Last summer, KGO morning anchor Natasha Zouves was finishing her newscast when she got up from the desk, slipped and fell.
“I expected to be sore, but I truly had no concept of what was to come. 24 hours later, I couldn’t handle any light, I couldn’t stop throwing up and I was asking the same questions over and over again. At the ER, I was diagnosed with a serious concussion,” the San Francisco anchor said in a story on ABC 7’s website.
Zouves said as that morning’s newscast ended, someone’s hair spray canister exploded. It left film on the floor and when she fell, she hit her head, badly. She didn’t think she had a concussion immediately. But as it turned out, her concussion was so severe it forced her to step away from work and recover from home for months.
“The recovery process was incredibly challenging. I was severely photophobic and nauseated. I had splitting headaches as though an ice pick were lodged in my head, that medication couldn’t seem to touch—all I could do was wait for hours in the dark praying it would stop, every day. As is common with traumatic brain injury, I lost the ability to taste and smell. Any food that once brought me comfort tasted like cotton in my mouth; every smell that evoked a precious memory, erased. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be ok again,” she wrote.
Zouves is now back to work and fully recovered from her injury.
Yesterday, she addressed viewers on the air. You can watch it here.