Lonnie Quinn, the meteorologist for CBS New York, is back on the air this week, after experiencing a traumatic brain injury in March.
“Listen, I missed you guys more than you know,” he told his coworkers on the May 5 broadcast. “I mean, this is a business where we’re kind of connected to what we do, and I’m certainly connected with you guys.”
Rob Marciano/Instagram
Robert Marciano (right) welcomes back Lonnie Quinn
As Quinn, who’s also featured on CBS Evening News, sat at the news desk, footage showed him being welcomed back with hugs. He noted that he’d been presented with a cake, as well, at his employer for 18 years.
“It was a very major head injury,” Quinn explained. “Once the MRI came back, and that’s when the doctors came in and said, ‘Okay, well, this is actually a traumatic brain injury, not just a concussion. You’ve got to be out of work for six to eight weeks, and we just got to [have] rest and relaxation and get you back to it.'”
Quinn had explained in March that he went through a scary situation after he “took a wallop” to his head.
“The big concern in the medical community, they want to see if there’s a brain bleed because you can be dead in the morning if you don’t treat that,” said Quinn, whose preliminary scans were clear. “So I was free to go home. And I got on with my life, as we all do when we bang our heads, right?”
But he faced a scary situation one night when, just before going on the air, he suddenly couldn’t see out of his left eye. After about 15 minutes, it went away.
“I did the newscast,” Quinn said. “But that’s when our news director — who really looks out for her people — said, ‘Okay, you’re not driving home. We’re gonna get you a car. You’re going to the hospital.'”
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It was there that a neurologist spotted a more severe injury on an MRI. He said he would be going through physical rehab and cognitive therapy.
Rob Marciano, who works with Quinn at CBS, was one of the many happy to welcome Quinn back.
“This man is a good friend, a gifted weather pro, and all around great human,” he captioned a photo of the two. “It’s been a fun privilege to fill-in for him the last few weeks as he heals and works thru concussion recovery. We are all so psyched to have him healthy and back in action!!”
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