Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Endless Marathon: A Health Setback for Brett Bullington

brett-copy

For those following the amazing progress of longtime Silicon Valley exec and investor Brett Bullington, it’s been heartening to see how quickly he has come back from a devastating bicycling accident last year that resulted in severe brain trauma.

After immediate hospitalization, Brett went home and started his promising recovery. It included walking so much that a little more than a week ago, after I had arranged for an Up activity band to be sent to him, he emailed me: “8330 steps and 3.98 miles today. How are you?”

It made me smile.

But a few days ago in a blog post on his recovery, there was some bad news.

Apparently, some of the skin on his head, part of the surgery to repair his skull, has been tearing, creating a worrisome problem after a doctor’s visit.

Wrote his wife Diana:

“It ended up being a shocking and devastating meeting. Because this area of skin is basically not thriving, a skin flap surgical procedure is required to protect Brett’s head. This is a pretty intense operation where a section of muscle (from Brett’s lat muscle) will be removed and attached to the healthy skin on his head. Then a skin graft from his thigh will go on top of that. In addition to all of this, the skull implant will be removed because there is a distinct possibility that the bone flap may be infected which could lead to serious complications.”

The five-hour surgery is Monday, which will put him back in Stanford Hospital for at least a week.

She added to the post:

“We are feeling a bit deflated right now but are working hard at preparing mentally and physically for this next ordeal … this feels like we have been running a marathon and we were in the last 5 miles of the race, but now the rules are changed and we are told that we will be running an additional 26 miles before we finish. It is overwhelming for the moment.”

Indeed it is, so please send all good wishes to Brett next week, whom you can see here in this video interview I did in mid-January:

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus