SUDDENLY, A CAREGIVER
An exclusive interview with Lee Woodruff
BY:SUSAN STRECKER RICHARD
Photographed by John Abbott
Lee Woodruff was in Disney World with her four children when she got the ominous wakeup call from ABC News President David Westin. Her husband, Bob, who was reporting in Iraq, had been hit by an IED and injured, along with his cameraman, Doug Vogt. It's a harrowing story that resonates two years later, even with Bob Woodruff recovered and back reporting. On that January day in 2006, life changed for Lee and her family "in an instant," the title of the book she and Bob coauthored. Here, Lee reflects on that time and how life goes now.
FACING SHOCK AND AWE
Caring Today: As you tried to absorb the fact that Bob had been seriously injured, you say in your book that you turned into "the general." What do you mean?
Lee Woodruff: I just took control in such a way that I think my brain also took control. Any extraneous information was not going to get in. I programmed for the task at hand, marshaled the forces, which were my four kids, to get them where they needed to go, to get them set up. It was a very methodical, very pragmatic approach that didn't include a lot of emotion.
CT: You also talk about being "in the zone." Can you explain what that means and it's importance to your sanity?
LW: Acting as "the general" was the initial crisis stage. "The zone" became the place where I lived all the weeks when Bob was in a coma-the place where other information was not relevant. I needed to know my children were okay, but I didn't need to know so-and-so was fighting with so-and-so. I didn't want to Google "traumatic brain injury"—TBI. I didn't want to know the what-ifs, nor the X percent does this vs. X percentage does that. I wanted to believe Bob was different and that we were going to have a different outcome, that he would fight this and survive.
CT: Did you just discover this in yourself?
LW: Yes. You really don't know how you're going to react until faced with something. You could be the person who falls apart or screams and falls to the floor. What I sort of knew about myself, even before this, is that I'm a very rational person in that moment. I'm the person you would want to be with if the Titanic was going down. My fall, when I have the luxury of falling apart, comes later.
CT: Sixteen days after the attack, you say you "stepped out of the zone and began asking questions you'd been avoiding." What changed?
LW: We were heading into different days. All of the sudden I did need to know. I needed to know so I could make informed decisions—mostly about Bob's care. This was such a foreign world to me.
CT: You seemed to really trust the medical team, as opposed to researching on your own, or hitting the Internet.
LW: I was petrified. I knew that anything with the brain was not good. I certainly knew basic things. I knew Bob had been hit in the left temporal lobe, that it was going to affect speech and language and that he'd have to learn things again, like a child. The reason I didn't want to Google is that people kept telling me, "We have no way of knowing." They didn't know if Bob would talk, if his face would be paralyzed. I thought, what's the point of finding out all this horrible information until he wakes up and we know his baseline? Let's hold it together and stave off all the horrible scenarios. Then, when he wakes up, I can operate from a position of strength, with facts. I didn't want all these things floating around in my brain when I lay down to try to go to sleep. It was very much a self-preservationist mode.
THE TIME OF ADJUSTMENT
CT: In the book, you make it quite clear that you have ambition and a career, and that it often got your goat that Bob would call you, excited from the middle of the action somewhere while you were in the middle of laundry or returning the soccer uniform late. Then, with Bob's injury, your life went on hold. What were your biggest emotions? Or were they all in a ball?
LW: I think I cycled through every emotion. I was angry at first because I was sure this was Bob's fault, that he'd done something risky. But that was ridiculous because he's a reporter and things happen. Then there was the "playback period," that I know from other people is so common, when you just try to take it back. You play that videotape in your head over and over again up to that moment, and then you want it to have a different ending. I remember finally talking myself out of that one. Not that it ended abruptly, but I said to myself, "Lee, this is just so not productive. It happened and you have to accept it." Then there was a period of putting everything on hold while we waited for Bob to wake up, and then dealing with reality. And then learning to be so patient as the brain heals.
CT: What about fear?
LW: I kept thinking about how I was going to take care of everybody. Thank goodness I kept my hand in my career, I thought. I know we'll have to change our lifestyle and probably have to sell our house and whatever, but at least I know I can put food on the table.
CT: You were already projecting your burden.
LW: Absolutely. Even when Bob was awake and healing but still not with it, I thought, This is the way it's always going to be—I'm going to have another child to care for. I don't know how often caregivers talk about this, but I think it's probably a huge fear. You've had a symbiotic relationship and it's been equal or a teeter-totter, and all of the sudden there's this person who is incapacitated. What happens to that respect? That love? Then, I'd just push that away because you just can't add that to your list of worries right now because we're still healing. Deal with it when it comes, I'd tell myself. Yeah, but for a type-A person, that is really, really not easy.
LOOKING OUT FOR ONESELF
CT: You tried to swim most mornings while Bob was at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Other than that, you don't seem to have done much else for yourself.
LW: I had wonderful dear friends who gave me three or four massages while I was down there-and I would lie on the massage table and think, I've just got to get back to Bob. But the swimming was something I did solely in the morning. All my life I've been a morning swimmer-and it was the one time it was quiet, when I wasn't interrupted by my cell phone, by doctors, by Bob's family. It was the thing I tried to use to center myself as each day started.
CT: We are always telling caregivers: take care of yourself, do something for yourself, go for a walk. Yet, we look at a situation like yours and think, How is this possible? Could you have found the time?
LW: I have ten tips for those helping caregivers. One of them is to stop trying to make the person leave the bedside if they don't want to, or to eat because they'll eat when they want to—or go do something for yourself, especially when you have children in the equation. You're dead last, and you just accept that. You just say this is the way it's going to be. I have ragged nails and a constantly full bladder and I'm doing the best I can possibly do. I think, especially when someone is in an acute situation, there's a lot of guilt over taking care of yourself. What you don't want is for someone to keep badgering you to do it. On the other hand, for someone in a long-term care situation, whose days look pretty much the same, then you have to carve a place, someplace where you can let off your stress or your emotions. But when you're in the midst of something like we were going through, those surrounding the caregiver need to take their cues from the caregiver. If that person doesn't want to leave the bedside, don't try to force the person to leave. They're just going to be worse for separating.
CT: You had a lot of family support-an army of Bob's brothers, his parents, your sisters and more. What are some of the best things they did for you?
LW: My sisters really picked up the slack with for my kids. Our voices are similar, we sort of look similar, so there's almost an interchangeability—that was big. They managed the information and that was huge. There were lots of people doing that in different spheres—ABC, Bob's family. It all spoked out like a wheel, almost happening automatically. My sister Nan came in and figured out the bills that needed to be paid and set that up. I can't do that, but she did it. I have a part-time babysitter who knew our routine and where things were. My sisters kind of gleaned things from her. It was truly a team effort. Really, it does take a village.
REACHING OUT
CT: You also mention your sorrow for all the soldiers and others with TBI-those in the hospital you saw so alone, or a lone mother sitting at the bedside of her injured son. Was that the inspiration for the Bob Woodruff Family Foundation?
LW: Absolutely. I think about those people every day. Also, the inspiration is that we had such a great outcome compared to so many and that we had that spotlight shone on us. There's that great Desmond Tutu saying: "Suffering is just part and parcel of the human condition, but it can either embitter or ennoble you." Well, nobody wants to be bitter. And it would have been selfish of us to take this experience and not share it, to just close off. Certainly, we did that for almost the first year. We were still healing and wanted the privacy to do that. But now, as long as Bob is willing to put a face on this and use that for some good, not only are we hoping to do things for the current military population, but also for veterans living with brain injuries around this country.
Not many people know that 4.5 million people are living with some kind of brain injury, mild to severe, and that 1.4 million get a brain injury each year. That's more than those with MS, AIDS and, believe it or not, breast cancer combined—annually. It's a staggering figure. Yet it's something most people know nothing about. The Brain Injury Association has been around for 25 years, and they have tried repeatedly to have someone who has suffered brain injuries be a spokesperson and put a face on it. And in those 25 years, no one has ever said yes because it's perceived as such a stigma. I think Bob felt like, Hey, I was doing my job, I wasn't doing anything wrong, and there's nothing to be embarrassed about with this. It's something our soldiers are coming back with every day. I'm willing to say, "This is what it looks like."
CT: Will the foundation concentrate on benefits for soldiers?
LW: We're starting out by helping wounded service members returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're a small organization. We'd love to be able to tackle both fronts, but there's a lot of spillover just by raising awareness through the military population. We're looking at the family holistically—at the caregiver, re-employment opportunities for the injured person and more. If the person is wounded, the entire family is wounded.
FAMILY TIME
CT: You talked about getting out again once you were finally home together as a family, how you wanted conversations with others to be normal again.
LW: People are so awkward, and justifiably so. I don't know what are the right things to do. I wanted people to acknowledge what we'd been through and then move on. So, yes, we're doing amazingly—and now, what are we going to talk about that has nothing to do with it? Part of the awkwardness people feel may come from a tendency to feel so grateful that it's not them—and wondering what to say.
CT: How long did it take to get back to that normalcy-going back to school meetings, etc.?
LW: I felt very awkward and very cloistered at first. It was a while before I could go out. But Bob was great. He's always been just guileless, sort of, "You know, this is what it is," so it was much easier for him. If he can't think of a word, he just goes, "Oh, there we go...that's my brain."
CT: Have the kids been able to move on? Is life back to normal for them now?
LW: It really is. I think they see how much Bob's progressed and is still progressing. I will say that my older daughter, who is very close to him, will sometimes, if Bob's tired, ask if he's okay. I will just say, "Sure, honey, he's just tired and needs to take a nap. That's what part of this is all about. P.S., your dad used to take naps before.... If you're tired, you're tired."
CT: What guidance did you get about what and how you to tell your children about Bob's condition?
LW: I was really trying to stave off letting them see him as long as I could. It was a real push-pull. They wanted to see him, wanted to see that he was still alive, what he looked like. They were building up all sorts of things in their minds. I had the help of the neuropsychologist at the hospital to guide me but, as their mom, I was taking cues from them to guide me as well. Moms really know their kids best.
PERSONAL TIME
CT: What part did journaling play during this time?
LW: I started journaling on my computer two weeks into this. I wanted to keep notes for Bob and I wanted to understand what was happening. Medically, everything moves so quickly and you're not always listening. I knew Bob would want-hopefully he would wake up-and then he would want to know everything that had happened. I would have never remembered. And then, of course, it just became cathartic. In the process of telling him stories and talking to him every day when he was in a coma, I was remembering a lot of parts of our life, too. As I would sit and write about what had happened during the day, sometimes it would flash me back to earlier parts of our marriage. That's how the past/present aspect of our book happened. I would write about that day and then I would think back to all of the fabric of our lives and wonder, Is this the end of our life together? I'd look at the richness of all we've been through.
CT: Your book is very honest.
LW: So many caregivers—not just those dealing with brain injury—have said thank you for being so honest. I think there's a tendency to whitewash it. I think people who haven't had a caregiving role have no idea; they think people are just dutifully caring for a loved one. But it's much more complicated than that. Bob and I made a conscious effort to say: If we're going to tell our story, we're going to tell it unvarnished. Otherwise what service are we doing? We didn't want a "we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps" approach. What good would that do? In fact, it could leave people feeling inadequate.
Also, I'm so quick to say, whether I'm speaking to a medical audience or not, that I am just so not the norm. I have never seen an insurance form, never had to pay a bill for any of this. This was a worker's comp issue. I had a corporation stepping in to help. I am not the norm.
CT: What's your first thought each day when you wake?
LW: "Why do I have to get up so early?" (laughs). My first thought? I think that, for the longest time I'd wake up and then remember, Oh, yes, things are different now. I don't quite react that way anymore. Now I wake and think: Okay, it's good.
The other day, a friend asked me if things are good and I said, "Yes, they're too good-it makes me nervous." There's still a part of me that would like to go back to January 28, 2006, to say, "You're not going down that road, you're not going in that tank"—never to have had any of this happen, not just because it's been an arduous journey but just so that we could have it back exactly the way it was. You can't do that with life, so we make the best we can of it.
When I wake up, I think that we've taken our rough patch in life and tried to do the best we can for ourselves, for other people, as an example to our kids. And I guess we'd give ourselves an "A" on that. But there's always that little moment when I'd go back in a nanosecond to that feeling of not having had all of us touched by a tragedy. I guess that's probably a mother's deepest wish.
CT: Your last thought at night?
LW: That I'm lucky—yeah, that I'm lucky. That my kids are fabulous, that my husband is lying next to me, and that we're having a great conversation. That he's here, he's here. That's a gift.