Traumatic brain injury and life after the anchor desk

Kim Block spent 39 years as a news anchor and reporter at WGME, the CBS affiliate in Portland, an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning career that began at radio stations in Maine before she made the move to television. Co-hosts Dr. Lisa Belisle and Dr. Jeff Barkin open the conversation by tracing Block's unlikely path into journalism: a childhood in the Washington, D.C. area, a year in nursing school at Indiana University in Bloomington, a pivot to broadcast journalism and Spanish, and a first job right out of college at a Portland radio station. Block describes the steep learning curve of commercial radio, the additional demands of crossing into television, and the double standard women in broadcasting faced around appearance, likability and credibility that male colleagues simply did not.

The conversation turns to the cognitive demands that defined Block's on-air career: simultaneous processing of a script, a producer's voice in her ear, breaking developments and the physical discipline of making it all appear effortless under bright studio lights. Belisle draws out how those very skills, rapid multitasking, sustained attention, forward thinking and fluent language, became the measure of what Block would lose after a fall on an icy patch in her driveway sent her to the emergency room and eventually into an extended course of rehabilitation. Block recounts working through the evening newscasts on the day of the injury before recognizing she could not continue, then waking the following morning to vertigo, sensitivity to light and sound, and a cascade of symptoms that did not resolve on their own.

The final segment addresses what recovery from a traumatic brain injury actually looks like across months and years, as distinct from what it looks like to outside observers. Block describes the gap between appearing well and carrying ongoing deficits: reduced cognitive capacity, difficulty with reading and sustained attention, and the fatigue that sets in when the day's reserves are spent. Barkin and Belisle explore with her the emotional weight of an identity built around journalism, the slow work of accepting a changed baseline rather than chasing a return to the person she was before, and the value she has found in sharing her own story. Block also speaks about her involvement with LoveYourBrain, a nonprofit that supports people affected by brain injury through yoga, mindfulness and peer community, and closes with a word of support for working journalists and a free press.