Perry Sutton: Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury

What were the circumstances and nature of your injury?

Back in September 2017 I suffered traumatic brain injury as a result of a Grade 3 (severe) concussion following an accident at my apartment. While I was getting ready to go to work at Dillon Music, I slipped and fell in my bathroom, falling backwards into my shower. The fall knocked me unconscious, cracked my head open, and I suffered some lacerations to my upper thigh and abdomen. The head injury led to hearing sensitivity (hyperacusis), light sensitivity, a brief period of speech loss, a several-months-long stretch of insomnia, anxiety, and serious effects on my short-term memory, including a six-month period of almost complete memory loss. I’ve dealt with symptoms of post-concussion syndrome since then as well.

I’m extremely lucky that I live just a short walk from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ where I received the bulk of my care. I saw various specialists, but was principally in the care of the neurology department.

What treatments did you undergo, and what was most helpful?

One of the more difficult parts on the road to recovery for me is that there aren’t a lot of “cookie cutter” treatments and therapies outside of letting the brain heal and develop new neural pathways. Most of the treatments were based on treating symptoms—migraines, draining fluids, hearing tests, blood thinners, and more CT scans than I can count. I did have several months of speech therapy. I was also on a regimen of trial medications, some of which helped more than others, and some that brought a fair amount of side effects (weight fluctuations, anxiety, sleep loss, and hypertension, among others).

One of the things that my doctor stressed was that, as a musician, I’ve always been used to working hard and seeing tangible progress, but that traumatic brain injury recoveries don’t lend themselves to “linear recovery.” Taking the pressure off myself to force progress was the only way to really heal. This was particularly difficult for me. 

I did wear hearing protection in public for the next few months and went out of my way to avoid much human interaction, as I was very embarrassed about the state that I was in.

How long did you have to stop working? 

I was able to work at my day job at Dillon Music after a few weeks, but was not permitted to practice the trumpet at all for close to four weeks. My chops actually felt fine, but the pressure that practicing was putting on my head was causing intense migraines and memory loss. I wasn’t medically cleared to begin playing the trumpet again until a day and a half before I had to leave for a concert of a Handel oratorio on baroque trumpet with Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland.

What were the greatest frustrations during your recovery?

As someone who has always had a good memory and generally felt as though I had my faculties about me, memory loss and an inability to communicate made me feel absolutely worthless for months. Couple that with playing and practicing causing me not only physical pain, but to forget my name at times, and I felt like I had been stripped of my best qualities. It wasn’t long before I felt as though I had hit rock bottom. I was extremely depressed both personally and professionally and was going to have to rebuild my technique to make things less physical to take some pressure off my still swollen and healing head. 

For a while, I had to keep a piece of paper taped to my steering wheel with my address and the places I needed to go for the day, because I was forgetting where I lived and where I was going pretty frequently. It was incredibly demoralizing. It also was very frustrating because I felt like there weren’t many people to talk to about how I was feeling who really understood what I was going through. I was also terrified that if I were truly honest with anyone about what I was going through, it would cost me work and that I would become a pariah or be viewed as “less than.”

I look back at pictures of myself or listen to recordings of gigs from this time period and they almost don’t seem real. I have little to no recollection of any of them. 

Did you have to adjust your approach or technique?

My thinking was, if there is a way to remove some physicality and effort from my approach and technique, it would take a lot of the pressure off my head and help me to be more efficient. I went back to my undergraduate lesson notes from my studies with Pete Bond that I had saved in my email and rediscovered a lot of the concepts that Pete had been telling me a decade and a half earlier. As it turns out, I just needed to get hit in the head to realize how to get better! I started spending two to three hours every morning working on making a few tweaks to my approach and setup, and by the end of that first tour things never felt better. Keeping up with that after getting home has given me an extra fifth on my range, eliminated my “break” in the upper register and I have much more control over my tone than I did before. I feel these changes have given me the ability to be a more attentive music maker as opposed to a trumpet “operator.” I feel like, in a lot of ways, it helped me get things back together, and that some of these professional “victories” paved the way for me to get things back on track personally. 

What seemed to help the most throughout your recovery?

Personally, it was as much the support of my family, friends, and colleagues as it was the time it took to heal. So much of my injury was as much mental as it was physical—allowing things feel different and new, and regaining confidence without having a solid memory bank to rely on.

Another helpful thing was to accept the nature of the non-linear recovery. I think as trumpet players and musicians we can all relate to seeing progress after putting in concerted and thoughtful practice and hard work. The hardest part of this experience has been how much this injury can have its ups and downs, good days and bad days. 

Did you change equipment? 

For me, and the nature of my recovery, I felt it was important to limit as many variables as I could, so I did not make any equipment changes for a few years, but have since moved into some equipment that fits my “new old” approach based on where I am physically now. But, as principally an early music musician at this point, I still mostly play on authentically designed equipment.

I have found that regaining trust in the body is no small task. What was this process like for you?

This took a very long time. I felt like I was constantly asking everyone around me, “Do I sound ok?” “Am I doing anything weird?” “Was last night’s concert alright?” I was scared to tip my hand about my limitations but desperate to know how I was progressing. I’m fortunate to report that from the outside looking in, it wasn’t very noticeable, but truth be told, I felt like I was fighting as hard as I could just to tread water. 

Did you come to feel like “yourself” again? 

I don’t know if I can really come up with a fair answer. My injury was so random and out of the blue that I don’t think I ever took accurate stock of what feeling like “myself” was before. I’d like to think that the 2020 version of me is better off than the 2017 version of me, that I’ve progressed as a person and musician, and that this wasn’t all for nothing. As one of the world’s most closeted optimists, I’d like to think that there was an opportunity for growth here that wasn’t squandered. 

Were there any resources that you found particularly helpful?

I really had to swallow my pride in the months following my accident, and I sought advice and some lessons from players and teachers that I trusted, in addition to following the advice of my doctors. Even though I have good health insurance, I did have to go out of pocket for a lot of treatments, tests, and medications that weren’t covered by my insurance. I was willing to do anything I could possibly do.

For brass players, I highly recommend checking out Peter Bond’s new Facebook Channel “Bell Canto” which highlights similarities in technique between vocalists and brass pedagogy.

Do you have any advice to those going through an injury or in the recovery/rebuilding process?

No one plans on having accidents and TBI’s aren’t your fault; there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Don’t be too proud to ask for help (as I absolutely was) or to lean on those around you. Trust your doctors and do the best you can to follow their advice. Surround yourself with positive people and be patient with yourself and your recovery.