The Journey of Brain-Injury Survivors and Their Healers
A neurologist grapples with the aftermath of his traumatic brain injury, forever changing how he treats patients and their families, in this moving examination of recovery and healing.
“Discharged from a hospital just means you’re not dead.” These words of Ralph B. Lilly, M.D., describe his early struggle to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Lilly was a forty-four-year-old practicing neurologist sitting on his motorcycle at a red light when a drunk driver rear-ended him in 1980. In the ICU, after regaining consciousness and being told what happened, he asked, “What’s a hospital? What’s a motorcycle?” This tragic experience transformed his life and his approach to his neurology practice: doctors treat those with brain injury; but loved ones heal them.
Second Lives: The Journey of Brain Injury Survivors and Their Healers is written by Dr. Lilly and Diane F. Kramer. After his death in 2021, Kramer completed the book with the assistance of Lilly’s wife Joyce Stamp Lilly. This memoir weaves together Ralph Lilly’s experience with a collage of stories about his patients and their healers. After his recovery, Lilly retrained in the emerging field of behavioral neurology, which focuses on behavior, memory, cognition, and emotion after brain injury.
His clinical skills and expert witness testimony were sought by physicians, survivors, families, and attorneys to secure the best “second life” for survivors. His many patients marveled at his uniquely compassionate approach: “What doctor gives you his cell number and says call any time?” Lilly’s pioneering career spanned forty years from Brown University’s Butler Psychiatric Hospital in Rhode Island to Nexus Health System and private practice in Houston, Texas. He treated ER and hospital inpatients whose loved ones were in acute quandary, as well as outpatients who’d long given up finding a doctor who knew how to help. Lilly’s memoir is full of heart, not science, and will provide insight to general readers, family, and friends of patients with brain injury, as well as those who treat them.
His narration is unintentionally poignant, often punctuated by wry humor. He generously incorporates the words of his patients and their families in telling their stories. Their gratitude for his care is profound. As one former patient said, “Without Dr. Lilly, I’d be dead or in jail.”
Category: Mental Health, Nonfiction
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN (paper): 979-8-9864078-5-2
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9864078-6-9
ISBN (hardcover): 979-8-9864078-8-3
Pages: 252
Trim size: 6 x 9
Paulette Jiles, News of the World“These are remarkable stories of both disaster and courage. They are told in people's own words and the story of Dr. Lilly's recovery from his own brain injury is riveting. Dr. Ralph Lilly was an amazing man and by great good fortune his wife Joyce was able to put together this compendium of personal tales of what it is like to survive and heal, always with the help of others --- one's guardian angels. I urge you to read this valuable, extraordinary book.”
Karen Conti, mother of a teenage TBI patient of Dr. Lilly“Dr. Lilly concisely describes the unique experience of TBI families. He writes, “Somewhere early on came a concept I will never forget. I had died and that somehow my body had been replaced by a similar but not identical person.” The families see the form of the person they love but experience the personality of someone new. It is a heartbreaking transition to embrace the concept that the “first life” person is gone. Dr. Lilly was instrumental in helping me accept this change and move forward.”
Guy Clifton MD, Principal, ACTIN Care Groups“Ralph Lilly was a trained neurologist who not only survived a serious brain injury himself but reinvented his focus to care for patients with serious brain injuries. I knew him well. He cared for his patients with equanimity, kindness, patience, and an insight like no other. In this book, Ralph tells his story and allows his patients and their Healers to tell theirs. As if in a conversation with the reader, we learn of mighty struggles to recover and then to adapt. This was accomplished always with hope and finally with hope fulfilled.
Paulette Jiles, News of the World“These are remarkable stories of both disaster and courage. They are told in people's own words and the story of Dr. Lilly's recovery from his own brain injury is riveting. Dr. Ralph Lilly was an amazing man and by great good fortune his wife Joyce was able to put together this compendium of personal tales of what it is like to survive and heal, always with the help of others --- one's guardian angels. I urge you to read this valuable, extraordinary book.”
Karen Conti, mother of a teenage TBI patient of Dr. Lilly“Dr. Lilly concisely describes the unique experience of TBI families. He writes, “Somewhere early on came a concept I will never forget. I had died and that somehow my body had been replaced by a similar but not identical person.” The families see the form of the person they love but experience the personality of someone new. It is a heartbreaking transition to embrace the concept that the “first life” person is gone. Dr. Lilly was instrumental in helping me accept this change and move forward.”
Guy Clifton MD, Principal, ACTIN Care Groups“Ralph Lilly was a trained neurologist who not only survived a serious brain injury himself but reinvented his focus to care for patients with serious brain injuries. I knew him well. He cared for his patients with equanimity, kindness, patience, and an insight like no other. In this book, Ralph tells his story and allows his patients and their Healers to tell theirs. As if in a conversation with the reader, we learn of mighty struggles to recover and then to adapt. This was accomplished always with hope and finally with hope fulfilled.
Barbara Radnofsky, attorney and author, A Citizen’s Guide to Impeachment"The book skillfully blends a neurologist’s story of dealing with his own, profound disability with his growth and adaptation to allow him to continue to heal others and, in the doing, heal himself, combined with his wife Joyce Lilly’s love, growth and flexibility. These are indeed magnificent stories of human capacity and change. This is an uplifting and remarkable read — and a love story in its own right."
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