Tedy Bruschi woke up one morning in 2005 and looked at the digital clock next to his bed. The time read 2:23 pm. A few months before, a stroke left the linebacker paralyzed and blind. Except, it wasn’t 2:23 pm. It was actually 12:23 pm. Still, Bruschi felt the comeback brewing.
After having a stroke in the prime of his professional football career at home, Tedy Bruschi was sidelined from the game, unable to drive and partially unable to see. In Bruschi’s bedroom was a digital clock with big, bright, red numbers on it. The time was 12:23, only for Bruschi, he had lost vision in the left field of both eyes, meaning the clock appeared to read 2:23 to him. One day, Bruschi looked down at the clock and could not only see the 1, but the little battery symbol flashing down in the lower left corner of the clock. This became a pivotal recovery moment for the former Patriot and ultimately was the turning point in his return to football.
In the high-stakes world of sports, wins and losses on the field often dominate the headlines. But behind the scenes, there lies a lesser-known narrative – the journey of athletes grappling with long-term and in some cases, potential career-ending injuries. The majority of stories revolve around a broken bone, torn ligament, or physical setback that takes months, and in some cases, years of recovery and physical therapy to return to the field. Fewer stories however, resonate as deeply as that of Tedy Bruschi’s story from his playing days with the New England Patriots.
The former linebacker defied all odds when he returned to the field after suffering a stroke during the height of his career. His remarkable journey of recovery explored countless challenges, strategies he employed, and numerous lessons that he learned along the way. From both an emotional and physical standpoint, Bruschi overcame an uphill battle from something that no professional athlete had ever done before, and something that would change his life forever. The primary reason for his return was what his wife, Heidi, called his superpower and why he was a professional athlete - his positive mindset.
He woke up on February 15, 2005, with a severe unexplained headache and numbness down the left side of his body, classic stroke symptoms. This came just a day and a half after returning from his Pro Bowl flight home. The symptoms began around 5 am and the Bruschi’s decided to let them go on for a few hours, planning to deal with it in the morning, not thinking twice of the usual pain he endeavored.
Things went from bad to worse when his headache led to vision loss. The Bruschi’s reached out to Heidi’s father, a physician’s assistant, who let them know he would need to be seen immediately. They filled in the Patriots’ training staff and had an ambulance sent to the house once they began to realize the severity of the situation.
“I’d woken up in pain before throughout the course of my career, so this was nothing new to me,” said Bruschi.
This normal discomfort for Bruschi became shocking very quickly for the former Patriots star.
“What happened was when my oldest son TJ [Bruschi] walked in from my left to my right, he startled me,” he said. “I couldn’t see him walk in.”
Bruschi and his wife immediately called 911 and drove to Massachusetts General Hospital. He had suffered a stroke that was the result of a congenital heart defect that allowed a blood clot to enter his brain. Bruschi was admitted to MGH and instantly, the stroke was deemed life-threatening.
In 2005, the answers weren’t all there in front of him. It became bigger than football at this point for not only him, but his entire family as a whole.
For Heidi, the caregiver role had increased tenfold. She was in the process of nursing a newborn who was just six weeks old and had two other children who needed someone to look after them. The family dynamic had shifted and the new normal for the Bruschi’s was up in the air.
Other than the significant amount of medical intervention and rehabilitation that was needed in order to bring back the use of his basic functioning, his positive mindset and resilience are what separated him and allowed him to make a return. Instead of looking at the past and wondering why it had happened to him, Bruschi’s constant focus was on looking forward and finding solutions in terms of how to get better.
“On the football field it wasn’t about what happened in the last play. It was about how you fix the problems that you just experienced, and what’s the adjustment, what’s the winning solution,” he said.
Nonetheless, Bruschi had to be real with the situation at hand and was unsure of the winning solution at the time.
“I sort of got emotional actually to see [Bill] Belichick and told him I was going to retire and that was the end,” he said.
Bruschi left Gillette Stadium as a former NFL player, thinking he would never play again. However, he and the Patriots were resilient. He continued the rehabilitation process with the help of the Patriots team as a whole. He still could not see, still could not drive and was left wondering if his vision would ever heal completely.
Fortunately, his sight returned; and as it came back, so did his positive emotions. His mindset had officially changed that a comeback was possible.
Colleen Sliney, a graduate of Boston College and member of the Wheelock Sports Psychology program at Boston University, has worked with athletes who have dealt with long term injuries and witnessed the impacts on their mental well being.
She emphasized the importance of implementing psychological strategies in order to cope with the emotional challenges of being away from the sport.
“Trying to identify your support systems can be super important, and then trying to figure out what role each of those support systems has,” she said.
Typical supports include someone who can take the emotional role, a doctor or physical therapist, and someone who can handle the logistical side of things if an athlete becomes incapable of doing so.
And for a little over four months, from February to June of 2005, Bruschi worked tirelessly with his physical therapist Anne McCarthy Jacobson, who works specifically in clinical neurology rehabilitation at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston.
“Regardless of what their motor or sensory or cognitive return is, just the fact that they have good social support and socioeconomic status means their outcome’s going to be better than someone who doesn’t have those things,” Jacobson said.
Sliney also mentioned how even though it can be incredibly challenging to hone in on a sense of positivity given the circumstances, it is essential for an athlete.
“Positive mindset is everything," she said. “Having that positive mindset makes people more inclined to engage in all the rehabilitation exercises. It also has just scientifically been shown to improve the rate at which you recover from injury.”
But that wasn’t always the case for Bruschi or many other patients she sees. There were days, Jacobson recalled, that keeping a positive mindset was harder than others. Bruschi had a lot on his plate and sometimes it took a little extra encouragement. Regardless, he remained resilient and whether he wanted to be there on a specific day or not, he did what was needed from him to recover.
While doing physical therapy, the linebacker wasn’t a fan of running, even if it was on a treadmill for just a few seconds. Ironically, fast forwarding almost two decades later, he’s also the same person who has run three Boston Marathons through his foundation, Tedy’s Team, a group surrounding stroke awareness which has grown into an endurance training team.
Of course, getting back onto the field was step 50 in a long, daunting process, never mind returning to the professional talent level. He had to keep a short term focus, taking it bit by bit. Bruschi stopped paying attention to his sight and began focusing on the little things in life, such as his handwriting, getting the feeling back in his left side, and his balance. All in all, he was hoping for his procedures to go well. He needed a hole in his heart closed and a device put into his heart. He held on to his positivity despite all of this, but more importantly, trust.
The Patriots’ motto under Belichick on and off the field was “Do Your Job.” The same could be said for Bruschi’s recovery; he wasn’t going to be able to do it alone.
“[You have to] trust the team that you have decided to have in your corner, he said. “Realize that they have a job to do and hopefully they’re doing theirs right.”
Jacobson collaborated closely with Bruschi’s neurologist, Dr. David Greer and his cardiologist Dr. Igor Palacios, who was in charge of the linebacker’s surgery. In doing so, they were able to determine when Bruschi could effectively return to the football field.
The little victories were increasingly important for him and the bigger picture. His balance began to return, his walking improved, his left arm strength slowly came back, and the procedure in his heart ended up healing the way it should have. In trusting the team around him, Bruschi was on his way.
In order for this comeback to come to fruition however, there were levels to what he would have to accomplish.
“Coming back to play your sport is one thing,” he said. “Coming back to play your sport the way you did prior to the injury is another thing. And then even getting better beyond that, do you have that goal?”
Bruschi was never one to shy away from a challenge, but what separated his injury from a normal physical injury is the fact that he didn’t have everyone on his side to return to the football field.
“I had immediate members of my family that were doubting whether I should attempt this because it was a stroke and it was the first time anyone had ever done this before to play in the National Football League after a stroke,” he explained. “So there was a different mental pressure that I had in terms of asking myself, was I doing the right thing?”
His wife was one of these people on the opposing side when it came to his long term health and the linebacker’s aspirations. “That’s where we parted ways, we’re no longer on the same team, and that was unusual for the both of us,” she said.
The two had a typical strong, loving, and supportive relationship since they began dating at just 18 and 20 years old.
“To not be on the same page and not be pulling in the same direction was unknown to both of us,” she said. “I see him as a father to my children, as my husband, for [the] long term, long beyond football.”
It was difficult for her to get on board and potentially put him back in harm’s way. All she wanted was to first return to what they’d lost - normality. A lot was taken from the family early on, especially for a Bruschi who was unable to pick up and play with his young children.
The linebacker knew he couldn’t attack the issue without the support of the people he loved, and eventually, after many months, Heidi came full circle, put aside her fears, and supported him in the caregiving process.
His rehabilitation was unlike a lot of other people’s with the majority of it happening at Gillette Stadium, away from home and on his own. The linebacker made leaps and bounds, sometimes without even realizing it. One person who did pay attention was his therapist.
“One time I remember I was smiling because I asked him to stand up on his toes and do toe pushups,” Jacobson said. “He goes, ‘what?’ and I said, you could not do this two weeks ago. I keep track of these things.”
Jacobson wasn’t one to give Bruschi the false positive mindset, but her objective was to give him hope. She knew in being transparent and with Bruschi’s trust, that in itself would keep him motivated to push forward until he saw the results he wanted. The positiveness and resiliency the former Patriot brought to work wasn’t just to get him back to the game of football, but to the game of life.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t until his wife saw the progress he was making did she change her mind on letting Bruschi get back in action.
“Tedy and I had many conversations about where this was headed and him returning,” she said. “My role not only is his caregiver, but his wife, to support his dreams, and him not attempting to come back would have been me holding him back, and I didn’t want that.”
Once the two were on the same page, she was elated to be there for his first game back against the Buffalo Bills on October 30th, 2005, just over eight months from when he’d received the news about his stroke, a remarkably quick turnaround.
Bruschi’s tests with medical adversity opened his eyes to many things, including the ability to relate to people. He felt comfortable with bringing up and sharing his experiences to the general public, whether it be with a cancer survivor, stroke survivor, or other medical injury as a way of expressing what he felt during his setbacks. His injury not only allowed him to empathize with someone who was dealing with a physical injury such as a torn ligament or a broken bone, but also with the rarer obstacles that were out of a person’s control. Every person’s comeback is different and Bruschi emphasized not comparing any two returns. His time away from the field allowed him to navigate the doubts that he had and the thoughts that went through his head, and turned them to good as a way to connect himself with athletes who are also struggling with their recovery.
However, there are very different levels of a stroke. Some people are able to make a full recovery, while others return 99%, 98%, and so forth. Even after being diagnosed, Bruschi found the positive in the situation.
“Sometimes, I really thought that this was a blessing because it told me my medical condition,” he said. “I had a thickening of the blood, I had a hole in my heart, it gave me knowledge that possibly prevented me from having a catastrophic stroke in the future.”
Bruschi is appreciative of the rollercoaster of a journey he went on and how he was able to return to being a great husband, father, and role model.
“I’m proud that a lot of people have come up to me since my stroke and said ‘my doctor told me that I had the same thing that Tedy Bruschi had,’” he explained. “People can look to my comeback and say ‘hey, if you can come back and play professional football, I can come back and do my job, which is, a lot of 300 pounders aren’t trying to knock me out.’”
The biggest thing the family learned after the entire process was to compromise. The Bruschi family came out on the other side stronger than they were before.
“We learned that we can deal with pretty much anything,” Heidi said. “And we learned that we can do it together. We also learned that we can’t do it apart because when we were fighting each other, it wasn’t working. So he knew that he couldn’t come back without my full support and I knew that I couldn’t withhold it.”
Bruschi’s advice to every athlete dealing with a long term injury provides some insight into the bigger picture.
“I truly believe no career is complete without a comeback, because that whole aspect of that major adversity that you're put through and tested with, how you deal with that really is a testament of who you are,” he said. “I think a lot of people have fallen into the trap of feeling sorry for themselves and they just need to know that there have been people before them and there’ll be people after them that’ll go through something that’s exactly the same as they’re going through right now.”
For Bruschi, it was always about what’s the solution.
“What’s the solution” - Those three words singlehandedly impacted the course of Tedy Bruschi’s career for the better. His positive outlook and resilient approach allowed him to return to the field after just eight months away from the game, a near improbable feat following something that had never been done before by a professional athlete. His story is a testament to what a positive mindset can do for someone battling with a potential career-ending injury, and had he not followed his process day in and day out, taking it one step at a time, he may have never returned to the top of the world. He found the light in every setback and the now Patriots’ Hall of Famer has made a difference outside of just the sports world, touching lives across the globe.