Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Mandi Dickey spent years helping patients recover from brain injuries as a board-certified neurology nurse practitioner. Then a car accident gave her a traumatic brain injury of her own. In this deeply personal conversation, Mandi and Wendy explore what happens when medical expertise collides with lived experience. They discuss why so many...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Clinical trials can feel overwhelming, confusing, and even frightening, especially for patients navigating a new diagnosis or searching for better treatment options. In Part 1 of this two-part Rupture conversation, Wendy welcomes patient experience expert Kelly McKee and patient advocate Mindy Cameron to explain how clinical trials actually...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. After a traumatic brain injury during the pandemic, Rob Baugh was told what many concussion patients hear: go home, rest, and you'll be fine. He wasn't. Years later, Rob still lives with chronic headaches, aphasia, cognitive challenges, and the ongoing reality of an invisible disability. In this conversation, Wendy Lurrie and Rob...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Women are more likely to have their symptoms dismissed, more likely to be diagnosed later, and more likely to be told that pain, fatigue, or serious medical concerns are "all in their head." In this special Rupture roundtable, Wendy brings together three returning guests, Lara Benjamin, Nina, and Fallon Morey, for a candid convers...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Concussion recovery isn't just a medical challenge. It's a systems challenge. In this episode, Wendy sits down with neurorehabilitation specialist Dr. Kellianne Arnella to unpack what she calls the "Three A's" of concussion care: Awareness, Affordability, and Availability. Together, they examine why so many people s...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Before COVID, Lindsey Jennings was on the rise. A comedian, performer, and tour manager, she was building the career she'd worked toward for years when the pandemic abruptly changed everything. What followed wasn't one rupture. It was many. After losing her professional momentum, Lindsey sought treatment for ADHD symptoms and was...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Eating disorders don’t just affect teenagers. They follow women into adulthood. Into careers, relationships, motherhood, and everyday life. In this episode, Wendy Lurrie sits down with Fallon Morey to talk openly about something rarely discussed. Living with an eating disorder as a grown woman. This conversation explores: The lifelong “voic...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Grief isn’t just emotional. It’s structural. In this episode, Suzanne Barbetta shares the story of losing her husband to cancer at 45. But what follows is something rarely discussed. The collapse of the systems around her. Healthcare. Insurance. Financial stability. Social identity. With no roadmap and no support, Suzanne was forced to buil...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What it means to live with a brain injury and decide whether, when, and how to tell people Do you tell people you have a brain injury? In this solo episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , host Wendy Lurrie explores one of the most complex and emotionally charged questions surrounding traumatic brain injury and invisible disability...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Lara Benjamin survived a high-voltage electrical accident that should have killed her. But what no one realized at the time… was that her brain had been permanently changed. Years later, her symptoms began to surface. Vision loss. Daily migraines. Memory failure. And a growing sense that something was deeply wrong. Doctors dismissed her. Te...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Clinical trials are often seen as a last resort. But what if they’re actually one of the most important options available? In this episode, Wendy talks with clinical trial expert Kelly McKee about how clinical trials really work, why they’re so misunderstood, and what makes TBI uniquely difficult to study. They explore the gap between perce...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What happens when your brain injury doesn’t show up on a scan… but changes everything? In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , Wendy speaks with neurologist and neuro-ophthalmologist Dr. Melody Merati about the hidden reality of traumatic brain injury. We’re told concussions are temporary. That we’ll “bounce back.” That if...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Most people are told a concussion resolves in 10–14 days. But for a significant group, it doesn’t. In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan, host Wendy Lurrie speaks with Dr. Kellianne Arnella about the 10–30% of people who experience long-term symptoms after brain injury . They explore why vision issues after TBI are often m...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. A traumatic brain injury isn’t just the moment it happens. It’s everything that follows. In this episode of Rupture , Wendy Lurrie speaks with actor and audiobook narrator Suzanne Barbetta about the hidden, often misunderstood reality of TBI. Suzanne’s injury didn’t look severe. No loss of consciousness. No visible damage. But what followed...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. In this episode of Rupture, host Wendy Lurrie welcomes back Nina Scherenberg for an intimate and devastatingly honest conversation about what happens when one rupture becomes many. After a traumatic birth, Nina sensed something was wrong with her newborn son, but her concerns were repeatedly dismissed. Days later, she learned he had suffere...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What happens when nothing about the way you look has changed, but everything about the way you function has? In this episode of Rupture , Wendy Lurrie talks with Fallon Morey about invisible disability, the pressure to seem fine, and the exhausting labor of having to constantly explain, justify, and translate what others cannot see. Fallon...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What happens when a traumatic brain injury changes your ability to trust your own brain? In this episode of Rupture , Wendy Lurrie sits down with Kim Lauersdorf to discuss the complex journey of recovery after TBI. They explore how trust evolves after brain injury. Trust in doctors, treatments, and eventually in yourself. Recovery often inv...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What happens when your immune system turns on you. And the healthcare system is not built to catch you. In this episode of Rupture, Nina Scherenberg shares her experience living with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that reshaped her body, identity, and daily life. She describes the flare that left her unable to sit upright. The long pat...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Content Note: This episode contains discussion of self-harm, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), eating disorders, and related mental health challenges. If you are in the U.S., call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are outside the U.S., please contact local crisis support services. What drives self-harm and eating...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Traumatic brain injury can change everything. Not just how the brain functions, but how a person understands themselves, their limits, and their future. In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , host Wendy Lurrie is joined by neuro-ophthalmologist Dr. Melody Merati for an honest, deeply human conversation about what TBI real...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. What happens when the systems designed to support people stop working? In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , strategic HR executive Marlo Green joins the conversation to unpack why modern HR leadership is failing employees. And how it can be rebuilt. Marlo shares her journey into HR, the limits of policy-driven people op...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Menopause is not just hot flashes. It is a full body and brain shift that collides with modern work, leadership expectations, and a culture that still treats the topic as taboo. Wendy Lurrie sits down with leadership coach and brand consultant Lauren Glazer to talk about the real workplace impact of perimenopause. They unpack why so many wo...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Caregiving is often framed as an act of love. What is rarely acknowledged is the emotional load, financial strain, identity shift, and systemic failure that caregivers are forced to navigate every day. In this deeply personal episode, Wendy Weingart shares how her life abruptly changed when her husband faced severe health challenges. What b...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. Vision is how we move through the world. After a traumatic brain injury, that relationship can change in ways that are often invisible, misunderstood, or dismissed. In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , Wendy Lurrie speaks with occupational therapist and vision rehabilitation specialist Kellianne Arnella about the comple...

Submit a dispatch. BestGuessistan wants to hear from you. In this episode of Rupture: The World of BestGuessistan , host Wendy Lurrie is joined by Kim Lauersdorf, founder of Cosmic Shift, for an intimate conversation about life after traumatic brain injury. This is not a story about quick recovery or inspirational transformation. It’s a conversation about rupture. About what happens when a brain i...