Where’s Tommy?

I just finished reading Where's Tommy?: A mother’s journey through her son’s traumatic brain injury by Debbie Lennon – It was a heart-wrenching look at the invisible hell of undiagnosed TBI.

If you've ever wondered why someone’s life can spiral so dramatically after what seems like a “minor” accident, Debbie Lennon’s new memoir Where’s Tommy?: A Mother’s Journey Through Her Son’s Traumatic Brain Injury is required reading.

At 16, Tommy Lennon suffered a surfing accident — a surfboard to the forehead that left him with stitches and what everyone assumed was just a bump on the head. No dramatic coma. No obvious red flags at the ER. Life went on. But there was nothing “minor” about it.

Almost immediately, Tommy’s life began to change: sudden, dramatic shifts in impulse control, behavior that looked on the surface like typical teen rebellion or emerging mental-health issues (unless you knew him closely like his at-the-time-girlfriend could tell with the behavior different and deeper than teen rebellion prior to their break up), escalating addiction, school expulsion, homelessness, and eventually jail time. The family questioned everything. For nearly 40 years they searched for answers while watching their son disappear into a system that had no idea what it was actually dealing with.

The book lays bare one of the cruelest realities of traumatic brain injury: when it’s undiagnosed (or even when it is diagnosed but left unsupported), the symptoms get blamed on the person instead of the injury.

Brain Injury doesn’t always show up on a standard CT scan. It can hide in the frontal lobe damage that quietly rewires impulse control, emotional regulation, decision-making, and motivation. What looks like “bad choices,” addiction, anger, or laziness is often the brain trying — and failing — to work the way it used to. Families, schools, doctors, and the justice system miss it because the injury is invisible and the timeline between accident and symptoms can feel disconnected.

Reading Debbie Lennon’s raw account of the decades-long fight for answers made me realize how many of us are still left to navigate the aftermath alone. Debbie should have received support that day of the surfing accident from the emergency room. There should have been resources of what to watch for provided when Tommy’s reported injury was involving being unconscious with a head wound. It is simply unacceptable that the medical community does not have it as a standard practice following treatment for any concussion to include education provided for family members and caregivers on symptoms and changes to watch for for the potential development of Post Concussion Syndrome and deteriorating and devastating impacts of the brain injury suffered that they know 20-30% of concussions will result in.

Years later in 2023, my hospital ER visit for my concussion was still no different than Tommy’s nearly 40 years before. The advancements in general medical care capabilities over the last 40 years are simply astounding, yet there were still no resources, education, support, or understanding and preparation for the road to come provided for me or my family following my concussion - an injury that occurs over 56 million times per year according to the American Brain Foundation. We were left alone by the medical community to figure it out ourselves.

Debbie Lennon’s honest memoir shows the devastating ripple effects: the guilt, the exhaustion, the fractured family dynamics, and the decades of advocacy it took just to get a proper diagnosis. It also shows the power of finally naming the real problem — and the hope that comes with it.

If you work in mental health, addiction recovery, education, or criminal justice — or if you love someone whose behavior changed after a head injury — read this book. It will make you look at “difficult” cases differently. Each case is so unique. That child in your class? That patient walking through your doors? That addict being helped into recovery? That person coming to you in need of mental health support? Maybe they have had something with their brain happen that needs different treatment than the directly observed behavior. Maybe there is an underlying condition of brain injury screaming for diagnosis, treatment, and support. I’ve met many survivors in TBI support groups who only decades later piece together their lifelong struggles, like Tommy, were from an undiagnosed TBI incident earlier in their life.

Where’s Tommy isn’t just a memoir. It’s a wake-up call about how many people are still walking around with undiagnosed or unsupported TBI and post-concussion syndrome, suffering in silence while the world asks, “What’s wrong with you?” when the real question should have always been, “What happened to your brain? How can I help your brain rehabilitate and support you and your family?”

Debbie Lennon asks the question “where’s Tommy?” Tommy is here in my life now - with pieces of his story resonating deeply also with the millions of brain injury survivors that have experienced profound changes, difficulties, and altered lives following their brain injuries. Too many survivors don’t receive the proper diagnosis, treatment, support, and care. Let’s keep working to change that. Lives depend on it. An estimated 3-7 concussions happen every minute. Where’s Tommy? Add a new name to that list of undiagnosed and untreated patients nearly constantly. Add a new family to that list wondering where their loved one is. Yet decades later following Tommy’s injury, the undiagnosed and unsupported treatment for brain injury survivors is still far too pervasive.

Awareness saves lives — and families. You are not alone.