After brain injury, Florida doctor turns to art

ORLANDO, Fla. – Dr. Cindy LaRoe dabs her paintbrush into a gray tube of paint and spreads it along the canvas in the living room of her Eustis, Florida, home.

It wasn’t long ago that instead of painting, LaRoe, 57, would be at the office diagnosing and treating patients. In addition to being an accomplished internist, she was also a skilled bicyclist, known by her peers for her speed and endurance. Everything changed during a 2011 bike race. She flipped over her bike and slammed her head, which caused a brain injury along with a few broken bones.

The injury temporarily prevented her from being able to move her legs or read, caused her to have seizures – and cost LaRoe her career in medicine. The crash led her down an unlikely detour focusing on art. Now, she and her husband are partnering with the Brain Injury Association of Florida to host the Physician Artist Gala this fall at Orlando Museum of Art to help raise awareness and money for others with brain injuries.

“It hurts knowing that you can’t win,” LaRoe said. “I know everything happens for a reason, though. I have this sign that I look at every morning that says something like, ‘Do not compare yourself to who you were. Have compassion for yourself.’ I know that I won’t ever be happy if I always think about how I used to be and ask myself why I can’t do things normally.”

She and her husband, Ken, who were high-school sweethearts, have made it their mission to spread awareness of brain injuries and help the families of the injured when they need it most. Ken LaRoe serves as a board member to the Brain Injury Association of Florida and is the driving force behind the Oct. 15 gala he hopes will raise $100,000 for those affected by brain injury.

“We didn’t know what to do after Cindy had her accident, and I wish we had someone to lean on,” Ken LaRoe said.

Valerie Breen, president and CEO of the Brain Injury Association of Florida, said about 214,000 people are living with lifelong disabilities due to brain injuries in Florida. She said events such as the upcoming gala put a spotlight on the needs of people with brain injuries.

“We want people to get care and support when they need it most,” Breen said. “Cindy stands as a great role model for these people because of her willingness to move on and make this terrible injury into something beautiful with her art. She might not be able to help people through her practice anymore, but she can by bringing awareness and her artistic ability.”

After graduating from Tavares High School, Cindy LaRoe worked as an engineering draftsman and didn’t start studying medicine until she was 30. She credits her interest in the field to her mother, who died of breast cancer, and her and Ken’s son, Zachary, now 28, who lives with cri-du-chat syndrome, an intellectual abnormality caused by a missing piece of chromosome five.

“I needed answers and wanted to know more about why and how these things had happened,” she said. “It was my way of dealing with the grief and coping with it.”

She graduated with her degree in medicine from the University of South Florida and completed her residency at the University of Florida. She practiced for about 10 years when her career was cut short due to the accident.

“I really miss the patient care because having seen death and dealing with tragedy, I had a sense of empathy and compassion that I feel some of my other peers didn’t have,” she said. “I appreciated every day what I was doing and really appreciated humanity, life and death.”

Cindy LaRoe remembers only flashes from the accident. She recalls swerving out of the way of other bikers crashing, looking down at her speed – about 30 mph – and being loaded into an ambulance. Her husband has vivid memories of the crash – the grass stuck in her ears, the lack of scrapes she had and how she couldn’t remember who he was.

“I remember she said she couldn’t move her legs, so we knew something was wrong, but the hospital was more concerned with her broken bones,” he said.

Cindy LaRoe said she didn’t know she had a brain injury until two weeks after the accident, which also left her with four broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a frozen shoulder. One Sunday morning she picked up the newspaper and realized something wasn’t right.

“I called Ken and told him he needed to come home now because I couldn’t read the newspaper,” she said. “The next morning we went to a doctor.”

The couple visited eight doctors, not including those at the hospital, on a journey for answers and hoping to find a way to cure what was wrong. Along the way, Cindy LaRoe became more interested in painting and began creating large canvases filled with color. She has sold a few of her paintings but said she does it more for her own pleasure as a way to relax.

“It really helps me forget everything else going on and puts me at ease,” she said. “I lost so much, but I really can see the light in it because I’m a completely different person now. I used to always be so focused on what my next task was, but now I take time to smell the flowers and appreciate things.”