Evangeline Lilly says brain scans show “almost every area” of her brain is “functioning at a decreased capacity” months after she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall in Hawaii. In a video posted late Jan. 1, Lilly told followers she is starting 2026 with “bad news” about her concussion, then said the test results point to brain damage tied to the injury.
Lilly said she fainted on a beach in May 2025 and hit her head on a boulder, leaving her with a concussion that has required ongoing medical care. She said she now needs doctors to sort out what’s driving her continued symptoms and to map out treatment, even as she admitted she dreads the workload ahead. Lilly added that the scans may point to “other factors” beyond the traumatic brain injury, without offering specifics.
She first described the incident in a May 30, 2025, post on her Substack, writing that she fell “face first into a boulder” and that hospital staff focused on finding a cause for the blackout while treating her facial wound. Lilly said clinicians checked her heart, blood sugar and iron levels and found no obvious explanation, echoing a pattern she said has followed her since childhood. She wrote that doctors once floated hypoglycemia without testing, then later blood work made that explanation harder to support.
Medical guidance offers a frame for the long tail Lilly described. The Mayo Clinic says persistent post-concussive symptoms can last longer than three months and may include headaches, dizziness, fatigue and problems with concentration and memory; it also notes that loss of consciousness is not required for a concussion and that lingering symptoms do not track cleanly with injury severity. Lilly told viewers her “cognitive decline” after the fall changed her day-to-day pace, and she described a calmer, more restful holiday stretch than she has had in years.
