Suzanne McKenna can remember the moment in high school when she decided she wanted to spend her life studying the brain. But sometimes she can't remember what the refrigerator is called.
"It's like, uh, the box we keep food in," McKenna said.
McKenna was 31, had a doctorate and was an up-and-coming star in neuroscience when she was rear-ended by another driver at a Cary intersection in July 1998.
Since then, the life she dreamed of has been derailed.
McKenna, who walked away from the accident, sustained a traumatic brain injury - an injury far more common than you might expect. Every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 37,000 people are treated for brain injury in North Carolina emergency rooms.
"We call it a silent epidemic," said Sandra Farmer, president of the Brain Injury Association of North Carolina. "More people sustain a traumatic brain injury each year in falls, playing sports, in car accidents and in the military. There are more people who suffer brain injury than are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, AIDS and breast cancer combined."
Most of the ER cases are considered mild, but in brain injury parlance, the designation of mild vs. serious has more to do with how long a person was knocked out than with how significantly daily function is affected.
It is telling, for example, that McKenna's life-altering injury was officially deemed "mild."
If she was knocked unconscious in the accident, she doesn't remember it. She had been wearing her seat belt, and her head never hit the windshield or anything else, she said. By the time someone approached the car, she was alert.
She convinced the EMTs that she didn't need to be checked out at the hospital. In fact, her car was crumpled but operable, so she drove herself home. On the way, she stopped to see a friend, who immediately realized something was wrong.
"She said it was like the lights were on but no one was home," McKenna said.
What McKenna didn't know until later was that, even though she hadn't hit her head in the crash, the whiplash, in layman's terms, sloshed her brain around in her skull, severing critical connections.
It was easy at first to write off McKenna's symptoms. Right after the accident, she was in a daze. She had trouble finding some of her possessions but had moved just a day after the accident. It was a stressful time, so it was understandable that occasionally she'd get lost.
But then McKenna realized with alarm that she could no longer read. When she tried to write words, numbers appeared on the page. For the next four years, she would routinely find herself incapable of finding her way home - only to discover she was just blocks from her driveway.
It took intensive biofeedback and years of other therapies and operations for her to regain more normal function.
"Most people think that when you have a concussion, even a serious one, before long you're back up and back to normal," said Farmer, of the Brain Injury Association.
In truth, more than 12,000 North Carolinians are disabled by brain trauma every year. Many others are affected by brain injury and don't even know it.
"They present to the world as completely normal," Farmer said. "They may just be short-fused, or they may get confused easily, or they may be awkward in social settings."
McKenna still grieves the life she planned. She had a big grant from the National Institutes of Health and was beginning to receive calls to present her cutting-edge work at international neuroscience conferences when the accident occurred.
But McKenna has learned to appreciate what she does have. Doctors told her she would never work as a scientist again. She proved them wrong. For several years, she worked for a company that, fittingly, manufactures drugs for people who had strokes and other brain injuries.
More recently, she, like many people with permanent effects of brain injury, began experiencing seizures and had to take time off again.
So for now, she is working part time at the Brain Injury Association office in Raleigh's Cameron Village. Still focused on the brain. Still teaching others.
Just not in the way she had imagined.
Get the biggest news in your email or cellphone as it's happening. Sign up for breaking news alerts.
A Walk & Roll-athon to boost awareness of brain injury and the Brain Injury Association is planned for Saturday at Lake Crabtree Park in Morrisville.
Registration starts at 9 a.m.
For more information, visit bianc.net.
