How Aneeta Rai, of Dix Hills, survivor of traumatic brain injury, is inspiring others and raising awareness

Looking back on that day more than three years ago, it's best that Aneeta Rai can't remember the crash in Dix Hills that nearly killed her.

Rai, now 37, of Dix Hills, spent five weeks in a coma after a drunken driver in an SUV going west veered across lanes on Vanderbilt Parkway and struck the Honda Rai's father was driving east as she rode in the passenger seat. Both suffered catastrophic brain injuries. The driver of the SUV died in the March 2022 crash.

Aneeta Rai and her father, Nirmal Rai, now 81, spent the next three months hospitalized, recovering from broken bones and brain injuries and learning how to walk and speak again.

No recollection

"I remember being in the hospital and my husband asking me if I know why I'm there. And I said I had no idea," Rai said, recalling her recovery Wednesday. "He said there was an accident and I remember looking at him shocked. I had no idea. Everything I know is not truly a memory. It's simply what my family has told me."

In the years since the crash, Rai has made a near full recovery. On Wednesday, others stopped to take notice with a tribute, and an effort to raise awareness of the life-changing aftermath of a traumatic brain injury and threatening budget cuts that advocates say could hamper recovery.

Rai was recognized Wednesday at the Emerge Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Glen Cove as the Long Island honoree of the Brain Injury Association of New York's Sept. 13 "March On for Brain Injury" at Eisenhower Park. Other walks that day statewide will include local honorees like Rai.

Rehabilitation advocates said success stories underscore the need for funding and resources for survivors.

"A brain injury occurs every 13 seconds in our country, and it affects many people, whether it's a concussion or very severe traumatic brain injury that leaves someone in a coma or hospitalization for months at a time," said Barry Dain, a board member for the Brain Injury Association of New York who attended Wednesday's gathering.

"People need to know that brain injury survivors are like you and I," Dain added. "Their lives have been interrupted along their journey at a very specific moment in time, whether they're a child playing lacrosse or football, or whether an adult who has been in a motor vehicle accident and can no longer support their family the way they used to."

Relearning and restarting

Rai said her recovery meant relearning everything as her damaged-brain healed.

"It was like I woke up, sort of like a like a newborn baby, where my brain wasn't functioning yet," Rai said. "I sort of had to restart."

Rai’s father, who is also continuing to recover, had picked her up from an Long Island Rail Road station after she arrived there from work on March 25, 2022. She recalled it was the first nice day of spring and her plans included going home and taking her 3-year-old son to the park.

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., the SUV struck the sedan across the street from her home as they were about to arrive. Nirmal Rai also broke his spine.

"We both broke many bones," Aneeta Rai said. "Both of us came apart at the seams and had to be put back together with a lot of hardware, a lot of metal, a lot of screws and wire."

Progress, then inspiration

Eventually, Aneeta Rai was transferred from South Shore University Hospital to Glen Cove Hospital for her rehabilitation. She underwent speech therapy and learned to walk at first with a walker and then a cane before she was able to walk on her own.

She said her father saw her progress and it inspired him in his recovery after he spent nearly a month in a coma.

State and federal legislation is pending to provide resources for survivors with traumatic brain injuries, which have been threatened with cuts to Medicaid, Dain said.

The New York State Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver program is funded with more than $300,000 for this year and advocates are looking to secure it in the future, Dain said.

Proposed legislation in the state Assembly would require hospitals to provide information and care for brain injury patients. At the federal level, there is a request in Congress to reauthorize and improve a program related to the prevention, detection and treatment of traumatic brain injuries.

Dain said the walk at Eisenhower Park is a way to gain public support and attention for an injury he considered "often a hidden disability."

"We don't want it to be hidden," he added. "We want the public to know that a brain injury survivor needs our support, deserves our support."

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.