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Gina Bissmeyer hasn't added a story.
This is a fundraiser for my brother Tony. He was the victim of three acts of senseless violence in 2010 — blindsided blows to his head at the jaw — by his then partner who has had a long history of erratic behavior, spontaneous rage, and violence. Just like the blindsided violence you see on the news, these punches were vicious, out of the blue, and thrown in a completely calm environment.
After the third blindsided punch to Tony’s head, my brother suffered an incident of brain swelling — itself a brain injury, and likely a low-duration brain bleed (stroke) common in rotational head trauma. That's four serious brain injuries in a few months. Due to the head spins, the majority of the damage was found in the frontal lobes.
Though it would not be diagnosed until 2017 by UCLA, at this point Tony had Diffuse Axonal Trauma, and all of the secondary injuries listed below. By 2011 his symptoms had became severe, and his injuries brought a years-long, severe decline in his physical, cognitive, and neurological health that did not level off until late 2014.
But his years-long, intermittent cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak persisted. Though his symptoms were permanent and had drastically altered his life, sinus surgery to better oxygenate his brain and spinal procedures at Cedars Sinai to plug the leak made him finally feel that the worst was over. But just months after these surgeries, she attacked him again, throwing her fourth blindsided punch to his head -- a punch to the head of someone already with a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), one that she had caused.
This punch was thrown to his head while he was literally driving his car. It came just days before Tony was to begin monthly vestibular therapy at Stanford for balance problems and veering while walking — both caused by the original violence.
This punch broke his ear canal and required brain surgery to repair. During surgery, surgeons found a break in his canal at the "most robust" part of the bone at the skull base. They also found a tear in his brain dura, a live CSF leak, "numerous" skull base fractures, as well as a significant amount of adhesions (scarring) on his temporal lobe.
Tony’s injuries went undiagnosed so long because he didn’t make the connection between his severe decline in health and his partner’s violence. The delayed onset of symptoms typical in rotational head trauma is one reason for this.
But it’s also very common in TBI. Tony’s neuropsychologist explained to me that damage to the frontal lobes can reach a tipping point where obvious and important connections won’t get made. Until the person learns they have a brain injury, they’ll be "very simplistic”, and focused only on what is happening within them, often blind to what’s going on around them. Since Tony was also dealing with time distortion and severe AGHD, for him to make this connection would be virtually impossible.
So he didn’t report the violence to his doctors. — But the biggest reason Tony went undiagnosed falls on the person who brought the violence, as she actively kept knowledge of it from their friends, from our family, and from Tony’s doctors, choosing not to make the connection for them on several occasions, and actively misleading his doctors on two occasions that we know of — this was discovered in his medical records.
Choosing not to make the connection for Tony when he so obviously wasn’t making it for himself, she watched him struggle for six years of severe symptoms and health issues caused by her violence. Tony attended an absurd number of medical appointments (mostly by himself) while he continued to play the role of caretaker to her erratic, volatile behavior — as he had also done for years before the violence.
Unfortunately, female on male violence is not taken seriously. Despite having a diagnosis of severe brain injury from UCLA in 2017, the local D.A. in our small town completely ignored what happened to Tony, and did not even allow him to apply for state victim’s compensation funds — essential for Tony to move to a city with a proper TBI clinic. Tony basically sat in an apartment for two years, waiting for a housing voucher and the financial means in order to move to a city for treatment.
Finally, a relative and two friends paid for a move to the bay area, where Tony was placed into the UCSF Neurorecovery Clinic on a referral from the UCSF Stroke Clinic. Since getting into a proper treatment setting in September of 2020, the following damage was discovered:
DIAGNOSIS FALL 2020 UCSF
Severe executive and episodic memory dysfunction
Fall risk in the home; Damage to balance and gait systems
Mild loss of coordination in left extremities
DIAGNOSIS SPRING 2021 UCSF
Total loss of vestibular functioning on the right side
Intermittent disruption of breathing and swallowing
Gaze destabilization; Double vision
DIAGNOSIS SUMMER 2021 UCSF
Trauma-induced damage to the pituitary gland causing severe adult growth hormone deficiency
Daily injections of growth hormone, needed for rest of his life.
DIAGNOSISFALL 2021 UCSF
Hippocampal damage causing episodic memory disfunction and severe time distortion
Tony's doctors are still assessing the full damage.
This is attributed to the fact that rotational head trauma is reliably the most destructive form of closed head brain injuries, and because — as his neurologogist would say — diagnostically, the brain is a "black box". Though Tony was actively seeking answers to his health issues, all this went undiagnosed for ten years.
Tony’s treatment is now being moved to Stanford Neuroscience Health Center, as they are better suited to address issues of autonomic dysfunction. They will also address his gaze destabilization, and cervical spine related symptoms. UC Berkeley’s Neuro-Optometry, will assess his trauma related optic symptoms like double vision.
LOOKING FORWARD
— After UC Berkeley, our goal is to get Tony to Dr. Kestor Nedd at the Design Neuroscience Center in Miami. He is on the cutting edge of a more comprehensive means of evaluation and diagnosis for traumatic brain related injuries. His book CONCUSSION:TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY FROM HEAD TO TAIL “A New Approach to Treating Concussion” can be found by clicking HERE.
— After Miami, Tony has a referral in place to the RUSK clinic at NYU. Unlike most TBI clinics in the country, the NYU clinic has been working at the cutting edge of TBI for six decades. This will put him in line for new treatments that usually take years to get into the mainstream. They also have a more comprehensive longterm program to support living with traumatic brain injury.
Since the violence, even with his small disability stipend, Tony’s lost wages well exceeded $600,000. We are aiming to raise less than 10% of that amount. This website is going to be a year-long collective effort to raise $50,000 so Tony can get a solid footing, and financially take on the next stages of treatment (Miami and NYU) in the Spring and Fall of 2022.
We’ve made this crowdfunding site to help pay for Tony's past and future medical related expenses, and his continued treatment down the road.
I'll be doing bi-weekly updates on treatment, new findings, and (hopefully) positive turns in his recovery, with the understanding that that may not always be possible.
TONY'S WRITINGS AND VIDEO
Though writing for Tony has become far more difficult due to issues with double vision and episodic memory, he's decided to begin writing seriously about traumatic brain injury because of the gross lack of understanding of it, and because of the simplistic responses by those around someone with brain injury. He feels there is no proper language for it; for what it’s like to experience it; for how people respond to it; for how even doctors talk about it; even the people he has encountered over the years who have traumatic brain injury.
I asked him to provide a two minute video for this site. He incorporated some of his work into the short video featured above.
For Tony, this video best explains, in brief, what it’s like to deal with an injury to the most complex part of the brain, one that affects multiple body systems and brings damage to the core of who you are — but to not have language to explain it to others. If he had to sum it up in one sentence, he said "traumatic brain injury is damage to your sense of time, your sense of space, and your sense of self in both."
Tony will be working on publishing his writing on Substack. His neuropsychologist told me that Tony writes about brain injury from the inside out at the highest level-- something he hasn’t seen in his thirty years of both studying and treating brain injury.
Check back here in updates and links to Tony's writings and videos.
Lastly, Tony’s story is bizarre and stunning. That he could go so many years without getting treated for a progressive brain injuries that get worse over time without treatment is just mind boggling. I saw the changes after the violence, we all did, we just didn’t know about the violence. That part of the story is attached below as PDF Press Releases below, article sI wrote to the paper in our small town. Though it covers a lot of ground, it doesn’t come anywhere close to telling the entire story, that will come in time.
If there is anyone with connections to the DA;s office, or to the office of Victims Services, now or back in 2017/18, we would be grateful. Including any information as to why either office chose to completely ignore what happened to Tony, or how the decision to not act (or even make contact with Tony) may have had influence -- contact me at gmbissme@yahoo.com.
Please donate as generously as you can.
Your help sharing and support is invaluable.
Thank you!
Gina
* * *
Publications to the Mariposa Gazette, below:
- Dec 23rd 2021 Guest Article, " Secondary brain injuries uncovered for Tony Radonovich"
- Dec 23rd 2021 Gina's accompanying letter to the Editor, under Your View Section
- Dec 17, 2020 Article "Fund is set up for Tony Radonovich, who suffers from neurological issues"
Gina's accompanying letter to the Editor, under Your View Section below:
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