality would be I’d be upset for a couple of weeks. And I’d say I’m gonna pick myself up, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna even do it better. But I was so emotionally upset about it six weeks later. That is so not me. You know. And so I had a lot of emotional issues, and irritability and anger and stuff. And you know, when you look back Well, those are symptoms of a brain injury.

Bill Gasiamis 28:29
Everyone listening here is just relating with you. Everyone’s just holding their heart going oh my god, Kelly. We know what you went through. We get it what’s your self-talk like? Because you know, your two weeks at home, I’m going to be better than I go to work and then things are not good. And then I can’t get my next Dan level kind of over the line.

Bill Gasiamis 28:57
I can’t do all these things. What are you saying to yourself other than being emotionally upset six weeks after you’ve failed your black third Dan What are you saying to yourself? Are you looking at yourself in the mirror and going through with you or how do you go about life when everything is so flipped upside down and you’re not recognizing this version of yourself?

Kelly Tuttle 29:27
Well, first of all, I was I didn’t have that self-awareness. So I couldn’t even go this is not me. That took a long time to come back. And I And and it was one day I tried to go back to the dojo to train and I laughed upset just, you know, demoralized and I went home and I was like This is not me, something’s wrong. And I went back and I read all the paperwork that I had had from the concussion and stuff that I looked at to help get better.

Kelly Tuttle 30:11
And I realized, oh my gosh, I’m getting worse, not better. And so then I sat down with my husband, and I said, Yeah, I think I’m not better yet. And he goes, Yeah, you’re not, your brains not right. So I was like, why didn’t you say something to me this whole time? And he goes, I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.

Bill Gasiamis 30:51
What a legend.

Kelly Tuttle 30:53
Yes, yes. And so that’s when I, you know, started to that. And then shortly after that, I talked to my colleagues and said, hey, you need to get seen by specialists get the head scans, and so forth.

Bill Gasiamis 31:08
Your husband was afraid you were gonna put him in a headlock or something?

Kelly Tuttle 31:12
Probably.

Bill Gasiamis 31:17
Oh, my gosh, I’m gonna let you continue the conversation, your story in a minute, but your sensei is probably going, Who is this person? What is going on with her? Why is she no good all of a sudden, she was my perfect student, she, you know, she’s done everything, she’s a lethal weapon. And now she’s not thinking straight, she’s not able to achieve anything. Was your sensei giving you any feedback? Were the people in the dojo giving you any feedback?

Kelly Tuttle 31:51
You know, what I have thought about that. And I thought, you know, they had some students that were training along with me, and they had injuries, broken foot, and, and so forth. And they modified their tests for them. They were able to pass their tests after the modified test and accommodations for their injuries. But they didn’t do that for me.

Kelly Tuttle 32:22
And now looking back, knowing what I know, I realize it’s because my injury was invisible, and that they were not knowledgeable about concussions and brain injuries and how they can affect their students. So that’s a knowledge gap. That is out there. And I realized after the fact that they just didn’t know they had no idea. I mean, I didn’t have any idea. So I was having a hard time explaining. I just kept saying, Oh, my neck hurts. I have a headache.

Unknown dangers in contact sports like TBI

Bill Gasiamis 33:00
I’ve had a couple of guys on the podcast who are BJJ practitioners, and they both had a stroke because of a carotid artery, or dissection because of a choke. That particular injury seems to be common in the sport. However, people within the dojo don’t understand what choking somebody could do to the neck, or the blood vessels today, or down the track a few days down the track, there’s no awareness whatsoever.

Bill Gasiamis 33:38
It’s a big issue. So that’s why I asked, I was just curious. And I didn’t expect you to say that I of course, they were completely aware of what had happened, and they were onto it and all that kind of stuff they couldn’t possibly be they’re not medically trained at all. And they don’t understand what it looks like to have an invisible neurological condition unless they’ve had one.

Bill Gasiamis 34:02
And unless they spent so much time like you and me writing books about it, and being on podcasts and interviewing people and all that type of thing. So we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt will, will, will say look, that makes sense that they didn’t respond. Your husband also is in the same situation, you know, he’s just going along.

Bill Gasiamis 34:26
Life as per normal, thinks you’re a little bit off, doesn’t want to say anything. Because he’s not certain doesn’t want to upset you. But eventually, he says something. And then how does the next part of the conversation go? What happens after he says I didn’t want to want to hurt your feelings.

Kelly Tuttle 34:47
Like why did you tell me it’s like, Well, I kind of tried, and he did. He said, Hey, I don’t think you should continue training. I think you should take a break. I don’t think you should go and do your testing, but I didn’t hear it because I was just like, I want to meet this goal, I’m in the best condition fighting strength that I’m at, you know, because I’ve been training, I was, you know, trained 13 years, but I trained intensely the year before.

Kelly Tuttle 35:19
And I didn’t want to give that up. And, but he did try. And then the other thing was that I was having to sleep a lot. And I was sleeping like 1214 hours a day, and taking two-hour naps, you know, on the weekend, and then I go to work, come home, go to sleep, and then wake up, go to work the next day and do it all over again.

Kelly Tuttle 35:48
And so what happened was, all the childcare and the household stuff fell on him all of a sudden, and he, you know, was very overwhelmed. He’s just like, where’s my partner, you know, it took her away and replaced her with this person who is not so nice to get along with. So he’s also not thinking clearly because he’s just trying to be there for the kids and stay on top of the dinners and laundry and all that stuff, too. So it was a rough couple of years. In the first two years after my brain injury,

Bill Gasiamis 36:33
yeah. Did your husband at the time? Notice that it was all this stuff started after the collision? Was that dot kind of realized? She’s not been the same since that collision. Did that happen at some stage? Or was that an aha moment later on?

Kelly Tuttle 36:55
I think he noticed it right away. Yeah, cuz he was the one with a brain that was working.

Bill Gasiamis 37:04
Yeah. I know. I mean, like, it’s so relatable all the stuff that you say, because no matter because stroke survivors all have their version of a TBI. And we’re all sensitive to light. We’re all sensitive to sound. I was out at the most amazing place in Melbourne today, yesterday with my wife. It’s overlooking the river. It’s under some massive beautiful trees, it’s outside, there’s tables.

Bill Gasiamis 37:36
There’s a restaurant there. You know, it’s nice and thin. When I say nice and thin, you know, it’s maybe only about six meters deep, but it’s very, very long. And it’s on the most amazing riverbank. There are people everywhere, it’s a beautiful, sunny autumn day. And they’ve got music. On the above our heads in the in the trees, the speaker’s net, and There’s music everywhere.

Bill Gasiamis 38:06
And it’s chilled. But down below, there is a barge. And so the place is called Arbery. So it’s called Aubrey because it’s under a whole bunch of trees. However, just the, on the river, where the path is where the sidewalk is where people walk along the river, there’s a floating version of it, they call it bribery of float. And they are the same business but different venues.

Bill Gasiamis 38:34
And they’ve got different music playing on the float right on the barge. And it’s pumping over there. Everyone’s having a good time. And they’ve got music on this side. And I’m losing my mind. And Christine says, all of a sudden, she says, You these guys, they should just switch the music off from one of these venues because we can’t hear both of them correctly.

Bill Gasiamis 39:01
And just as soon as she says it. I’ve just gone. Oh my god. That’s why I’m losing my mind here. I can’t cope. It’s too loud. And on my left ear, I’m getting this sound on my radio, I’m getting this sound, and the mash of him is just driving me bananas. And I’m just not enjoying myself and I. And I said to her about 10 minutes later, our meal hadn’t come yet. So we’re still waiting to eat.

Bill Gasiamis 39:27
And I said to her, I can’t get what you said about the music. Now I’ve noticed that I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s driving me bananas. And we just sit in there. And she’s going oh my god, what sort of a date would this have been if we were meeting on a date I would have left you here. And I was acting all strange and being weird and I couldn’t sit down. My left-side deficits were playing up because it was a little bit warm. I was just I was just not I was like fidgeting. I couldn’t sit still I couldn’t do anything.

Bill Gasiamis 39:59
And I still look I don’t know what’s going on. Well, I know what’s going on. But coming back coping or can’t deal with all this, anyhow, the meal came, we ate, of course, her meal came first mine took another five minutes to come I ate after her. And then finally, when we got the meal done had to get out of there, we just got up and left. And I realized, and we were walking around the central business district in Melbourne.

Navigating neuro fatigue and noise cancellation technology

Bill Gasiamis 40:24
It was a Saturday afternoon, and it was pumping those people everywhere, it was a beautiful day, and all the cafes were filled. Our business district is also very heavily residential. And we were, we had done a fair walk. So I said, so we were going to hit towards the car and I said to her I don’t think I can walk towards the car, I’m stuffed, let’s just go and find the closest spot to sit down and have a coffee.

Bill Gasiamis 40:24
And we sat down at this place, which is technically what we had been doing all day, just walking and sitting in places having a snack, a coffee, whatever. But I couldn’t get back to the car. And I said, well, let’s just go and sit somewhere we sat down. And I think we just sat there, we had one coffee, we dragged it out for about an hour as long as we could drag it out.

Bill Gasiamis 41:14
And then I kind of recharge my batteries. And then we walked to the car. And that’s me every day like, my day has to be strategic. I I’ve lost that ability to wake up in the morning, and just do all my things and not hit those walls that just turn up out of nowhere. And I’m 12 years, you know, 12 years out. So it’s a really interesting thing to observe how my day went yesterday was still a lovely day.

Bill Gasiamis 41:53
But my wife doesn’t see my deficits, rather, she doesn’t see my deficits either. And every once in a while, it catches her off guard because everything is normal. And I was freaking out because the music is different. She’s just going oh my god, you wait, what are we going to do? I’m like I don’t know we’ll get it. It’ll be fine. We’ll just get through it. So strange, though.

Kelly Tuttle 42:21
Yeah. So when I was researching for my book, what I learned is that a lot of cognitive fatigue, or neuro fatigue, that was neuro fatigue, what you’re having is related to the brain wanting to run efficiently. And so these researchers were looking, they were using MRI imaging. And then you know how, if you have a brand new car and it’s running, it runs efficiently.

Kelly Tuttle 42:50
And then if you compare it to an older car that wasn’t taken care of as maybe hasn’t had an oil lube and 50,000 miles or something you put the same amount of gas well the newer cars just going to use up less fuel to get to a to b whereas the older car the that has been taken care of uses up more fuel Well that’s the same thing with the brain, the brain likes to run efficiently when it has damages, broken connections, cell debris and needs to clean out.

Kelly Tuttle 43:27
If it’s spending energy on Neuroplasticity, building up those connections, then it has less energy for things like visual filters. That’s why the sounds of the light seem to be audio filters. Because it doesn’t have the energy to block that out like you and I were able to do before our brain injuries. And the other thing too is sometimes with a brain injury, the brain loses the ability to differentiate between sounds.

Kelly Tuttle 44:09
So you suffer from sound overload and it gives dual attention to all sounds from the music to the conversation you’re trying to hear to the baby crying across the restaurant and it’s just overwhelming whereas before your brain would be able to go want to listen to this conversation. We’re gonna dampen this background noise you don’t have that anymore.

Bill Gasiamis 44:36
I love how you described that it gives dual attention to both sounds.

Kelly Tuttle 44:44
Yes, and the way I survived that because I still have sound sensitivity is through noise-canceling technology. Yeah. And there their headphones and earbuds that you can put into your We’re cancel out that sound. And they’re so advanced, they can kit you can connect them to your smartphone and control the amount of sound coming in via the app.

Kelly Tuttle 45:15
And those have been lifesavers for me, with that device, I’m able to hear a conversation with a friend better in a love restaurant, or even on an airplane, they assist me in hearing conversations because it’s cutting back that you know, the engine noise.

Bill Gasiamis 45:36
Are they small in size, are they as big as the headphones that you’re wearing now?

Kelly Tuttle 45:41
You can get both, I do have some smaller ones, but I would love to pull them out. But then they’ll activate and get my fun times. But you could do the small ones and just slip those into your ears, you know what else you can do. If you are working in a loud environment and you need to focus, you can put on these earbuds in turn the noise canceling on.

Bill Gasiamis 46:43
So that’s all right.

Kelly Tuttle 46:45
My earbuds

Bill Gasiamis 46:47
They did do that they connected.

Kelly Tuttle 46:52
Yes. But let me see if I get my get my video back up. But you can wear the earbuds and the headphones on top. And this will increase the sound control around you and allow you to focus. Say, if you’re writing a report, and you’re in an open workspace or your student you’re studying, you know, in a study hall or outside instant noises are breaking your focus. These are great tools to save your life. And when you utilize them, you are allowing your brain to save energy to not have to spend on blocking out these external noises. And you’re able to use that energy instead to focus on what you need it to or the tasks that you’re working on.

Bill Gasiamis 47:51
I love what you’re saying there, I used to take headphones, like the ones that you’ve got on, I used to take them to work and just put them on without switching music or anything that was just to keep my head feeling a little less overstimulated. And then recently, I discovered there’s a brand of earplugs called loop earplugs.

Bill Gasiamis 48:16
I’m gonna have a link in the show notes that just the earplugs but they’re able to have three different settings and change the level of noise canceling that they do. And they’re designed so that you can go and play, listen to a concert, and have a certain level of cancellation.

Bill Gasiamis 48:37
And you can be in a crowd and you can be in all these places. So for anyone watching and listening, just go to the show notes and see those links. I think they’re cool because they’re little, they’re inconspicuous. They just look like you’ve got a normal Apple or whatever brand earpieces in. And that’s it. You’re good to go. I love it.

Kelly Tuttle 49:01
I have a set myself.

Bill Gasiamis 49:03
Yeah, that’s good. Hey, you wrote a book. What’s cool is that you and I, we’ve got a lot in common. It’s that, that it’s that even though you’ve got like a head, that’s a little bit messed up, you’re always about solving problems, you’re looking for solutions, you’re looking for ways to help other people and give people information and tools. And I’ve got this download on my website.

Bill Gasiamis 49:31
It’s called several questions to ask a doctor after your stroke. And it’s been around for ages. It might be a little bit out of date and might need a couple of updates. Nonetheless, it has questions that you can take, you can print off and you can take it to your doctor. And you can say, all right, when did the stroke happen? What does that part of the brain do? And so on and who else can I see what other doctors do I need to visit etc?

Bill Gasiamis 49:58
People contact me and let me know how life-changing having those seven questions, even though they might not all be the correct ones for them, because it starts a conversation that they never could start before and then that usually sits them down the trajectory of knowing to ask certain people certain questions.

The Book: After The Crash By Kelly Tuttle

Bill Gasiamis 50:24
And you’ve got a similar download on your website. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But I do want to talk about the book After The Crash. Tell me a little bit about it. How did you get to the point of deciding that you should write a book about this situation, and what is the book, mentor accomplish?

Kelly Tuttle 50:46
So I didn’t come up with the idea on my own, I had another great friend recommend that I write the book. And so I just put it on the little to-do list and then five, at my fifth anniversary of my car crash, I decided to start writing the book. And the reason why I wanted to write the book was, my goal was to get back to work as soon as I could, because I was the single-income earner for my family, and I earned the health care benefits and so forth. And so I needed to get back to work.

Kelly Tuttle 51:21
And I wanted to get back to work. And I remember the first couple of weeks, like before, I was supposed to go back to work freaking out, like I don’t know, what I need to make my return to work successful. I don’t know how I’m gonna handle this, I don’t know how this is gonna go. And I had some great books on how to recover from a brain injury that I learned from but they weren’t niched down to returning to work what you need to return to work. So that was my goal, I wanted to fill that niche.

Kelly Tuttle 51:59
My book would focus on supporting you in returning to work or studying while your brain healed. And so it talks about brain injury symptoms, common brain injury symptoms, and the specialists who can help you with it. Because I also didn’t want to say, yeah, you can have dizziness after a brain injury, but not say, what to do next. Some books don’t say what to do next.

Kelly Tuttle 52:30
And I wanted to answer that question. And so I do have those answered in my book. And then I share all the strategies and compensatory tools that I had learned to support my successful return to work. And that’s the main part of the book. Then at the end of the book, I had five strategies to get back to life and to support my brain’s healing.

Kelly Tuttle 53:03
It talks about mindfulness, nutrition, sleep exercise, here in America, the American Disability Act, and we Family Medical Leave Act that helps protect your job when you take time off work to heal from an injury or a serious illness. And I also have ways to ask for accommodations for your disability from your employer, and then I talked about finances, which is important.

Kelly Tuttle 53:42
If your finances aren’t healthy, then you’re not going to feel healthy, or you’re going to have a harder time getting better if you’re stressed out about paying the bills. And then I talked about at the end, about letting go of the old things that you were in the past, before your injury, and how to embrace the new, the new you and your new brain.

Bill Gasiamis 54:08
That sounds amazing. Thought of things that a lot of other books have been thought of. And I think it’s going to be helpful for people to be able to access a book that has some information, again, to start thinking about solving problems that seem unsolvable. Especially when your brain is not working properly, and you’re trying to get through to the next stage.

Bill Gasiamis 54:30
This has been a great book for caregivers as well, family members, loved ones, partners, and all sorts of people will be able to benefit from that because if like you and I our partners are taking up the slack, then they might benefit from knowing which direction to hit. And that might make it easier for everybody, including family. So that’s cool. How long did it take you to write?

Kelly Tuttle 55:07
I started in 2020. It was published at the beginning of 2023. So I’d say about two and a half years to get it written. And I wrote it along with a self-publishing company. So they had writing coaches. And so, which is great, because I’m a nurse practitioner, I don’t know how to write. I didn’t know anything about marketing, or social media accounts, those kinds of things. And so they helped me out with that. And I think that helped with my brain healing, too, with all that additional learning.

Bill Gasiamis 55:51
Yeah, it does help for sure. I wrote my book took four years from concept to research to writing, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I mean, I don’t have my ability to process words and all that kind of stuff fatigues me, the usual stuff, you know, I’ve got to find ways to get through that while I’m in the zone in the writing zone, but then I get fatigued. It was a real challenge.

Bill Gasiamis 56:19
And I had a book coach as well because there was no way I was going to be able to do this somewhere, nobody would have said to me, how’s the book coming along? I would have said I, it’s not, you know, forget about it. I’m not doing it anymore. Yeah, I’m so glad I did it, though, your book has very, a few things that my book has in it. So three of those topics, nutrition, sleep, and exercise, are in my book as well.

Bill Gasiamis 56:45
And What’s cool is, that I wrote the book because the chapters were not chapters that I thought of, I’ve interviewed 10 stroke survivors, and they’ve told me that stroke was the best thing that happened to them. And without crying out without leading them down the path, to tell them why I said that. I got out of them, these 10 chapters. And then when I interviewed the next person, they had they tended to the same 10 things, and the next person, the same 10 things.

Bill Gasiamis 57:17
And what they were, they seem to be universal things that we all need to attend to, to start the healing journey and to sort of give it legs so to speak, so that you start to improve things marginally, on all these areas, and then they all add up. And then there’s a massive difference in improving. And I had this little bit of a aha moment, it was like, Well, okay, that’s what everyone needs to know about.

Bill Gasiamis 57:49
The only problem is that everyone else’s book says the same thing. Everyone has to go back and attend to all these things. And I thought, Oh, my God, I’ve just written another bloody book that everyone else has written the same book. But God’s sake, what’s the point of that? But what is cool is that it’s not the same book, it’s a completely different book like yours, your spin on nutrition, your spin on sleep, and your spin on exercise, will be completely different from mine, but they all attend to healing the brain, they all attend to making the brain stronger and better.

Bill Gasiamis 58:26
And that’s what’s cool about it is that it doesn’t matter where we come from those core 10 things that need to be attended to are universal, and getting different people’s perspectives on how to go about healing your brain. Even though they say the same, they have the same title, for example, at the beginning of the chapter, is important to get a lot of different versions of how to sleep at a lot of different versions that eat better the one so that you can find the one that works for you, and you can get the result that you need, right.

Bill Gasiamis 59:03
And I couldn’t get that result from reading somebody else’s book, for example, but I might get that result from you. And just picking up one thing out of a book that you didn’t know could be the game changer. It could be the one thing that then propels the recovery in the right direction. Now that it’s out, what’s the feedback been like? How do people respond to your book?

Kelly Tuttle 59:35
I’m very well. I’ve gotten several five-star reviews. And I’ve had some people invest a lot of time in to their reviews, and their reviews tell me that my book has reached the goal of my intention. That it’s a you know, they talk about how it’s a companion, because it understands what they’re going through.

Kelly Tuttle 1:00:05
And they talk about some of the things that I had put in my tools and strategies they hadn’t realized or thought about, and now are going to use or wish they had known back when they were dealing with whatever the issue was. They say that it’s easy to read.

Different learning curves especially after a TBI

Kelly Tuttle 1:00:27
And that was my goal, I didn’t want to talk a whole lot about my story, even though sharing your story is important. I wanted to get to the point, you needed to, if you have this, do this, and this, you know, if Yeah, I don’t want to waste anybody’s energy, their brain energy, you know, reading too much of a fluffy story, because I know reading time is limited when you have a brain injury.

Kelly Tuttle 1:00:55
And, that’s why my book is also on Audible, I read it for Audible because I know how difficult it is to read. I’m a big audible user myself and learned that I was able to learn information from listening to books. Before my brain injury, I was very much the person who had to read it.

Kelly Tuttle 1:01:18
I was not an audible, an auditory learner. However, after my head injury, I became an odd auditory learner. And so that was important to me to have both versions of the book available. Because, yeah, in the beginning, that was one of the things I did notice was my ability to read hours on in was diminished down to 5 minutes, 5-10 minutes early in my recovery.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:47
I always struggled to read for hours on end, I think I had some kind of a, you know, I had a dislike of reading, not because I didn’t enjoy learning from reading, but because books used to put me to sleep literally. And I struggled at school, I struggled ever, I never read a book, I think the first book I read was in my 20s.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:12
And when we had a book to read for English class, I would make sure the book had a movie attached to it. And we read, we were supposed to read the book, The Killing Fields when I was in school. And it was a book about the Holocaust that happened in Cambodia during the ’70s Khmer Rouge regime, right?

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:38
And I was like, Oh, my God, I’m not reading this book, there’s no chance and there happens to be a movie that came out and I went and read and watched the movie. And then I wrote my paper based on the movie. And I got high marks, and my friends were all annoyed and upset.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:52
And I’m like, guys, like, it’s the same thing. Like, once the movie, it’s telling the story, reinterpreted you know, get over it, you guys read the book and took ages. I don’t know how long it took you to read the book, but I saw the movie in two hours. And, and that was it, I was done. And I knew from back then that I had a different way of grasping information than learning.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:14
But of course, back then there wasn’t a lot of stuff available on Audible, there wasn’t an audible, you know, you had to buy cassette tapes, and CDs and all that type of stuff. And I remember the first massive amount of listening that I did, somebody told me to listen to the Tony Robbins cassette series, Tony Robbins has about 7 billion tapes that he made available in one of his programs, I think, Unleash the Power Within.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:46
And man, I was able to put that in the car while I was driving to work and then just listen to that. And then flip the tape over and then go on and keep listening to that. And I got through his 30 or 40 cassette tapes, quicker than I ever would have got through, say 30 chapters of a book or 30 volumes of a book or something like that. And it was a game changer because information was now able to enter my mind the way that it served me. And I didn’t know that I had this other method of learning.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:21
So for people who are listening, who want to read and can’t read a book, and perhaps might want to try listening, one of the things that I do now is I buy the book and the audible and I read while the person is narrating the book, and that’s an even better experience because there’s no I don’t have to get tired doing any of it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:50
My eyes are just scanning the words so I know what I’m up to. If I need to highlight something in my highlighter, and then I’m listening to the person tell the story it’s just two ways of joining the dots and embedding that information, a completely different experience to just reading or just listening. It’s amazing.

Kelly Tuttle 1:05:09
That is an amazing combo, I would never think to put those two together, I’m going to keep that I’m gonna steal that from you, and share it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:17
Yeah, give it a try, Kelly, because it’s just so gentle and easy to do. And you don’t have to think. Because the eyes and the ears are connecting the dots. And it’s just embedding it far better. So how, how thick is the book? Do you have a copy there? Can you hold it up to the camera? How many pages is

Kelly Tuttle 1:05:48
Is it not that many? Over 200

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:57
Yeah, perfect stroke survivors love that stuff. Yeah, brilliant. I love I’ve got the filter on all. I’ll make sure there’s There you go. Make sure there’s a copy of that on the show notes as well.

Kelly Tuttle 1:06:14
But it’s really Yeah, it’s really easy to read. The other thing too is at the end of each chapter, I have like a list of recaps. So if you forget or you just want to quickly look back on something, you can go to that list and it’ll remind you, and yeah, write in it, highlight it. Yeah, you don’t have to read it front to back. You can pick the chapter like I have. I think I have sound sensitivity. Just go straight to that. And get in learning about that.

The hardest thing about TBI

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:46
Yeah. Excellent. You know, with my stroke survivor guests, I asked them these three questions at the end of the podcast episode. So now I’m going to ask you, but it’s relevant. So what’s the hardest thing about traumatic brain injury for you?

Kelly Tuttle 1:07:06
Or me, it’s the fatigue. Yeah, the chronic fatigue, you go to sleep. And no matter how much sleep you get, you wake up. You don’t wake up refreshed. I remember waking up refreshed and bouncing out of bed. I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t since the car accident. And here I am eight years later and still don’t do that. So that is the hard part. Is living with fatigue.

What has TBI taught Kelly Tuttle

Bill Gasiamis 1:07:37
What has TBI taught you?

Kelly Tuttle 1:07:42
Oh, wow. It has taught me to have patience. And it has made me think even more empathetic and compassionate and understanding of others around me. And it has made me more grounded in the present moment. And I spend a lot less time in the past and the future now.

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:15
Has it made you a better nurse?

Kelly Tuttle 1:08:18
Well, you know, before my head injury, I was a cardiology nurse practitioner, I help people with our hearts. After my head injury after two years of learning about the brain, I was able to beg and plead myself into a trainee position as a neurology nurse practitioner. And I do feel it has made me a better provider.

Kelly Tuttle 1:08:45
Because I’ve been there and done that I have the T-shirt. I can hear what my patients are saying and put words to what they’re not getting out. You know, and they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s what I meant. You know, so I’m able to take these big kind of general struggles and say, Oh, you’re having difficulty with hearings because you’re experiencing hearing overload, and then I explain it and they’re like, Yes, that’s it. And so yeah, I feel like I’m a better ambassador between the patient and the care they need.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:27
Yeah, you’re a translator as well. You’re able to decipher what they mean and put it into words.

Kelly Tuttle 1:09:34
Yes.

A piece of advice from Kelly Tuttle

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:37
I love that. I hate that you had to go through what you had to go through to get there. But I love that you can do that. Other people are listening, that have all had a traumatic brain injury, all my guests and they’ll be someone that very early stage of their recovery, and they get to hear from me and you who are you’re eight years out I’m 12 years out and they’re kind of like, oh my God, like, will I ever be like that? What would you like to tell people who are just starting their journey or even a few years in? What kind of advice information encouragement would you like to offer,

Kelly Tuttle 1:10:18
That there is hope that you will get better. The thing is, is that every brain injury is as different as our personalities. And every road to recovery, therefore, is going to be different. And some of those roads are going to be shorter, and some of them are going to be a long highway. And you just don’t know until you get there. What you need to do is just be in the moment that you’re at, and do the best you can to support your brain healing.

Kelly Tuttle 1:10:51
You will have to learn over time, how to push yourself to help your brain grow stronger, but not push it so hard that you end up what I call regressing in your recovery. And that’s when all your past symptoms are unmasked, and you’re exhausted and you’re in bed for days trying to recoup, get your energy back. So it’s a lot of push and pull. The recovery isn’t a linear line. It’s gonna be like a dance.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:29
It sure is. Hey, Kelly, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Kelly Tuttle 1:11:37
Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed our discussion.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:41
Well, thanks again for joining us on today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kelly Tuttle to get a copy of my book about stroke recovery, go to recoveryafterstroke.com/book. To learn more about my guests, including links to their social media, and to download a transcript of the entire interview, please go to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes.

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:06
Thank you to all those people who have already left a review about the podcast on iTunes or Spotify, it means the world to me. And it makes a massive difference to how people who are looking for this type of content combine it. If you haven’t left a review and you would like to leave one.

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:26
You can do that by going to your Spotify, or your iTunes app, and going in leaving a five-star review and a few words about what the show means to you. If you’re watching on YouTube, comment below the video now this is starting to take off people are commenting, and we’re creating conversations on the different YouTube videos. So it’s great to see I love people who are interacting with my video and I also respond to all the messages.

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:54
Also, if you’re watching on YouTube, like the episode, and if you want to get notifications of future episodes, obviously subscribe to the show. Hit the notifications bell. If you are a stroke survivor with a story to share about your experience. Come and join me on the show. The interviews are not scripted, you do not have to plan for them.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:14
All you need to do is be a stroke survivor who wants to share their story in the hope that it will help somebody else who’s going through something similar to you. If you have a commercial product that you would like to promote that is related to supporting stroke survivors.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:31
Come and join me on a sponsored episode of the show. Just go to recoveryafterstroke.com/contact and fill out the form briefly explaining which category you belong to. And I will respond with more details about how we can connect via Zoom. Thank you once again for being here and listening. I appreciate you see you on the next episode.

Intro 1:13:54
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals. The opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience and we do not necessarily share the same opinion nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed all content on this website at any length blog, podcast, or video material controlled by this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill gassy armas.

Intro 1:14:24
The content is intended to complement your medical treatment and support healing. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health advice the information is general and may not be suitable for your personal injuries, circumstances, or health objectives. Do not use our content as a standalone resource to diagnose treat, cure, or prevent any disease for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional.

Intro 1:14:48
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Intro 1:15:13
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