It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.
Mahatma Gandhi
I watched another tv episode about TBI. Traumatic brain injury. I always find those a little disturbing.
I am going to try recalling the times I hurt my head in my lifetime.
Ten years old my brother and I were hanging out at the PNE, off-season he found a coke bottle, one of the old thick glass ones.
He threw it hard as he could upwards. It bounced off a chain-link fence, on it’s way down, it hit me in the back of my head.
I remember all the blood, and I remember being in a security guard’s shack waiting for an ambulance.
I got stitches that day.
When I was a little older, I was practicing for a track meet doing a high jump. Someone thought it would be fun to pull away the matts as I went over. I landed on my head on pavement.
I still have the painful lump on my forehead from that. I remember punching that laughing guy in the face before I passed out.
When I was in the Navy, we were out in the worst storm in twenty years, they say. The ship was rolling up and down 75-foot swells. I was in the radio room.
Our top-secret material was kept in a big, heavy safe as tall as I was.
Besides the safe was a large iron bar welded in place to keep the heavy safe door from damaging the shelves and equipment beside the safe.
As we violently rolled over a big wave, I felt the ship drop out below me. I was ejected at high speed at the iron bar, the top of my nose caught the bar. That knocked me out.
August 1 1986. I was driving a crippled man to a distant AA meeting. I noticed a Honda CRX coming from the opposite direction at high speed. He clipped a car pulling a tent trailer ahead of me.
I slammed on my brakes and pull as far off the road as I could.
He had radar lock-on. He hit me corner to corner head-on. No air bag in the car I was in. My foot still on the brakes.
The engine and tranny pushed my knee and ankle into the steering column. I smashed my face on the steering wheel.
12 hours of surgery on my knee, followed by 4 more at a later date.
My head injury was ignored for the more serious ones.
Summer 2000. A friend had brought over a 4 wheeled bobcat, so I could do some work on my new property.
It was on a high trailer, as I drove off I was violently thrown forward. I hit my head again on sharp metal.
Enough to give me headaches and dizziness for days after. I didn’t consider ER because I only had the bobcat for that afternoon. I rested for a while then went to work.
December 2014. I stopped at a stop sign near my house like I have a thousand times before. There was a little frost on my passenger side window, the sun was in my eyes for a second. I looked, the road was clear. So I thought. I was T-boned by a fast-moving truck.
My dog was sitting beside me on the console. On impact, my dog was ejected out the driver’s window, breaking my neck and back on the way out.
My head was also injured. 3 weeks later, I would undergo surgery on my neck. The clamps holding my head in place were over-tightened. So much that hair does not grow where the clamps made contact. 8 years later.
A couple of years ago I was doing a renovation. I moved my ten-foot ladder over a few feet. I had forgotten a claw hammer at the top of the ladder. It fell and hit me on the top of my skull at the back.
I went to Peace River Hospital hoping I would be treated fairly, something that doesn’t happen at Fairview hospital or Spirit River, thanks to some malicious nurses.
I was slurring my words and couldn’t concentrate. The doctor there refused me treatment, but gave me a sobriety test and made comments about me being used to that.
The funny thing is I had quit drinking Sep 18 1981.
I do remember stopping at Fairview hospital, that morning and seeing it was too full, and I needed to go to Peace River.
I also mentioned to the admin girl that I would go to Peace River hospital. Not too hard to imagine a phone call was made to the ER by the same nurses.
So again my head injury was not examined. If that doctor was convinced I was drunk, why were the police not called?
Today I am suffering a different problem, yesterday I was moving a large heavy piece of OSB, 6-foot x 6 foot 3/4″ thick into the house. I didn’t realize then, but I injured my upper back. I spent the night screaming a little if I moved at all.
I am spending the day resting, trying to heal up. I just had a lukewarm birdbath in front of the fire that was almost out.
It wasn’t a satisfying experience but I am clean. The rest of the day will be spent resting more. I don’t even want to risk reinjuring starting the gen. So no video games to pass the time. Only binge-watching old TV series.
