Thank you, NFL Commissioner Goodell and owners

Pamela G. Blaxton-Dowd

                                                Condemned to Die:  Ask me how. Tell me why.
                                                                    pgd83716@yahoo.com

September 5, 2012

Commissioner Roger Goodell

c/o The National Football League

345 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10017

Dear Commissioner Goodell:

I want to express my gratitude for the generous donation the National Football League gave to the National Institute of Health for Traumatic Brain Injury research.

On May 26, 2010, Brenna, my 27 year old daughter suffered a medically unexplained anoxic brain injury, that occurred as an awful byproduct of an eye surgery she had the day before. Brenna died on October 1, 2011, as a result of many complications associated with the brain injury.

I have chronicled her nightmarish journey through our broken health care system in a newly released book. In September, with Brenna’s two dogs, I will embark on a three month, personally financed nationwide tour, not primarily as a book tour, but to meet with brain injury victims and their families in every region of the United States. I feel strongly that I must do this to honor my daughter who would expect no less from her mother.

The purpose of this one woman two dog odyssey is to empower other families who are facing a health care system that struggles with answers to rehabilitation and recovery of brain injuries, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Hypoxic-Anoxic Injury (HAI).

In my personal visits with health care professionals at all levels, one thing has became abundantly clear; the mysteries of brain injury treatment and recovery care are, in many ways, still great mysteries. As I travel across the United States, I feel it is important for me to be part of a national catalytical dialogue about how this country’s health care system treats brain injuries and how they involve the family in the post injury therapeutic recovery process.

As I prepare for this trip, I wanted to take the time to correspond with you and thank you and the NFL team owners for the effort they are making for TBI patients, regardless of the original source of their injury.

For that, Commissioner Goodell, I commend you. As a 65 year woman who has never watched a live or television broadcast of a NFL football I want you to know I am now a big fan.and insurance company guidelines that discriminate against anoxic/hypoxic brain injury. Since DX codes for anoxic/hypoix brain injury do not include length of coma, unlike TBI DX codes, we need data around length of coma and corresponding outcomes.

Sincerely yours:

Pamela G. Blaxton-Dowd