Hi, I'm Christine Brown.

This week on the book, Mark, I'm talking with Diane Cramer, coauthor of Second Lives The Journey of Brain Injuries, Survivors and Their Healers.

We'll discuss the memoir of Doctor Lilly coauthor, a neurologist who suffered a traumatic brain injury that transformed his life and approach to practicing medicine.

We'll talk about his stories and stories of other patients and healers featured in the book.

Join us.

Can you maybe start just by introducing the book to us?

Sure.

It is Dr. Ralph Lilly's memoir, and I was asked to be his coauthor because he'd not written a book before, and he was somebody who'd had a traumatic brain injury when he was 44 years old.

He was probably 83 when we started talking about the idea of his doing a memoir, and he was really interested in trying to pass on to people what it was like to experience a brain injury and the aftermath.

Because people aren't the same after a brain injury.

He himself had no memory of his first life, which is one reason why he called it Second Lives.

And he he recovered, retrained in the field of behavioral neurology, which is the part of neurology that specializes in someone's behavior after a brain injury.

And it's different from treating them like the neurologists who would treat them in the hospital immediately.

But he also wanted to focus on the loved ones who really are the ones who help that person recover and participate in life again.

Because Dr. Lee often would say discharged from the hospital just means you're not dead, which was one of his my favorite lines that that he would say because those people are treat they treat the acute injury and after that there are there's a host of other doctors and therapists who need to be called in to help that person get over some of the manifest stations that happen after a brain injury.

And it's their loved ones who help connect them to all of those people.

So he really wanted to highlight what what the caregivers or loved ones do that he calls healers because he said that's really where the healing comes from and allows that person to participate in life again in whatever degree they can.

Yeah, that that word healer, I mean, it's in the subtitle, if that's that important.

But it really is throughout the book because he feel it seems like if I can maybe put words in his mouth, it seems like he felt like that was the make or break in how your recovery went.

So other people who were featured had very strong healers to help them.

Some didn't, and that could make the difference in how their second lives went.

Absolutely.

That is exactly what he wanted people to understand.

And and then but then also, there's a lot of sympathy because that's not an easy job either, that the role of a healer is is difficult.

But also, I'm hoping very rewarding, too.

Yes.

That was one of the surprises that I had, was the gratefulness that some some of the healers expressed for this new role in their life.

Ferris Wheel burns mother Pat was one of them, and he was of the people we profiled.

He was the one with the most severe injury, and she, you know, she went every day to the rehab hospital and center where he eventually ended up living to help him in whatever way possible, and then also helped some of the other people who were there.

And she became eventually became a volunteer and helped other family members learn how to assist this person.

And one of the things that she pointed out was the staff here are wonderful, but they don't know Ferris I know Ferris.

I know that he he loved cars and I, you know, and so she was the one who was able to introduce various activities to him that were what he was used to before and that she knew would give him meaning in his life.

And so she was she was able to communicate that to many of the other loved ones, their family members.

Before we get too far into talking about the book, I know you're not the doctor.

You're the medical doctor.

What is a traumatic brain injury for people who may not know?

Well, that is a brain injury that's caused by some type of traumatic impact to the brain.

So, for example, it could be a car accident where your brain is injured from, you know, hitting the steering wheel or something.

But but that was another thing that really surprised me is the different ways that you could damage your brain.

And so the traumatic ones are some sort of an impact, but it could also be acquired in another way.

There was one gentleman that was profiled who was in the hold of a ship, and it had been fumigate it with methyl bromide, which was a fumigant for insects or whatever in the hold of the ship.

And, you know, basically it was poisoned.

There was another one who was riding his lawnmower and the engine caught on fire.

And he caught on fire.

And the heat from the fire on his body damaged his circulation.

And when your circulation is damaged and it doesn't get to your brain, then you have a brain injury.

So there are a lot of different ways that you can damage your brain.

That was very surprising to me, too, because I just think, you hit your head.

That's how you hurt your head.

But an end to that could be just accumulation of of a number of smaller hits.

Like there was that woman who rode horses and she fell a few times and maybe they weren't as catastrophic as getting hit by a car, but they added up to something.

Yes.

Kathy Fritch played polo and she loved playing polo, but there were enough concussions over time.

And in Dr. Lily was the medical director of the polo club in Houston, and he kept telling her, You need to stop.

And of course, you know, that's why she opens up her chapter.

I'm Kathy Fritsche, and I'm a fool because she didn't listen to him for quite a while.

Now, how did you meet Dr. Lily?

How did you start to work together on this book?

I knew him socially.

I think I got to know him best.

We were in the same book club, and, you know, we would run into each other at the theater in Brenham, Unity Theater, or whatever.

And we just happened to end up at the same writers workshop that Ron was Rozell Roselle was doing once in Brenham, and he was reading part of the first chapter, which he had written probably 50 times.

And he's talking about waking up in the hospital after this motorcycle accident and, you know, they tell him what's happened and he says, What's the hospital?

What's a motorcycle?

And I was just completely blown away.

And I really wanted him to write that book because I wanted to read that book.

So every time we'd run into each other after that, I would ask her, How's your book going along?

So when did that turn into you two working together on the book?

It was after probably a couple of years.

We we did another writers workshop together, and he eventually joined my my writer's group in Brenham.

And at a certain point, I realized that was probably not a good fit for him.

One reason is because a book wasn't a really good fit, because if you were going to be presenting something to the group that was Chapter seven and they hadn't read one through six, then they don't really quite understand what's going on.

But also he had difficulty with a group of people communicating and paying attention to everybody, you know, that was talking and we'd all talk at once.

And and so I said, You know, Ralph, why don't you hire an editor, you know, and work one on one?

And that will do that.

Yes.

So eventually asked me and it's like, okay, I want to read that book.

So I guess I'm going to have to help you write it that I was more than happy to.

So what was the writing process like?

Would he, like, write you a chapter and send it, or would you collaborate or he'd tell you stories and you transcribe?

How did that have the process work?

He had been thinking about this for a long time, and I said he'd written the first chapter multiple times and he had already laid out in his mind certain patients that he he wanted us to cover, and he already had talked with them or their caregivers, their loved one, their healer.

And he had asked them to write out an accounting of what their experience had been.

So he had all of that.

He had medical records, he had all these all this communication that he had done, emails or whatever.

And basically he just did this to me when I had to sort through all of that.

And we eventually figured out that, you know, you know, he obviously he was one who needed to write the first draft of any of the chapters, and he lived 25 miles from me.

And so we did a lot by way of email and phone, although by phone was often difficult because he had this really low raspy voice.

I mean, he'd broken his neck during the wreck.

And so eventually we started meeting in person.

And so he would send me the first draft.

I would work through it because it'd be kind of a mess in terms of, you know, words were capitalized.

It shouldn't be capitalized.

Words that should be weren't, you know, the punctuation was crazy, the formatting, because he didn't really understand.

I mean, he's 85 years old at this point.

You know, he's trying to figure out formatting and word processing program.

And Joyce, his wife, was wonderful.

She helped him a whole lot.

But but I'd get this and it.

So I had to clean it all up to just to be able to make sense out of it.

And then I'd go through and see what we might want to change, what we might want to add, what we might want to, you know, put in a different order or whatever.

And then we would get together and we eventually learned that as best if I went to his place, he had a ranch near old Washington, and we'd sit across the dining room table.

He'd be at his computer, I'd be at mine, and we just be going through it, you know, sentence by sentence.

He'd go, Yeah, yeah, that's really good.

Or, no, we really need to change that.

Or, you know, it was really kind of a fun process, just working like that.

Collaborating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would also imagine, you know, most of what doctors do as far as writing is concerned is, you know, charting or maybe writing something for a journal.

And if you've ever read your after care summary, they're not readable or the most scintillating narratives.

So I imagine there's a lot of like medical jargon, and you had to kind of translate that for the layperson because this book is as a someone with no medical degree, was very readable and easy to read, but I bet that was a lot of that was one of the things that I that I discussed with him that I thought was very important, that this is and he he agreed from the very beginning.

This was not a book that was a medical book.

This was these were really going to be stories.

But I did have to figure out a lot of the medical terminology and decide, okay, let's let's translate this into something that's more readable.

Although there is you know, there are medical terms in there and there is a glossary because we wanted to introduce some of that.

Sure.

You know, but yeah, I just imagine I just I knowing doctors, even if they're wanting to be helpful, they're just on such a different level than the rest of us.

So getting that translated, I've had this wonderful writer's voice on the page.

It was, it was sort of quirky, which, which is partly related to some of the language processing issues he had from the the brain injury.

But, you know, just this he had this wonderful personality.

I mean, he's just almost bigger than life.

And he was he was like six five.

And I mean, he was a big guy and, you know, so I was most worried, you know, if I rewrote too much of it, that I was going to take away his voice.

And I didn't want to do that.

And so after he passed away, you know, we'd only written about seven chapters.

It's like, my gosh, what am I going to do now?

You know?

And and Joyce was very, very helpful because she went through his computer and his phone and any text message or e mails or all of the files in his office, everything looking greeting cards that he had sent her and for their anniversary or birthday defined any of the phrases that he used.

You know, anything that sounded like, that's Ralph.

And that was just so helpful.

And I think we we were able to successfully preserve his voice.

Well, I didn't know him, but I think you did, because he comes across as someone who is interesting and engaging and can really tell a story.

I mean, that like you said, that first chapter he can hook, he hooks you in right away immediately with that.

What's a hospital what's his is a doctor, a medical doctor asking what's a hospital?

Which is like, I want to know, how did we get here and where do we go from here?

So yeah, and then too, you see in the the, the, the testimonials or the stories from the patients and their healers, A similar love for Doctor Lou.

I love how he treated them.

And and so he comes through in their stories as well, not just his own story.

Yeah he was definitely a different kind of doctor, you know is is one of the survivors.

Russell Moyers said, What doctor gives you his cell phone number and says, Call any time.

But that is exactly what Ralph did.

And he knew how important that was from his own personal experience.

If they are, you know what one of the issues for a lot of people with a brain injury are personality changes, particularly the difficulty in managing emotions, particularly anger and not knowing how to express it.

And, you know, you know, if somebody is flipping out, you know, he knew that he needed to intervene very, very quickly.

Or as Russell Moir said, without Dr. Lee, I'd be dead or in jail.

And Ralph was more than willing to do that, you know, And Joy said, you know, they often had to cut their vacation short.

First of all, they didn't take that many, but when they did, they often had to cut it short because I need to get back.

He would say, I need to get back.

I want to make sure we we have to put talk about his story a little more in-depth, too, because he was already your neurologist and then he had this accident.

And I, I mean, I'm sure it's happened before, but the odds of a brain injury happening to somebody who studies the brain, who can then take that experience, because the eight minute like you said, he had to kind of retrain, he had to go back and not go back to school, but he had to go back to some to some training and some to to practice.

But then to be able to take that to his patients, that must have been invaluable for them to somebody who really understands, because everybody says, I know what you're going through.

But he really did.

Yeah.

And he I asked him once, I said I asked him whether or not he routinely told a new patient that he'd had a brain injury.

He said, no, no, not at all.

But he told you about one.

And it's in the book that he hadn't said anything to this person.

And the guy's getting really frustrated about, you know, what his experiences are trying to recover.

And he goes, You just don't let her stay.

And Dr. Lily.

So of course then Ralph tells him, and he said, it just completely change the guy's attitude, you know?

Then they had a really good relationship after that.

And I can I can relate to that.

That would make a lot of sense to me, you know?

But, you know, initially, you know, they had this wreck.

You know, he's on a motorcycle, he's 44 years old, is a drunk driver, and the motorcycle driver doesn't see them stopped at a stoplight.

He was dating a young woman at the time who was on the motorcycle also.

And the impact throws Ralph over the car in front of him, underneath the axle of the car in front of that one.

And he's wedged there and and he wakes up in that hospital and he has no memory of his first life.

He doesn't know who he is.

He doesn't know that he's separated from his wife at the time that he has two children.

He didn't recognize his brother or sister or mother when they came.

Nothing.

And he's not the only one.

I mean, there are some patients that we we profiled who had the same experience.

You know, I'd asked also Russell Moyer, he was a really funny guy.

And because this was during COVID, we had to do a lot of we did all these interviews by phone or email or text or whatever.

And so, you know, he and his wife are on the phone and telling me some stuff, and he's just this really funny guy telling these great stories.

And one of the things I'd been curious about during this time was how does a brain injury affect somebody's sense of humor?

And so I said, Russell, I said, you know, you're just such a funny guy.

What was your sense of humor like before your injury?

And he says, I don't remember myself before my injury.

And his wife intervened because he wasn't funny at all.

Before his injury, he couldn't tell a joke or a funny story, but the injury disinhibited him so that he could then tell funny stories but unfortunate.

It also disinhibited his ability to control his temper and he would often get in trouble for that.

And he's he's the one who said, Without daughter Lilly, I'd be in jail or dead.

Like I said at the beginning, this this, these these stories, Doctor Lilly's and everyone else's, I've just never read anything like this.

And I the idea that your personality could, you know, knowing who you are, is one of the most important and kind of personal things that you can you can have about yourself and losing that identity and not knowing who you were.

I just can't imagine.

But then the strength that these people have to say, well, okay, I'm going to figure out who I am now and keep going is so inspiring.

Exactly.

And also, you know, if you get in a car accident, you don't have a brain injury.

Well, we know what you do.

You you get you get physically you go you're in the hospital and so you're not dead and you get discharged, like you say.

And then there's there's a process.

There's physical therapy.

We I think we all understand what that process is.

But this process is different.

There isn't.

Okay.

You go to two times a year, maybe you get a plate put in your leg or something.

It's a the mind is a very different thing to heal than a knee or an arm or something.

Yeah.

And it takes a lot of different kinds of therapies, almost always speech and languag counseling, psychological therapy, lots of different kinds of medications.

And they're there healer, figuring out, you know, how to help them participate in life.

Again, a you know, a wife who knew her husband like to gamble, you know, takes him to a casino, you know, monitors the money, but lets him play, you know, because that was something that he enjoyed.

And so figuring out how that person can experience joy again and have some kind of meaning in their life again and just yeah, that that has to be almost required.

But no doctor is going to say, I recommend you go gambling.

Exactly.

If that was something you loved or golfing or, you know, running or whatever hobby it was, that's where that, like you say, the healer is.

So important because that that probably that joy, that love of that is still in there somewhere.

You just need to unlock it.

And, and if you didn't know who you were, how would you find yourself again without a healer helper?

It's just it's just so, so fascinating.

I want to talk ask broadly about the stories they're so vital.

Was that Doctor Lilly's idea to have these different voices, or was that a necessity of not having the book finished when he passed?

Well, he had in mind that we would profile a number of different survivors, and initially we it was all going to be that he would decorate and of course he would narrate.

But but quote people because, you know, we had them write out an account.

And of course, some of all it was just, you know, the way they wrote it was so wonderful.

We had to include that.

And so it was going to be Ralph narrating and and quoting from people.

But then there were several that were they were just so well-written that we included them in a separate part.

So there's four parts to the book.

The first part is about his injury and recovery, and then the second part is profiling, with him narrating a number of the survivors and healers.

And then there's a third part where some of those healer survivors are discussing it, and their first person that includes Joyce, also as a healer.

And then there's the final part where we talk about his you know, he doesn't survive.

You know, he he gets covered and he's he survives COVID, but his brain is just inflamed, you know, after that.

And then it's downhill after that.

And so then, you know, Joyce and I finish the book.

And so there were of course, there were many chapters that I had to write at that point.

Then the first draft and, you know, she and I were able to do it.

We both promised him that we would finish the book.

I was going to ask that this was he I mean, he knew he was declining and he made you both promise that this was going to happen.

Why was that so important to him, Do you know?

You know, I don't think he made us beat it.

But Joyce and I both were very committed.

And it's like, you know, if we could, you know, if we could give him anything, we were going to give him that, we would finish this book because it meant a great deal to him.

In fact, he had said while we were writing it, he said, this is the reason why I'm I'm living this.

I want to finish this.

I want to pass this on to people so the people would understand both what it's like to have a brain injury, but especially to understand the healers role and how vital that is.

And it meant a great deal to him.

And I'm very I'm very glad that Joyce and I were able to finish it.

Well, I again, I have to compliment you because I think you did a wonderful job of weaving together.

And those other voices are so important.

It adds a richness.

It adds another perspective to a kind of a prism of you get all these different points of view of what what it's like to have these injuries.

And I think that enriches the book.

every single one of those survivors and healers could be a book.

I'm sure there's much more than what's on the page.

Yeah, well, unfortunately, we are running short on time.

So in our final maybe 3 minutes, what do you want people to take away from this book?

I would like for them to take away that even having a brain injury, it means you could have a fulfilling life afterwards.

It's going to be different.

Ralph would always say your life is not going to be the same, but it could be a very fulfilling life.

And also for the healers who help you have that second Life.

Well, I am going to I did I did peek online a little bit to read some reviews.

And so many people were saying how helpful they found this book.

Other healers or people who had experienced brain injuries.

So, I mean, it's still a relatively new book, so we can't say what the full impact is going to be.

But it seems like it is reaching people and having that effect.

That's the feedback we've been getting.

And and I mean, I think if you're someone who is dealing with it with this kind of injury, it's probably helpful.

But I think also if you're just helping someone through any kind of long term illness, you know, the stories of these healers are relatable, not just for brain injury.

I mean, yes, I think I think it's valuable for anyone who's been a caregiver role like that.

Yes, I agree.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

I really enjoyed our conversation.

Like I said, this book, I've never read anything like this, and I hope it generates maybe more stories like this, because this is the kind of stories that need to be told.

So thank you so much for being here and talking about it.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us.

So that's all the time we have for today.

The book, again, is called Second Lives by Dr. Ralph Lilly and Diane Kramer.

Thank you so much for joining us and I will see you again soon.