WBAY anchor and reporter Sarah Thomsen continues recovery since suffering a severe concussion in a car crash in May in Green Bay
GREEN BAY - Sarah Thomsen hasn’t been on the air at WBAY-TV for the last four months, but the anchor and reporter has been working hard off-camera to return.
Thomsen suffered a severe concussion in a car crash on May 19 near downtown Green Bay that has left her with headaches, dizziness and blurred vision. She continues to make progress on her recovery with speech and physical therapy sessions and daily brain exercises, she told WBAY’s Jeff Alexander in an interview that aired Tuesday, but it has been a slow process.
“It’s been a long four months. A long four months. Longer than I thought it was going to be,” Thomsen told Alexander. “I think I’m getting better, but it’s really slow.”
Thomsen said her brain has difficulty doing two things at once, like thinking of words at the same time as reading them. Activities like back-to-school shopping have also been challenging for the mother of four.
“The motion of looking up and then looking down trying to scan for an item on the shelves, just, I was done. It just makes me really dizzy,” Thomsen said in the WBAY segment. “But people look at me and they’re like, ‘What’s her problem?’ so I wish there was something that says, ‘I have a concussion. Be nice to me.’”
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Thomsen has been anchor of “Action 2 News at 4” since the 4 p.m. newscast launched in 2006. Viewers also know her as an investigative reporter covering crime and public safety in her 19 years at the station.
Thomsen was heading north on Monroe Avenue on her way to work at the WBAY studios downtown when her vehicle was struck near Aldo Leopold Community School in May.
“A woman hit me, totaled my car, pushed me across two lanes of traffic, airbags went off, I lost consciousness and woke up and everything was blurry and I smelled smoke and thought the car was on fire,” Thomsen told WBAY in June.
Not knowing when she’ll fully recover has been one of the hardest things, she told Alexander.
“I have no idea and nobody can tell me. I keep asking, when is the full recovery coming? And I’m just going to say I hope so. I don’t know."
She thanked viewers for the many cards, letters and messages. She hasn’t been able to respond to them all, but she said she has either read them herself or someone has read them to her.
In Thomsen’s absence, weekend anchor and reporter Brittany Schmidt has temporarily been filling in as the co-anchor with Alexander for “Action 2 News at 4.”
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Contact Kendra Meinert at 920-431-8347 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: WBAY's Sarah Thomsen continues recovery from severe concussion in May
