Does Kate Shugak Have Brain Damage?

I have been reading the Kate Shugak series of mystery novels, which are written by Dana Stabenow. Probably what helps me in reading them is that I know very little about Alaska, so my tendency to quibble on the underlying facts is quelled when I read the books.

The protagonist, Kate Shugak, is a tiny (5') Aleut woman who was an investigator for the Anchorage district attorney's office. She burned out on the job and moved back to the homestead that she inherited from her parents. She investigates crimes and works at whatever she can to make a few bucks, sort of living a semi-subsistence lifestyle.

She can be vengeance incarnate, such as the time she left an injured bad guy out in the open to be eaten by a pack of wolves. She has had two sort of steady men in her life, both of whom were law enforcement. Her nearly constant companion is a large dog, named Mutt (half Husky, half wolf). Mutt probably outweighs Kate by 30 pounds.

But one thing has come to bother me, and that is in every book, Shugak takes some serious damage. Most of the time, it is in the form of a bad concussion that lays her out from a period of a few hours to sometimes several days. She never gets through a case without somebody seriously fucking her up.

Sooner or later, the long-term effects of the concussions would begin to take a toll on her. I kind of wonder if Stabenow will ever work that into her story line.