BrainLine News — June 2013

Superman: Suzanne Laboy's Blog

On March 1, 2013, Suzanne Laboy wrote this on her blog, "Superman" — "I arrived today to find him moving his arms. I reached to his hand and he grabbed it. He pulled me to his chest and gave me a hug. He is amazing." Only two short days before, Suzanne's husband, Peter, was shot in the head during a traffic stop. Peter is a 17-year veteran of the Alexandria, Virginia police department. He was flown to Medstar Washington Hospital Center with life-threatening injuries. BrainLine is honored to feature many of Suzanne's blog posts, which are keeping friends, families, and those pulling for Peter up-to-date and inspired by the strength, courage, and love of this family and community.

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What the Future Might Hold for Treating Brain Injury

"A great question is 'So you diagnose a brain injury, so what?' Currently, there are no FDA-approved therapies for acute injury to the brain other than t-PA for ischemic stroke [the intravenous drug tissue plasminogen activator that dissolves blood clots]. But the way medicine wants to go and will go is that ultimately you'll have your entire genome available to your physician … and all that that one's genome can predict." In BrainLine's video "What the Future Might Hold for Treating Brain Injury," neuroscientist Dr. Ronald Hayes talks about how — in the future — doctors will be able to map a person's genome, which could help guide how treatments are developed for brain injury.

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See more videos with Dr. Ronald Hayes >>

Father and Son: Life After a Brain Injury

"You want your son back so bad and you want him to have a normal life. It's not going to happen … all you can do is be there 100 percent." Tim Johns and his son, T.K., talk about the "peaks and valleys" they've had since T.K. sustained a severe TBI in a snowboarding crash. Watch "Gray Matters: T.K. Johns and Tim Johns," a powerful video excerpted from a project produced by Kentucky Educational Television.

Watch video >>
See another clip from KET's "Gray Matters" >>

For more information about TBI, please come visit us at BrainLine.org.

All the best from BrainLine.

Noel Gunther, Executive Director
Sharon Ladin, Director
Ian Collins, Senior Web Developer
Kelly Deckert, Associate Manager of Online Media
Leon Gittens, Project Administrator
Brooke Gushen, Project Coordinator
Brian King, Senior Multimedia Producer
Christian Lindstrom, Director, Learning Media
Victoria Tilney McDonough, Editor
Elaine Phillips, MSP, CCC/SLP, Research Consultant
Justin Rhodes, Associate Manager
Vicky Youcha, Ed.D., Senior Consultant

Newsletter Editor: Victoria Tilney McDonough