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Survivor Story
A Q&A with Dr. Tom Broussard
Q: What was life like before the stroke?
I graduated from the US Naval Academy and earned a Ph.D. from the Heller School at Brandeis University, with a focus on workforce development and the employment of people with disabilities. I owned and operated a company called Career Prospects for staffing and career counseling, and I was an associate dean at the Heller School for Social Policy & Management at Brandeis University.
Q: What is an associate dean?
Associate deans are responsible for oversight and coordination of all
programs and activities that support student recruitment, education
and retention in the college. They often work collaboratively with their
counterparts and other colleges to realize new academic degree
programs and to ensure that the support services, academic courses
and degree programs that their college offers meet the needs of
faculty members and students in other colleges and complement their
degree programs.
Q: Describe the day that it happened.
I was 59 years old, and felt chest pressure while walking. I needed
quadruple bypass because the blood vessels that fed my heart were
partially blocked. I also needed the aortic valve replaced because it
had hardened and caused the heart to pump less blood to the rest of
my body. So when I had my heart surgery in 2011, I thought, 'You get the bypass and a new valve and you're fixed'. But that was not true. Three months later I had the stroke. My right arm and right leg went limp. And I couldn’t see out of my right eye. Within three hours of the stroke, I received the drug tPA which dissolved the clot and prevented me from permanently losing all function in the right side of my body.
Q: What was your hospital experience like?
I lost my language and my career without really knowing that I had
lost either one. I was left with aphasia, a language disorder that affects the ability to communicate. I kept a diary using drawings, graphs, charts, and pictures. The recovery of my language progressed from individual words to sentences to paragraphs to pages. I also recorded my voice and this allowed me to develop my speech. I started with what the nurses called “word salad,” and grew to a point where my grammar came back.
Q: What came next?
For the second time, I thought I was “fixed.” But new health struggles
followed, including two transient ischemic attacks, where I had a
temporary period of symptoms similar to those of a stroke.
Next, I had renal failure that cost me a kidney.
Finally, I began to have difficulty breathing and worried I either had
pneumonia or bronchitis. I had to sleep sitting up because I felt like I
was drowning. I consulted my doctor and twice visited an urgent care
clinic. I was taken off one medication suspected of causing a bad
reaction, then treated for pneumonia. Nothing helped. I finally drove
myself to a hospital emergency room, where testing showed my heart
valve had failed and would need to be replaced. The difficulty
breathing was caused by fluid collecting in my lungs, putting me at
risk of heart failure. I had a transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or
TAVR, a minimally invasive procedure that wedges a replacement
valve into the aortic valve's place through a thin tube, or catheter.
Q: How did this experience lead to the creation of your company, Stroke Educator, Inc.?
I started Stroke Educator quite by accident. I had told my doctor
about my stroke and aphasia and explained to him about my habit of
“keeping track” of my life before my stroke. Then, after my stroke, I
continued my “keeping track” habit by keeping a diary, recording my
voice, taking pictures of the world about me and such. At that point,
the doctor told me that I should write a book and that is what I did. It
still took a couple of years to be able to write well and then it took a
lot of work just to be able to produce the book. At that point, I learned
about self-publishing and started Stroke Educator, Inc.
Q: Any advice for new stroke survivors about courage, tenacity, following their dreams or even forging a new path?
There are MANY people with stroke, aphasia and other health
challenges who write about their story to share with others with
similar health issues.
But what I didn’t know was that the act of writing, recording, or telling one’s story is also highly therapeutic, and that helped me go in a new direction. Much of my recovery comes from self-learning, motivation and education.
All of us were motivated to meet new challenges in our previous lives. Looking for the factors that motivated us the first time; to learn
something new, to get a new job, a new language, or a different
career altogether…are the factors you have built at every point of
your success in your life… and those factors are still there, still inside
you. Look for them, find them and use them to rebuild your next set of
new goals and aspirations! As all speech therapists say, there are
five steps towards recovery; motivation, practice, practice, practice,
and more practice!
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