Brain Injury

Four days after losing control of his bicycle and slamming - face-first - into an oncoming car, Matt Miller lay in the ICU at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Nerves controlling the left side of his face didn't work, and he couldn't close his left eye. His mouth zigzagged like a plunging stock-market table. Every one of his 32 teeth was lost, broken, or compromised. His jaw was wired shut, and he couldn't talk. "He looks like a person who's had a massive stroke," recalled Stephen Park, the surgeon who reconstructed Matt's face with titanium rods and screws.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn more attention to the plight of brain-injury survivors, as has the NFL's recent acknowledgment that some of its players are suffering neurological consequences from repeated concussions. But our health policies and treatment practices have yet to catch up to the staggering toll of this complex and insidious condition. Five million Americans are living with disabilities from brain injuries. There are 80,000 to 90,000 new long-term disabilities from brain injuries each year, and a new traumatic brain injury is sustained every 23 seconds.

The Bancroft NeuroHealth Institute for Professional Development and Research will hold "The ABCs of ABI," a conference on acquired brain injury, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. April 26 at the Cherry Hill Hilton on Route 70. The conference is designed to provide those who work with children with brain injuries knowledge about acquired brain injury assessment and how to handle behavioral, cognitive and clinical needs. Training sessions will be held on a variety of topics on pediatric brain injuries, including the mechanics of brain injury, characteristics that affect learning and behavior, and key teaching strategies.

Researchers have suspected for a while that people who sustain a single traumatic brain injury are more likely to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms later in life. Now a University of Pennsylvania scientist has helped bolster that theory with some hard evidence: irregular protein deposits in samples of human brain. The brains came from 39 people who had had a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury at some point but died from another cause, anywhere from one to 47 years later.

From the outside, it looks like any other suburban home. A white minivan is parked in the driveway of the spacious four-bedroom rancher in the Richwood section of town, and the house is surrounded by peach orchards, a covered patio and an above-ground pool - and sometimes by the footprints left in the grass by resident Joyce Toy as she paces outside, chatting to family members on a cordless phone. Inside, Toy bustles by the list of chores taped to the kitchen wall, bantering with her three housemates as they eat breakfast and crowd the kitchen counter to make their lunches before heading off to vocational training for the day. It is not the home's appearance but Toy and her housemates who make the house unique.

Calling the Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital in Malvern "one of the best I've seen in the world," Michael Bond, a pioneer in the field of rehabilitative medicine, toured the hospital's new $13.7 million brain-injury unit Tuesday. "It's the only facility I've ever visited in the U.S. or abroad where the people responsible for treating the severely disabled also had a hand in designing the hospital," he said. "To my mind, that's the way it should be, but it really is quite unusual.

Research by University of Pennsylvania scientists is shedding some light on why brain damage progresses long after a traumatic injury. The work also suggests possible treatments. Scientists have previously shown that head trauma damages nerve fibers - axons - that connect nerve cells in the brain. These fibers are meant to stretch during normal activity, but a fast blow to the brain can snap or stretch them too far, said Douglas Smith, an associate professor in Penn's department of neurosurgery.

Brian Forsyth is a lifelong Phillies fan who lives in Havertown The Phillies saved my life. Well, technically, a bicycle helmet saved my life. (Wear a helmet, everyone.) But the Phillies have helped heal the traumatic brain injury I suffered in a traffic accident in August 2007. The physical and emotional scars of that accident have required massive amounts of therapy. A lot of it has taken place at Citizens Bank Park. I attended the clinching 2007 season finale in a wheelchair, and I had to leave the game early due to overstimulation.

Cathy Crimmins misses her husband. He didn't die, but the man she married continues on a long road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury. She calls it an "incomplete death. " "You've lost a person, or parts of that person, but he's still there," Crimmins says. Crimmins was on an idyllic lakeside vacation in Canada in July 1996 when a speedboat navigated by a teen-ager struck her husband and injured his head, damaging the frontal lobes that control speech, movement and personality, and sparking a four-year journey from hospital to rehabilitation center.

Six-and-a-half years ago, Doug Walker and two of his college buddies were reveling in the carefree fun of a summer vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C. In the early morning hours of June 6, 1981, as the trio walked across a South Carolina highway in anticipation of the day's adventure, Walker and his friends, Lee Ann Moore and Danny Malm, were struck by a car traveling down the roadway at 60 m.p.h. Walker was hit first. His right knee was crushed and doctors were doubtful that he would ever regain its full use. Malm received a brain injury that left him in a coma for five months.

Sadness and another round of concern over head injuries in football followed reports of Junior Seau's suicide Wednesday. "Tough to hear the news about Junior Seau. One of the best LBs to play the game," Eagles linebacker Casey Matthews wrote on Twitter. "Had his throwback USC #55 jersey. 1 of the reasons I was 55. " Matthews grew up near USC and wore 55 in college. "Saddened to hear the news about Seau. Thoughts and prayers are with his family," Eagles linebacker DeMeco Ryans posted on Twitter.

It took six years, political pressure, and an online petition signed by 80,000 in a matter of days. But Thursday, Key Bank finally forgave the student loan for a Marlton student who died from a traumatic brain injury in 2006. "They said, ‘Effective immediately the remaining balance is forgiven,' " said Ryan Bryski, whose brother Christopher died after a fall. In a phone call Wednesday evening, an employee from Key Bank told the Bryskis, "We don't want to put you through any more undue hardship," Ryan said.

DEAR ABBY: My two children were in a terrible car accident and were both airlifted to a children's hospital. My son was released two weeks later, but my daughter is still there, suffering from traumatic brain injury. Abby, I was driving the car. Why is she being punished and not me? — Anguished Mother DEAR ANGUISHED: You're asking a question that philosophers have pondered for centuries — why bad things happen to good people. In many cases the answer is simply "fate.

Paul Pierce scored 24 points to help the Boston Celtics beat the Indiana Pacers, 86-72, in Indianapolis Saturday night. Ray Allen added 19 points, Kevin Garnett scored 15, and Rajon Rondo had 12 assists for the Celtics. Boston snapped a two-game skid and are now two games ahead of the 76ers at the top of the Atlantic Division. Danny Granger scored 20 points and Roy Hibbert had 17 rebounds for Indiana. The Pacers shot 35 percent from the field, made just 5 of 22 three-pointers and committed 19 turnovers.

  Ten years ago on April 5, Lauren Bilski was on the edge of her 12th-row seat next to her father watching her beloved Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins play, when a hockey puck hurtled off the ice, slammed her in the mouth, fractured her jaw, and knocked out three teeth. Her father, Joe, remembers hearing the sickening thud of the impact and turning to see his shocked daughter holding her face. Lauren, 10 at the time, remembers the blood drenching her favorite Penguins jersey, which all the team's players had signed.

Madison DiGioia loves to fly. She is 15, strong and trim, and her face lights up when she talks about how she loves to go airborne, to be tossed 15 feet in the air, nearly three times her height, to kick out, twist around twice, and land in the arms of her fellow cheerleaders. But she was grounded recently. On Jan. 3, at cheerleading practice at Washington Township High School, Madison took flight, did her kick and double twist, but was caught too low. The back of her head hit the bent knee of one of the girls catching her. Madison missed five weeks of school, and her concussion took more than two months to heal.

Ten years ago on April 5, Lauren Bilski was on the edge of her 12th-row seat next to her dad watching her beloved Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins play, when a hockey puck hurtled off the ice, slammed her in the mouth, fractured her jaw and knocked out three teeth. Her father, Joe, remembers hearing the sickening thud of the impact, and turning to see his shocked daughter holding her face. Lauren, who was 10 at the time, remembers the blood drenching her favorite Penguins jersey which had been signed by all the team's players.

Sarah Burke , a 29-year-old X Games star from British Columbia, died Thursday, nine days after crashing during a training run in Park City, Utah. Tests revealed that the pioneering freestyler, who helped get superpipe accepted into the Olympics, had suffered "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to her publicist. Superpipe skiing will make its debut in the 2014 Sochi Games. A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke crashed on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury during a training accident on Dec. 31, 2009.

A NORTHEAST Philadelphia man left out some vital information when he called 9-1-1 at 6 a.m. yesterday to report that his mother was experiencing chest pains. As paramedics were taking the 78-year-old woman out of the Kirkwood Road home on a stretcher, he mentioned that his pop was lounging in a recliner. Dead. For awhile now. "When the rescue guys are taking mom out, he says, 'Can you take my dad with you?' " said a source in Northeast Detectives. The 84-year-old father, who hasn't been identified, apparently spent Christmas in the recliner, but likely died on Christmas Eve. "He was dead for a couple days," the source said.