It's not just football players or troops who fought in the wars who suffer from brain injuries. Researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in the U.S. get potentially serious brain injuries every year, too. Yet they and even their doctors often don't know it. One such doctor is Bryan Arling , an internist in Washington, D.C. His peers often vote to put him on those lists of "top doctors," published by glossy magazines. So it's ironic that the brain injury he failed to diagnose was his own. And he could have died from it. Last spring, Arling went looking for some files in his walk-up attic. It was jammed with boxes of Christmas tree ornaments, old clothes and other odds and ends that define decades of family life. After an hour of searching, he found the files in a box, grabbed the folders and stood up. He then felt a shooting pain in the center of his back. "It's a pain I've had before," says Arling, who has battled back problems for years. "But it was more
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