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Woodruff still speaks up for troops

Bob Woodruff struggles to talk about his work in raising awareness of traumatic brain injuries.

“Some of it is ... is ... “ Woodruff says and stops.

Woodruff suffered a TBI on Jan. 29, 2006, when a roadside bomb exploded in Iraq, where he was doing reports for ABC News.

Traumatic brain injury has been called the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of troops have suffered mild or moderate TBI with symptoms that include headaches, dizziness, memory loss, vision problems and irritability.

Others have suffered severe brain injuries — their memory is shattered and they cannot walk, talk or feed themselves.

Woodruff, 46, considers himself lucky. Even though he struggles to remember words and names, he is a vocal advocate for service members with TBI.

His thoughts go racing down a mental highway, searching for a way to express himself because it’s out there, that perfect word, at the end of the road, stuck deep in his vocabulary. He knows the word. He can feel it. But he can’t reach it. He can’t quite bring himself to say it.

It is like the mental highway is cut in half — unseen roadwork, up ahead — creating a traffic jam. It can be maddening and frustrating, as this silent drama plays out in his head, if only for a microsecond, countless times every day, for a man who was once so eloquent and smooth.

Some of it is ... is ... “opening up awake-ness,” he says and stops. No, that’s the wrong word.

Back on that mental highway. Time for a trick. He takes an exit around the problem. Down a back road. Around the problem and ends up in another place, coming up with another word. A synonym; thank God for synonyms.

Some of it is ... is ... “ah, awareness of TBI generally, not only to general citizens of the country, but also to Congress and the Senate,” he says.

Awareness. Maybe it’s not the perfect word. But it works, for now — he can finish his sentence — and that’s an improvement. There was a time when none of the words would come to him.

“I’ve learned to fake it,” Woodruff says.

But he can’t fake it well enough to return to ABC’s anchor chair, at least not yet.

Woodruff’s ability to speak is his job.

“You can’t cover the presidential race,” Woodruff says, “and forget the name of the candidate.”

From a distance, he’s still Bob Woodruff. Smart. Handsome. Poised. Born to be a star. The guy who left Detroit and went on to ABC News and took over as anchor.

“It lasted a full 27 days,” Woodruff says.

But his face is marked with scars and he tires easily. Woodruff, who was once the face of ABC News, is now the face of TBI.

There were 4,216 troops treated for traumatic brain injuries at military hospitals from January 2003 to August 2007, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

Doctors believe thousands of troops have suffered TBI but have not told anyone — fearing the stigma of a brain injury or mental illness. Post-deployment screenings show that between 10 percent and 20 percent of the troops returning from Iraq have suffered TBI, according to the center.

Woodruff started a foundation, the Bob Woodruff Family Fund, to raise money for TBI victims. In September, Woodruff was the keynote speaker at the 27th annual Brain Injury Association of Michigan conference in Lansing.

He is greeted like a rock star by veterans with TBI.

There has been widespread media attention on traumatic brain injuries because of the wars. And Woodruff has been at the center of that attention.

There are 5.3 million Americans living with a disability as a result of TBI, according to the Brain Injury Association of America.

The leading causes of TBI are falls (28 percent), motor vehicle crashes (20 percent), struck by or against an object (19 percent), and assaults (11 percent), the association says. Only 2 percent of those Americans suffered TBI because of a war.

Every year, 1.5 million Americans sustain traumatic brain injuries, including 50,000 who die.

“The war is teaching the world about TBI,” Woodruff said. “Nobody, generally, knew about TBI until the war.”

Thousands of troops have come back with TBI. And experts say that thousands more likely have it but haven’t been diagnosed.