Man struggled to cope with head injury before diagnosis

TUMWATER — On Aug. 30, 1983, three days before his wedding, Vern Kenwisher suffered a skull fracture when he fell and landed on his head in a workplace accident.

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Kenwisher, 59, remembers the impact to this day. His head made the sound a melon makes when it hits the ground.

It would be nine more years, after his third wife suffered her own head injury in an accident, before he'd first hear the term "traumatic brain injury."

"It was after she got hurt when I started putting things together," he said from his home outside Tumwater.

The short-term memory loss.

The laid-back personality now more intense, more prone to angry outbursts.

The harsh words from his ex-wife: "You're merely a caricature of what you used to be. The outside is the same, but the inside of you is different."

In those ways, Kenwisher is a portrait of an injury shared by nearly 1.5 million Americans each year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But not in all ways.

He considers himself lucky. Unlike others with severe brain injuries, he can work. He can drive. He's married.

The divorce rate of TBI survivors is 80 percent, according to one estimate.

Still, his experiences offer a peek into the hardships of people whose worst enemy is the organ that makes them uniquely who they are.

On that day nearly a quarter-century ago, Kenwisher was assembling a shelf on an equipment rack at the Weyerhaeuser sawmill in Longview. He was standing on planks that made up the lower shelf 5 feet off the ground when his foundation collapsed, and he tumbled backward.

Alone after his head hit the floor, he lay stunned some time before gaining his senses to go to his boss's office. He was taken to a hospital. After doctors determined his injuries, he was released to his then-fiancee because she was a nurse.

The couple lived in Portland, and Kenwisher made another trip to the hospital that night after his fiancee grew concerned because of his off-the-wall answers to questions.