2012 May 10th
from The Observer
For Eastern Oregon University student and softball pitcher Holly Martin, February 25, 2010 was both the luckiest and unluckiest day of her life. On that day, she suffered a life-threatening, life-changing head injury. Given the reported lack of care she received after the injury, Holly was lucky to survive.
According to an article in an Oregon newspaper called The Observer, Holly Martin was pitching during practice from a distance of about 10 to 20 feet (significantly closer than the regulation distance of 40 feet). The batter, who was using a composite bat, struck the ball directly back to the pitcher, striking her in the head behind her right ear. A length of chain-link fence had been set up as protection, but it didn’t keep Martin safe.
So far, there were four mistakes made: The pitching distance was too short, the batter should not have been using a composite bat, the protective cage was inadequate, and the pitcher should have been required to wear a helmet.
But as far as we can discern from the article, those problems were compounded by the coach’s actions after the injury occurred.
Once hit, Martin fell to the ground, unconscious and bleeding from her ear. While other players urged coach Melissa Wheeler to call 9-1-1, she ignored them and called a trainer instead. According to the article:
Martin was transported on a golf cart to the training room. The suit alleges she was kept in the training room about two hours before Wheeler took her to the Grande Ronde Hospital in her personal car.
At the hospital, Martin was diagnosed with a longitudinal fracture of her right temporal bone. She was flown to Emmanuel Hospital in Portland for treatment.
That is hardly an appropriate reaction to a head injury. The injured Martin should have been transported by ambulance after a 9-1-1 call. This was a serious injury. According to the article, Martin suffers from permanent severe headaches, memory loss, inability to perform tasks requiring sustained attention, trouble with math and deductive reasoning, and more.
“She had all the signs of a head concussion but they kept her there for over two hours,” [Holly Martin's mother, Dawn Martin] said. “My whole point is, why wasn’t 9-1-1 called? It took them two hours to call me, and then another half hour to get them to take her to the hospital.”
The Martin family has filed a lawsuit to recover economic damages and other costs. Apparently, the University is fighting the lawsuit on a few grounds, including that the statute of limitations had passed.
That would be a shame. Holly Martin has been harmed enough.
To read the full story in The Observer, click here: Softball player sues EOU over head injury
2012 May 7th
from Chicago Tribune
Junior Seau was a star. He was the kind of football hero that put butts on couches and raised Sunday TV ratings.
Junior Seau died on May 2 of an apparent suicide. In echoes of the suicide of another former NFL great Dave Duerson, Seau killed himself with a shot to the chest, presumably because he wanted to preserve his brain so that experts could determine whether he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a form of progressive brain damage caused by multiple concussions. It can cause mood changes, memory difficulties, neurologic impairments, and dementia.
The tragedy of CTE—make that one of the many tragedies—is that the damage can be suffered when a person is young, strong, and seemingly quick to recover from any injury… but there is no way to diagnose CTE. The only way to tell the extent and progression of the injury is to examine the brain after death. Hence, one of the new preferred suicide methods for people who believe they have suffered enough brain injury to cause CTE is a gunshot to the chest, preserving the brain for autopsy.
According to an article on the Huffington Post:
After defensive back Andre Waters’ suicide in 2006, Dr. Benet Omalu of the Brain Injury Research Institute at West Virginia University told the New York Times that the 44-year-old “Waters’ brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics to those of early-stage Alzheimer’s victims.”
When the Bengals’ troubled Chris Henry died, Dr. Omalu and his colleagues determined that the wide receiver suffered from the same chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He was 26 years old.
Seau was a former All-Pro linebacker who played for 19 seasons in the NFL, for the San Diego Chargers, New England Patriots, and Miami Dolphins. According to an article on Forbes.com, on the day Seau’s death was reported, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell handed out suspensions for the New Orleans Saints players involved in the team’s bounty program.
Have you heard about the bounty program? As we wrote in a previous blog, the New Orleans Saints had a bounty program, in which players were paid thousands of dollars for hard hits that knocked opponents out of games. Supposedly, players were paid $1000 for a “knockout hit,” and another $1000 if a player needed to be carried off the field. Those are just some of the tactics that have driven more than 1000 former NFL players to sue the league for their head trauma and potentially permanent disability.
How many more players and former players will have to commit suicide before the NFL puts more safety measures in place? Then again, maybe the hundreds of pending lawsuits against the NFL will be the deciding factors. Very often, safety and progress only come after an issue has been screened through the filter of the legal system: Bad actors go to trial, good laws evolve.
Better a courtroom than an autopsy room any day.
RESOURCES
To read the HensonFuerst blog about the bounty program, click here: “Organized Savagery” in the NFL
To read the full article in Forbes.com, click here: NFL’s Junior Seau Dies in Suspected Suicide
To read the full article on the Huffington Post, click here: Junior Seau–Changing the NFL Forever
2012 April 17th
After a head injury, patients face numerous physical and emotional challenges. During and even after hospitalization, there are many medical decisions that need to be made as part of treatment. But the very act of making decisions is a problem, according to research published in the April 11, 2012, issue of the medical journal Neurology.
According to an article in ScienceDaily, the severity of the injury directly corresponds to the amount of decision-making impairment. One month after the initial injury, patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) showed little residual impairment, while those with more severe TBI had significant impairment. This impairment can affect patients’ health in ways that go beyond simple decision making.
“Immediately following injury and during the rehabilitation and recovery period, patients and their families must make ongoing and often complex medical decisions, including treatment of brain trauma and orthopedic injuries, choice of rehabilitation programming and treatment of neuropsychiatric problems,” said Daniel C. Marson, J.D., Ph.D., professor of Neurology, director of the UAB Division of Neuropsychology and senior author of the study.
This study suggests that doctors and caregivers need to be more aware of what patients are, and are not, capable of. Patients may not be able to give consent to medical procedures for months after the initial injury. It could be that caregivers need to take a more active role in medical decision making for a longer period of time than previously thought.
Unfortunately, there is no test to help us judge when a patient is capable of making decisions. Caregivers will need to rely on physicians and other experts to help them make proper decisions for their injured loved ones. This study points out another reason why TBI attorneys are valuable members of a treatment team for people with brain injury–attorneys have experience dealing with the long-term needs of patients, needs that include help for caregivers who may need to take control over their loved one’s lives for months or years after the patient leaves the hospital.
To read the full article in ScienceDaily, click here: Head Injuries Often Impair
To learn more about how an attorney can help in TBI cases, visit our dedicated TBI webpage: www.lawmed.com/braininjury/
2012 March 5th
Thomas Henson Jr., managing partner of the catastrophic injury and complex litigation division of HensonFuerst Attorneys, spends much of his time focusing on cases involving traumatic brain injury, catastrophic personal injury, and spinal cord injury. He has personally represented hundreds of people—children and adults—with every type of brain injury, including concussion, coma, and brain bleeds. Henson is also a member of the Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice.
BIANC Board Member
In recognition of his role as a passionate advocate for the causes of traumatic brain injury prevention and treatment, Henson was recently invited to serve on the Board of Directors of the Brain Injury Association of North Carolina (BIANC). In this new role, he will work with other BIANC board members to raise funds and raise awareness of the life-changing effects of brain injury.
Henson has been a sponsor and member of BIANC for several years and has led HensonFuerst’s cycling team in its annual participation in Ride for the Rock, a charity cycling event that benefits BIANC, named in honor of a cyclist who suffered brain injury during a cycling-related accident.
“I am pleased to find another opportunity to help victims of traumatic brain injuries and their families, and I am honored that I have been asked to serve in this capacity,” Henson said. “The consequences of brain injuries can be tragic and are often overwhelming for those affected. Traumatic brain injury victims need and deserve our help, and the BIANC members do everything they can to maximize the quality of life for these victims and their families.”
Speaker and Author
Henson has also recently completed work on a book chapter. The book—The Miracle Mind: Sonya’s Story—was designed to help people retrain their brains after stroke. Henson’s chapter is a perfect complement, focusing instead on brain injury due to trauma (instead of stroke), and discussing how lawyers are often a critical part of a successful treatment team.
The chapter was publicly introduced on February 24, 2012, at the BIANC conference called “Building Community from the Inside Out.” There, Henson spoke about how attorneys can benefit brain injury patients, including helping them seek compensation for their injuries, providing medical and rehabilitation resources, and planning for long-term financial needs.
“I am honored to have been part of such a special group of people who gathered to exchange information and resources about brain injury, its consequences, and successful techniques for managing some of those consequences,” Henson said.
Miracle Mind-TBI Chapter
Brain injury patients nationwide are lucky to have such a tireless and passionate advocate on their side.
Thomas Henson Jr. can be reached at HensonFuerst Attorneys at 1-800-4-LAWMED, or via their website at http://www.lawmed.com/. If you have questions, HensonFuerst has answers.
2012 February 27th
Patrick & Sarah Jane Donohue
Patrick Donohue’s world is defined by two things: His daughter, Sarah Jane, and numbers.
When Sarah Jane was five days old, her baby nurse shook her violently, causing four broken ribs, two broken collarbones, and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). That injury sparked the interest in numbers. According to an article in Utah’s Deseret News, some numbers that Mr. Donohue is obsessed with these days:
- 765,000: The number of children and young adults sent to emergency rooms for brain injury in the United States each year.
- 80,000: The number who go on to be hospitalized for TBI.
- 11,000: The number who die of their TBI injuries.
- $10 million: The amount spent on brain injury research. (He compares that to the $4 billion spent on AIDS/HIV research and $1 billion on autism research, which combined afflict fewer people each year than brain injury.)
- 10: The number of different treatment plans TBI patients are likely to get if they visit 10 different doctors.
- HR 2600: The name/number of the bipartisan bill currently being considered in Congress also known as the Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury (PABI) Plan Act. This resolution would endorse a master treatment plan for brain injury, and create a network of 52 State Lead Centers of Excellence–one fore every state plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Dr. Ricardo Komotar, a noted brain specialist at the University of Miami Hospital, many people with brain injury may not even know it, especially if the injury happens during sports.
“It’s important to understand that only 15 to 20 percent of all concussions involve loss of consciousness. The other 80 percent are largely unrecognized.”
That has long-term consequences, he says, including cumulative brain damage. “You can present with early Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia. We’re seeing it more and more, the hits in sports more violent.”
The dementia-related disorders are the biggest issues facing adults who suffer brain injury, even minor brain injuries like concussion…especially after multiple concussions. But for children, the biggest challenges of brain injury are getting appropriate assistance in the school system, and helping them make the transition to adulthood. Experts say that about 90 percent of children in juvenile detention have brain injuries, making it not just a personal health problem but a public health and social crisis.
Concussion may be a dirty word
Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is better known by its more common name: concussion. But TBI activists and many physicians would rather we call call it just plain brain injury. Why? Because, according to Mr. Donohue, there’s a tendency to disregard injuries classified as mild TBI. “Imagine someone saying you have mild cancer,” he says.
MTBI may not cause the kinds of dramatic and devastating disabilities seen in patients with more severe brain injury, these mild injuries still require medical attention and coordinated treatment plans. Especially children, the youngest victims. And we all deserve to know that scientific and medical research is progressing, and it would be nice if there were sufficient funding that we have hope that someday TBI might become a treatable disorder, as opposed to a permanent disability.
To read the full article in the Deseret News, click here: TBI crisis as evidence mounts
2012 January 10th
What survives of a marriage when a spouse suffers brain injury?
According to an article in The New York Times, that’s the question being investigated by Dr. Jeffrey S. Kreutzer and other psychologists at Virginia Commonwealth University (V.C.U.) in Richmond. In addition, the psychologists are working to develop marriage counseling techniques for affected couples.
According to a 2007 article published in the journal NeuroRehabilitation, when a spouse suffers a brain injury, the risk of divorce is surprisingly low—approximately 17 percent. Well below the national average for uninjured couples. But the statistic may not be an accurate reflection of the health of the marriages—the couples aren’t necessarily happy. According to Dr. Kreutzer: “While people may technically be married, the quality of their relationship has been seriously diminished.” According to The New York Times:
Dr. Kreutzer and other psychologists at V.C.U. are among the few therapists in the country trying to develop marriage counseling techniques tailored to couples dealing with brain injuries. Traditional marriage counselors often hope to restore people and their relationships to their original luster. For Dr. Kreutzer and his team, recovery often means teaching uninjured spouses to forge a relationship with a profoundly changed person — and helping injured spouses to accept that they are changed people.
“Changed” doesn’t begin to describe what some spouses experience.
Depending on the severity of the brain injury, an individual may be considerably changed by the injury…so much so that he or she may seem like an entirely different person. Injured people often have difficulties with attention, concentration, memory, reading, writing, and speaking. They may appear confused, have trouble with physical coordination, and become impulsive—buying expensive items they can’t afford, take off on trips without notification, or other potentially damaging behaviors. And then there are the possible personality changes: aggressiveness, irritability, mood swings, depression, lack of motivation, and poor judgment. While every person experiences a different constellation of symptoms, even a small number of these symptoms can make the spouse of a brain-injured individual wonder what happened to the person they married.
The article in The New York Times talks about the experiences of Terry Curtis—who suffered brain injury from a tumor and the surgery needed to remove it—and his wife Vicky:
Mrs. Curtis, 60, was once drawn to her husband’s “sparkle,” she said. After the injury, he “flat-lined” emotionally, and he suffers from depression, anxiety and a lack of motivation. Her husband sometimes makes erratic decisions, she added, like the time he decided to take a do-it-yourself approach to the plumbing at their home in Coralville, Iowa. “Not a good picture when I got home,” Mrs. Curtis said. “And you can yell at him like a little kid, but he didn’t know any better.”
Once a software programming analyst, Mr. Curtis, 57, has “a lot fewer interests” than he did before the injury, and he estimates he has lost 90 percent of his friends.
“It’s a new you,” he said, “and they just can’t cope with that.”
It’s worse for a spouse, who lives with the changed person. According to the psychologists, the factor that seems to keep marriages from falling apart is guilt. It’s hard to be the kind of person who gets a divorce from a brain-injured person. The goal in therapy is to help the couple see that the person will not ever be exactly the same…that they will have to deal with a “new normal” in their lives…but that it may be possible to rediscover a new facet to the old relationship.
That may be the real definition of hope.
To read the full article in The New York Times, click here: When Injuries to the Brain Tear at Hearts
To learn more about traumatic brain injuries, visit our dedicated webpage here: HensonFuerst TBI page
2011 December 30th
Over the course of a year, we write hundreds of blogs. In case you missed some, here is a round-up of the most important traumatic brain injury (TBI) stories of the year. (To read any of the blogs, click on the title and you’ll be taken directly to the story.)
U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords
The year did not start off well. On January 8, 2011, a man went on a shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona. Six people were killed, 13 were injured, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head. The rapid response of the medical team saved the lives of a dozen people shot in the rampage, including Giffords’. Over the course of the year, her recovery has been better than anyone could have predicted, a tribute to the medical advances in brain injury treatment.
Long-Term Effect of Concussion
The biggest brain injury story by far is about the long-term effects of concussion, especially in athletes. This year, scientists linked multiple concussions to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a kind of central nervous system damage that happens when people suffer repeated head injuries, typically soldiers or athletes in high impact sports, such as football or ice hockey. Early symptoms of CTE include memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and disorientation. As the disease progresses, people with CTE show behavioral problems—poor judgment, aggression, sexual compulsiveness, erratic behavior, and drug and alcohol abuse—as well as increasing nervous system symptoms, including tremors, staggering gait, deafness, and dementia. Unfortunately, the only way to definitely diagnose CTE is to examine the brain of the affected individual during an autopsy. From kids to football players to hockey teams, concussion has been the biggest TBI story of the year.
Cheer Safety
What do you call an activity requires strength, stamina, flexibility, agility, planning, and coordination with team members? What if the participants were required to train with weight-training and aerobic exercises? And what if that activity was performed in gymnasiums, in stadiums, and on outdoor fields? And what if teams competed regionally and nationally? Sounds like a sport, right? Well, not to sports authorities. Cheer (what used to be called “cheerleading”) injures participants like a sport, including some devastating head injuries. That’s why we wrote a 3-part series on cheer as a sport.
How to Hire an Experienced Brain Injury Lawyer
TBI is a difficult, complex injury for doctors to treat…and for lawyers to pursue. If you are considering pursuing a legal case, it’s important to choose an attorney who knows the complicated ins and outs of brain injury. That’s why we’ve provided this guide:
VIDEOS
In addition to blogs, we also create videos about important health, medical, and legal topics. To see all of our available videos, please visit our YouTube channel here: HensonFuerst YouTube Channel
Here are links to some of our brain injury videos:
Symptoms of Concussion
Epidemic of Concussion in Youth Sports
Hiring an Experienced Brain Injury Lawyer
2011 November 15th
A new product is the latest tool to combat sports concussions. The Impact Indicator (by manufacturer Battle) is a chin strap that connects to a player’s helmet. It measures the force and duration of a hit to the head: When first connected, the impact indicator LED light on the chin is green…but after a hard hit, the indicator turns red. This can be a signal of a potential head injury, so that coaches and players can act appropriately.
The device, which costs about $200, is endorsed by former hockey star Keith Primeau. It is currently being worn by more than a thousand youth football players in the United States, and it can also be used by hockey and lacrosse players.
Primeau, now age 39, played in the NHL for 16 years before his fourth documented concussion forced him to retire from the Philadelphia Flyers. He still feels crippling effects of his head injuries: headaches, head pressure, dizziness and fatigue.
According to an article in The Globe and Mail:
Primeau said the Impact Indicator doesn’t prevent concussions but indicates when someone should come out of a game. Information is a weapon in the fight against concussions, he said. People can have an objective measurement rather than just subjective judgment of coaches, teachers, administrators and even physicians on the sidelines.
Once the LED turns red, there is a 50% probability of a concussion. At that point, a player shouldn’t take anymore head hits. It takes the guesswork out the equation: When the light turns red, the player should be removed from play and see a doctor.
Whether players, coaches, and team owners will ever fully adopt the new technology remains to be seen, but it seems like a no-brainer. We support measures that help preserve health and prevent brain injury. Paralympian Paul Rosen won a gold medal with Canada’s sledge hockey team. He believes that losing his leg in 1999 was easy compared with post-concussion symptoms. As he told TSN:
“Losing my leg was an absolute joke in the way I dealt with it compared to what I’m dealing with on a day to day basis,” said Rosen, who suffered a concussion after a sled hit him in the head. “Thing was, they told me to suck it up. We have to get out of this mentality, whether kids are 10 years old or playing professional hockey, is get out of that mentality of suck it up.
“One hit to the head is one hit too many.”
To read the full article in The Globe and Mail, click here: New chin strap flashes red
To read the full article on TSN, click here: Primeau believes helmet can cut down on concussions
2011 November 8th
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic and UCLA have discovered that people who suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI) are four times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than people who have never had a head injury.
According to an article on Digital Journal, the researchers reviewed the past medical records of about 200 patients, looking to see if those who had experienced head trauma at some time in their lives later developed Parkinson’s disease. Why might this be true? The answer comes from another research study:
The UCLA team found that brain trauma causes an immediate 15% loss in brain cells called nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons. The loss of these cells continued so that after about 6 months, up to 30% of those neurons were lost. It is the loss of these dopaminergic neurons that make a person more susceptible to Parkinson’s disease.
Although there is still no cure for Parkinson’s disease, this research may provide another piece of the puzzle that could eventually lead to prevention or more effective treatments. But in the meantime, the sad news is that people who suffer TBI need to be watchful for signs of Parkinson’s disease as they grow older.
2011 October 20th
The post-game video review was especially difficult at John C. Birdlebough High School. Administrators and coaches examined every frame of what will forever be known as “THE game.” The game when 16-year-old Ridge Barden died.
According to an article in The New York Times, the coroner ruled that Barden’s death was due to a brain bleed, also known as a subdural hematoma. But while the reason for his death is known, the actual cause is still a mystery.
“There’s nothing here; there’s still nothing there; there’s nothing there; there’s nothing there — and now he’s laying on his stomach,” Jeff Charles, the head coach, said while watching the sequence frame by frame.
Apparently, Barden had no preexisting condition, no history of head trauma, and no symptoms of concussion during the game. He had a state-of-the-art Riddell Revolution helmet. On hand at the game were two certified athletic trainers, and emergency medical technicians arrived with an ambulance within minutes. And yet, a catastrophic injury resulted in an untimely death.
“You can have the perfect plan in place but if all of these things happen, it can still result in a catastrophic injury and death,” said Kevin Guskiewicz, the chairman of the department of exercise and sports science at the University of North Carolina and a leading researcher on sports concussions.
During the game, Barden told his coach that he had a helmet-to-helmet hit, and that his head hurt. When he tried to stand up, he collapsed. He went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance. Two hours after the injury, he had died.
This is a tragic story all around. The coach is considering not returning for another season, despite the fact that everyone agrees he did nothing wrong. No doubt, his teammates—and their parents—will also be reconsidering whether to continue playing football.
The lesson seems to be that any head injury is dangerous, and you can’t predict the outcome of any one hit. Barden never had a chance to say “Yeah, I already had one concussions…I think that’s enough. Time to quit.” His first hit was his final hit. The fatal hit.
All we can say is stay safe. Protect your head. Barden’s death was a fluke. Nothing could have been done differently or better. Sometimes, life is dangerous.
To read the full article in The New York Times, click here: An ordinary football game
To learn more about legal options in the event of a traumatic brain injury, visit our website at www.lawmed.com. If you have questions, HensonFuerst has answers.