This week I ran into two people who I'd been out of touch with for a few years. Both had brain injuries-it was a reminder to me of how hard it is for families to survive a brain injury. How can we help families like these? Is there any way to help these survivors maintain their relationships?

One of them was a young woman whose artwork I admire. I had tried to get in touch with her a few times over the last few years but heard nothing back so I thought perhaps she'd moved. No, she'd been in a car accident and had spent a year in rehab recovering. She was one of those folks who showed no symptoms--absolutely not one symptom--of being brain injured. Outwardly. But, she told me, while she is grateful for that recovery, it also creates problems for her when she tries to work at a job. She has significant memory problems as well as other cognitive problems caused by the brain injury. "I'm not the same person," she told me. She and her husband have become nothing more than roommates, she says, but they stay together because she can't support herself.

Happy New Year! Have you seen how much increased interest about brain injury there has been from the media and the general population in the last half of 2009? While I grieve for the families having to deal with it, the world seems newly interested in helping brain injury survivors

This letter comes from a student I used to work with when I taught at the university.Since I last heard from him several years ago, he has struggled trying to get disability payments, contend with his altered brain and behavior, as well as further medical problems and brain surgery. He and his friends and family have become estranged and he lives alone, trying to deal with all his problems with minimal help.

Tell your people about me. Tell the families and friends that the difference between a life and a living hell can be as simple as a little understanding, a kind word, a little attention. I am the poster child for neglected old brain-damaged cripples and no one should have to go through this. I know I am not alone.

Written by Lee and Bob Woodruff
Reviewed by Marilyn Colter

Published in 2007, In An Instant intertwines a couple’s love story with a family’s story of coming face-to-face with the challenges of brain injury. Journalist Bob Woodruff, and PR executive/freelance writer, Lee Woodruff, his wife, co-wrote the book after Bob was brain-injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006.