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Turning TBI Trauma into Purpose: One NP's Journey | Kelly Tuttle, FNP

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 42

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What happens when a medical provider becomes the patient? Kelly Tuttle's journey shows us how personal experience can transform professional practice and create unique connections with patients.

Kelly spent two decades as a cardiology nurse practitioner before a car accident resulting in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) completely altered her career trajectory. Rather than stepping away from medicine, she channeled her recovery experience into becoming a neurology specialist. The transition wasn't simple, it required two years of intensive self-education, seminars, CME courses, and eventually, a training position where she could develop expertise in conditions like Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy.

What makes Kelly's story remarkable isn't just her resilience but the unique perspective she brought to patient care. While keeping her own TBI history private, she used her firsthand knowledge of cognitive impairments, sound sensitivity, and neuro fatigue to provide uniquely compassionate and practical care. "My favorite part was helping them cope with that, because that was like my bag of tricks that I could share with them," Kelly explains. Her patients would often respond with surprise: "You're the first provider who understands me, who gets it."

This personal experience led Kelly to create valuable resources for others, including her book "After the Crash: How to Keep Your Job, Stay in School, and Live Life After a Brain Injury" and "My Brain Injury Recovery Journal." She advocates for journaling as a powerful recovery tool that promotes neuroplasticity, helps track symptoms and progress, and provides tangible evidence of improvement during difficult days. For students facing setbacks in their own journey, Kelly offers wisdom from her experience: "Don't let a bump in the road be a mountain and there's always a way around."

Whether you're a healthcare professional, a student facing challenges, or someone supporting a loved one through recovery, Kelly's story reminds us that our greatest challenges often become our greatest opportunities to connect with and serve others. Visit kellytuttle.org to learn more about her resources and ongoing work.

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Ashley Love:

Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant, medical editor, clinical preceptor and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It is my pleasure to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need, whether you're a pre-health student or simply curious about the healthcare field. I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine. I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations, so make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at shadow me next, where we will review highlights from this conversation and where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests.

Ashley Love:

Kelly Tuttle spent two decades as a cardiology nurse practitioner before a traumatic brain injury completely changed the course of her life. Instead of walking away, she leaned in, turning her recovery into a platform of hope and practical strategies for others navigating life after brain injury. What I admire most about Kelly isn't just her clinical expertise or the book she's written. It's the way she bridges lived experience with medical practice, creating a connection with patients that only someone who has been there can offer. We talk about resilience, the power of support groups and what it really means to adapt when the road doesn't look the way you planned. Whether you're a student worried about setbacks, a clinician rethinking how to meet patients where they are, or simply someone curious about the human side of medicine, you'll find wisdom here. Please keep in mind that the content of this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company.

Ashley Love:

This is Shadow Me Next with Kelly Tuttle. Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time tonight to join us on shadow me next. You have an absolutely incredible story and your story has turned into an incredible platform with amazing resources for people. So thanks for what you've already done and thank you for joining us tonight. Well, thank you for having me Ashley.

Kelly Tuttle:

I'm excited about what we're going to be talking about.

Ashley Love:

It's a great conversation and unfortunately, it stemmed from a situation that I would imagine was very chaotic and very traumatic and very scary for you, and we'll definitely talk about that. But before we do, I would love to hear how you ended up in medicine in the very first place, before all of this.

Kelly Tuttle:

Oh my goodness. So I was the child that had the teddy bear covered in band-aids and IV tubing with straws, and my mother couldn't keep tape and band-aids in the house. So from the very beginning I always wanted to be caring either a doctor or a nurse and I always wanted to care, you know, to be caring either a doctor or a nurse. And I decided to go into nursing because it was so much more patient focused, intensive, and I absolutely loved it and I was lucky to have the resources and the support to go into nursing school at 19. To go into nursing school at 19 and to come out at age 22, 23. I graduated from California State University, fresno, for my undergraduate and I had worked as a volunteer in the hospitals just trying to build up my resume and there was a specific hospital in town that I wanted to work at. It was Valley Children's Hospital at the time and so I started looking for jobs there, worked in medical records and so forth, and while I was in nursing school and then graduated to like kind of a nursing student position where you kind of work like a certified nurse's assistant and did that until I graduated and then I did my. It was a leadership type part of my program where I worked in the emergency room at Valley Children's Hospital as a student to get my foot in and get let people know. You know who I was and that that baby step kind of trail opened up an opportunity to work at this hospital, which wasn't accepting new grads as RNs at the time, but because of my trickle effect into the company, I was able to land a RN job in the emergency room after I graduated, and you know what I saw? What I witnessed was the transformation of health care from a health care business to a business model, and so this is in the early 90s. And so then I saw the transition from RNs to unlicensed personnel doing tasks, and so the RN positions were going away and the nursing position wasn't valued. And at the same time I saw the increased trend of people needing to use the emergency room as a clinic instead of seeing an outpatient provider. And so eventually we hired some nurse practitioners, and so they were in the fast track clinic and I was inspired to become a nurse practitioner, and I did.

Kelly Tuttle:

I went to Gonzaga University in Spokane, washington, and finished their family nurse practitioner program, got my master's in the nursing of science and that's just kind of how my career transformed. And as a nurse practitioner I got into a training position in cardiology doing stress testing and from that I expanded. Once I was in the with the company, my position at the time was part-time. I would volunteer and work at family medicine practice, emergency room, obgyn, pediatrics, just to get this experience down. And then finally the cardiology department said we need you to work full-time and so I worked as a cardiology nurse practitioner for 20 years total. And then I had my car accident and got passionate about neurology and the brain. And so I worked very hard for two years going to seminars, doing CE courses, reading anything and everything about the brain, and then was able to beg and plead to get a training position as a nurse practitioner, which was really intensive. I followed a neurologist, you know, for a year, just you know, learning about Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and trigeminal neuralgia.

Kelly Tuttle:

That's what we kind of managed at first as the nurse practitioners in the department, and then it expanded over time to BNS, the vagus nerve stimulation for controlling epilepsy. I really enjoyed doing that, and then we added stroke patients and then, as I was transitioning out into retirement, I was learning about managing headaches. So it's just a kind of transitioning, evolving job of new things, new opportunities.

Ashley Love:

It is an incredible story.

Ashley Love:

I am blown away and I think one of the most amazing things is you went from cardiology, which is one of the most difficult and most complicated and complex fields of medicine, at an accident which we'll talk about a major, major life change, and then you went into then another more difficult, more complex field of medicine which you've described the transition it's.

Ashley Love:

It is not just hey, you know, let me, let me go pick up a new job, um, let me get a new shift in neuro. You know you really had to train and train and train and learn and, like you mentioned, you were learning all the way up into retirement and I think we can phrase medicine as being a career for a lifelong learner and we can talk about that. But until we really hear that from somebody who has legitimately proven that medicine is a journey of learning, truly, you know, I don't think we can really grasp the full concept. So thank you for detailing all of that. Let's focus on your role in neurology as a neurology nurse practitioner. You talked about a lot of the different conditions that you guys worked with the most. What were some of in your opinion, what were some of your favorite, just ones that really you really enjoyed either treating or diagnosing or helping patients work through Dr Anneke Vandenbroek.

Kelly Tuttle:

So my favorite part was kind of like being the ambassador, and because I was a brain, a traumatic brain injury survivor, I had been there, done that and had the T-shirt Right, but I wasn't telling my patients that and I wasn't allowing, you know, telling my employer. My favorite part of the job was I would work with patients with Parkinson's or multiple sclerosis and even with some patients with epilepsy. They start to develop mild cognitive impairment, and so my favorite part was helping them cope with that, because that was like my bag of tricks that I could share with them, and they would be really surprised. They're just like, oh my gosh, how do you know that?

Ashley Love:

You're the first provider who understands me, who gets it, and so that was my favorite part of the job Absolutely, and one where your ability to relate to patients is not something perhaps that you would have necessarily chosen the way that you were able to do that, but you've taken that situation and you were able to really positively impact so many of your patients, I would imagine. I would love to hear more about your situation after the TBI. I mean, you have written some of these incredible books, one called After the Crash, an ebook called Getting Back Behind the Wheel. I would imagine at a certain point after your accident you thought I can't do this. How am I supposed to do this? Tell me a little bit about how that felt, especially as a medical provider here at Shadow Me.

Ashley Love:

Next, we have a segment on the show called Quality Questions, which is where we discuss potential interview questions that you might hear on your pre-health interview. Kelly has talked a lot about TBI. Traumatic brain injury has changed the course of her career and her life and I could imagine in an interview someone asking you to describe a medical condition that you have heard about either on social media or within your own social circles, to tell them about it, what you know about it, perhaps any medicine that you might be aware of behind it and why it matters socially right now, why you think it's a hot topic. Tbi is one of these. I'd be interested to know what you would say. Keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review over on shadowmenextcom. There you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions.

Kelly Tuttle:

Right. So I had a mild to moderate concussion and I had been taken off of work for three months to recover, and not initially but eventually. And when it was time to go back to work after that three month period, the two weeks before, you're like really I was just sweating it. I was like freaking out. I'm like what does my brain need to be supported so I can continue to be a safe, efficient employee, productive employee? And you know I read all my. I had a couple of concussion books that were my companions during my healing and I had online resources. Of course.

Kelly Tuttle:

I'd had my speech therapy paperwork and neurotherapy and I just was looking at it and at the time I had a ton of neuro fatigue and so my ability to read and memorize and learn my timeframe was window was tiny, it was like five to 10 minute increments was like five to 10 minute increments and I it was just really rough.

Kelly Tuttle:

And then when I went to work and it was just trial by error and and some mistakes, and when I say some mistakes, like I didn't realize I had irritability because of light sensitivity and sound sensitivity, I didn't realize I'd had some impulsiveness and so I would talk over conversation and maybe say things I would normally not say in front of people, and and so when I decided to write my book, I wasn't going to write about my story because I didn't want to bore anybody.

Kelly Tuttle:

That's what I told my writing editors, my writing coaches. But they said, no, you got to share your story a little bit, a little bit. And I said okay, because I want this book to go straight to the point of strategies and tools that a person can use to support their healing brain while that they're at work. I don't want to waste their energy because, I explained, they may not have the energy or the visual ability because you can get your vision processes knocked offline to read a story. Let's get to the point. You know facts, baby facts, but anyway. So yeah, so my book was going to be a one-stop shop where someone could go and grab before heading to work to find strategies and tools they could use to support their healing brain while they went back to work and school.

Ashley Love:

It's incredible. I mean I love the subtitle how to Keep your Job, stay in School and Live Life After a Brain Injury and I think so often we hear about TBIs traumatic brain injuries and we think, oh, wow, how terrible. You know, the recovery has got to be so hard. But a lot of times we skim over some of these concepts like am I going to lose my job? Am I going to be able to go back to school?

Ashley Love:

And so just the fact, like you said, just the fact that you get right into it even in the title and you explained it, these people perhaps either they themselves have a TBI or they have a loved one with a TBI and they just want to relate. It brings up an interesting question. I just recently had my first support group experience. Actually, I was a lecturer for the support group for people with limb differences so amputees. I was speaking as a derm PA, we were talking about skincare and wound healing and it was an incredible experience being in a support group and I was not a member, I was a guest and it was a very cool thing. Tell me why this sense of community and the sense of support is so important and so healing for people who share a similar diagnosis, something like TBI who share a similar diagnosis, something like TBI.

Kelly Tuttle:

Yes, I totally support support groups and I got to participate a couple times in a support group in my area and it was so nice to meet with people who get it and you also, when you attend those support groups, they tell you, like the doctors, to see, um, they, they share their strategies on how they cope with. Like, say, there was someone there who said, oh, I forgot to pick up my children and everyone pipes in. Oh well, I use alarms and I do this, and that really helped me remember. Don't worry, it's not going to always be like this, it's going to get a little bit better. And so I'm really encouraging of all my followers and my readers to find their tribe, because no one understands having sound sensitivity or neuro fatigue until you have it, and it's really important to be with people who understand and get you.

Ashley Love:

I love that, and it's what your book offers for these people, even people who might not are comfortable speaking about it yet or perhaps are not interested in really sharing their own story. Yet your book offers not only a supportive glimpse into the diagnosis, but actionable steps. Not only a supportive glimpse into the diagnosis, but actionable steps. You know, and then you have. You also have this incredible journal titled my brain injury recovery journal. Tell us a little bit about this. Why is journaling?

Kelly Tuttle:

so important in this, in TBI recovery. Oh, journaling is, like, really key. It offers a lot of ways to support your brain while you're healing, okay. So one. As I'm sure you know, writing with your hand on paper helps with neuroplasticity, the remodeling of the brain and reconnecting, creating connections to make up for the ones that have possibly been lost with that concussion.

Kelly Tuttle:

Because of the axion sharing that you have with concussions and it is one of the things about being a traumatic brain injury survivor is you tend to stay in your head and you don't want to stay in your head because inside your head is negative Nancy's and Bobby Bully. Right, you want to get out of that house, right. So writing in your journal helps you kind of be in the present moment, thinking about writing, moving that pen, write down those thoughts. You know what did negative Nancy say? And and was it stupid or was it something you should share with your talk therapist? Maybe you could share it with a friend or you could just say go, you know what you feel about negative Nancy and leave it there in your journal.

Kelly Tuttle:

But it also helps you track your brain injury symptoms and helps you discover what makes them worse, what makes them better, what therapies you're trying out. Are they making you, helping you? Are they not helping you? Did this medication help, did it not? What were the side effects? And then it also helps you on those like really bad days when you're so frustrated you feel like you're never going to get better and you can look back in your journal entry and see how far you've come, because the first two years you do see lots of leaps and bounds in your recovery, but after that the improvements are more incremental and subtle and if you're not journaling so you could see how far you've come, you're going to miss out on that.

Ashley Love:

That is a great example of how some of these healing processes end up unfolding, and it's not just TBI. This is a lot of things right and we can think about the two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, five steps back type of situations. But I love the idea of putting that in a journal because I would imagine, especially while recovering from a TBI, it's not just the concepts or the way that the concepts flow in the journal, but it could also be your handwriting. It could also be the way that you follow lines on pay can just be visual. You can visually see the improvements of things and um and how motivating, you know, how motivating for somebody who is on a long journey which a lot of these chronic conditions, a lot of them are. This is so interesting to me.

Ashley Love:

Let's talk to students directly here real quick. You have an absolutely incredible story and there's a lot of things they can take away, a lot of lessons they can learn from you, even though they might not have a TBI or have experienced a concussion. Have a TBI or have experienced a concussion, for example, a lot of students fear failure or unexpected detours in their career path. That's a question I get a lot, ashley. Do you think I'm behind? Do you think I've derailed? What wisdom would you share with them about resilience and just pushing through?

Kelly Tuttle:

Yeah, so I I had this conversation with a medical assistant that I had used that experience in my past and that was not to let a bump in the road be a mountain and there's always a way around. So her bump in the road was a certain class that she was taking and she failed it the second time and she felt like that was it. She's never going to be a licensed vocational nurse. And I said, oh no, no, no, no, no, find out, go contact the school counselor, find out which college, other schools accept transfer of classes. Go take that class at another place, another university, and you might have a better teacher that will speak to you and your learning, and then you could take the class and pass it and then move forward. And she did, and she moved forward and she became a licensed vocational nurse.

Kelly Tuttle:

So there are bumps in the road but you don't have to sit there and hit your head against it. There are ways around it. And if you can't figure it out, ask, just ask people around. What do you think? What can I do?

Ashley Love:

What fabulous advice. That was great and and I love it because I think so often, you know, as a student, I'm imagining just the end goal right, I need to pass this class. I need to pass this class so that, wherever I'm applying, whenever they ask, hey, did you pass this class? I can say, yes, but what a fantastic story she has about resilience and tenacity and how she passed the class and the people that she talked to and the advice that they gave. It's just, you know, it really is about the journey, not about the destination, and I know that's so cliche, but it's true. You know, it's so much more interesting to talk about that journey, which is basically your whole story, and I just love it so much. Kelly, as we wrap up, tell us we've talked a little bit about your book. Tell us where can we find these amazing resources and how can we connect with you outside of this. Shadow me next podcast.

Kelly Tuttle:

I would definitely recommend people to go to my website at kellytuttleorg and check out all of my resources and what I have to offer and, yeah, sign up for my sub stack, which is on my off my website. But see the other stuff that I'm up to. All the links are there.

Ashley Love:

Absolutely incredible the resources that you're providing to so many people who not only have TBI, but people who have family members that have had this and people who are just more interested in learning about it. Kelly, thanks for sharing your story and thank you for everything that you have done.

Kelly Tuttle:

Oh, thank you, and thank you for having me and getting the word out. I really appreciate it.

Ashley Love:

Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of shadow me next. If you liked this episode or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday, as always. If you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram Access. You want stories you need? You're always invited to shadow me next.

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Ashley Love

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