08/17/2025
On October 16, 2016, Dee Cottrell and Bobby Pyles had just finished taking their dog Faye home after an afternoon walk around the block. They were walking to a yard sale in their suburban Nashville neighborhood when a drunk driver struck them from behind, then fled the scene.
Dineen, 40, suffered a traumatic brain injury. Bobby, 44, Dee’s husband of five years and a guitarist for a popular local band, died later that day.
Dee spent weeks at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, eventually getting intensive physical, occupational and speech therapies. She’d never return to her job as a Labor & Delivery surgical technician at Vanderbilt, a job she’d had for 10 years, and loved.
Following outpatient therapy, including some during a few months she spent in Florida, Dee returned to the Nashville house she’d shared with Bobby and her 18-year-old daughter, Summer. But living in a house with stairs proved too difficult. In 2021, Dee moved back to Northeast Ohio, where she was raised, to be closer to her mother and sister.
By then, Dee’s balance and walking had improved, but nowhere at previous levels. She struggled with focusing on more than one task at a time.
Dee started doing yoga three days a week with an exercise coach who offered private classes tailored to people with disabilities. It gave her a way to relax and “to focus on my brain and body to become friends.”
At her mother’s senior apartment complex, Dee started helping the manager of a small café, volunteering for a few hours a week. She got to know the other apartment residents. She liked the socialization. But she stopped after her mother died in 2023.
By then, Dee had restarted physical, occupational and speech therapies, this time at MetroHealth. Feeling her progress had stalled, she stopped after a few months and began searching for something else.
Over the years, Dee has tried different things. A short-term clinical trial in Texas. An experimental umbilical cord stem cell therapy in Florida that was promising but too expensive.
In early 2025, a research physical therapist at MetroHealth emailed Dee to see if she’d be interested in a new clinical trial that explored whether real-world work experience improves cognitive and motor function in people with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The trial was recruiting up to 15 volunteers.
Dee passed a series of physical tests and spent six weeks in the cafeteria at the MetroHealth Old Brooklyn Campus. She worked three days a week while under a researcher’s observation.
During her 2-hour shifts, Dee packaged desserts, memorized food to serve, and engaged with customers. To guard against falls, she was connected to an overhead harness system.
Dee said she liked being challenged physically and cognitively, even if it was tiring.
“Dee jumped in with both hands, both feet, and by the end of her 6-8 weeks with us was doing everything relatively independently,” said Cole Galloway, PT, PhD, who along with James Sulzer, PhD, had designed the Metro Café research pilot project, which continues to enroll volunteers.
“It wasn’t surprising. She’s very social. She liked the café. She got to know people.”
Dee hopes the Metro Café project and other similar studies will one day make it easier for newer TBI patients to access therapy that makes it easier to reintegrate into society. More needs to be learned about TBI and how the brain works, she said.
The trial, Dee says, has given her more hope for her future, which includes working on the designs of a customized wooden shellacked box. With neodymium (“neo”) magnets to keep the lids shut when turned upside down, the pillbox is cute and functional. In 2024, she filed for a provisional patent for Dee’s Dosettes LLC., borrowing the original French term for the box.
“It’s been so uplifting emotionally, like a missing link that is now filled,” she said. “I’m not great at recognizing the positives in my recovery,” she said. “Unfortunately, I think often about what I can’t do.
“The old me is not here anymore. I’m trying to build this new life.”
