“Chanting Saved My Life: Irene & George on TBI Recovery”

“By participating, you agree the episode may be published and distributed.”Bill (Host):Because a lot of people do not survive TBIs, I want to start here. Irene, can you tell the audience how this event happened in your life? How did it occur?Irene:I’m very glad to be on your podcast and to be able to talk about it, because you’re right—many people don’t understand what a traumatic brain injury really looks like. It’s one of those invisible injuries, and most people are honestly perplexed by it.For me, it happened seven years ago to the day—November 19th. I had a catastrophic fall in the parking lot on my way to work. I slipped on black ice, fell face-first, and hit my head on the ground. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was unconscious for a while. When I finally woke up, I went inside thinking, “That was a nasty fall,” but assuming I was still okay. I wasn’t.Bill:You said you quickly realized you were not okay. What was happening that made you notice something was different—about your thinking, your perception, your life?Irene:It was a difficult time already. I was struggling at work, dealing with health issues. I had an appointment that very afternoon to start the process for bariatric surgery. And we were moving to a new office building.And that new building… honestly, I believe that’s how this happened. At the old building, they salted the parking lot well. At the new one—they didn’t. I stepped onto a patch of ice and fell. If we were still at our old building, someone would have seen me. But at this new site, no one saw a thing.When I got inside, my boss thought I was late just because I overslept or something. Meanwhile, I had been lying unconscious in the parking lot.Bill:So you were outside on the ground, alone? No one came out to help?Irene:No one. Not a single person saw me fall or helped me. That was terrifying in hindsight.Bill:And this was in Detroit?Irene:In Southfield, our neighboring city. And it was cold. We had something unusual that day—freezing fog. The roads and the parking lots were coated. I had ice on my windshield when I left home. But I didn’t expect the ground itself to be a sheet of black ice.Bill:So you go inside, trying to function, trying to push through. What happened next?Irene:I went to the ladies’ room to regroup and ended up just crying. Everything hurt. My head hurt. My body hurt. Something inside me said, “This is not normal.” But I kept thinking, “I’ve got to get to work.” You don’t expect that one step—one fall—can change your life instantly. But it did.Bill:The symptoms—when did they start showing up fully?Irene:The next day. That’s when it hit me—this is serious. My entire body was in pain. My mind felt off. I couldn’t think straight.Bill:And you were in IT, right? A systems and business analyst?Irene:Yes, I was. But I never went back to work. Not once. The TBI took me out of the workforce completely. After the ER visit, I started seeing doctors, and eventually I saw a neurologist. Everything changed after that fall.#TBI #TraumaticBrainInjury #StrokeAndTBI #BrainInjuryAwareness #HealingJourney #Buddhism #NamMyohoRengeKyo #Chanting “© 2026 Bill Clarke. All rights reserved.”© 2026 DreamEffortTenacity LLC / ScrambledEggs&Ham. All rights reserved.Support the showLifeline Crisis Chat (Online live messaging):https://988lifeline.org/chat