Hey guys, thanks for your well wishes!
On July 18, 2021, I slipped on a recently painted and "wet from rain" ramp and busted my butt (actually my elbows which I used to break my fall). Things were normal the next day until early hours of 7/20. Around 1am, my girl friend said I woke up and mumbled something like "frappy boga de be ba" and went back to sleep. I had never done anything like that before, but she assumed that I was in some state of semi-dream sleep, so she ignored it and went back to sleep.
The next morning I told her "the blanket is blue" which was clearly a problem because I was definitely awake and the blanket was not blue and it was an absurdly random thing to declare even if it were blue!
This was in Ajijic, Mexico so my girlfriend called a local friend who quickly picked us up and took us to the hospital. My own ability to communicate was sketchy at best and based on my incoherence they ran a CT scan of my brain and determined that I had a subdural hematoma. (bleeding inside the cranium such that the blood was putting too much pressure on the brain). They needed to do surgery quickly before it got worse; however, figuring out the right blood pressure medication to stabilize me took until the 21st (my blood pressure normally runs high which I medicate, but it was bouncing all over the place after the accident). They cut open my scalp, put in a shunt to allow the blood to escape from the brain cavity, and closed me back up.
The next week and a half are pretty foggy! I had absolutely no vocabulary, but think I could nod yes or no ... but couldn't comprehend enough to understand complex thoughts.
About a week in, my thought process was such that I became very concerned about my driver's license, which I had left with a bike shop (a security deposit of sorts) when I rented a bike for 3 days. I devoted a lot of thought/time to coming up with the words to communicate this to my gf, but the only two words I could summon were "ride" (to suggest bicycle) and "sheriff" (to suggest driver's license). Needless to say this was not successful, but it is interesting on how I solidly fixated on something that really wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things.
At about two weeks, I was clearly regaining vocabulary and they let me go back to the condo where I continued to sleep about 20 hours/day (which is apparently the best thing your body can do to re-establish the brain connections/signals). Strangely the words I had the toughest time regaining were not necessarily obscure words. I did not make it obvious to her that I could not remember my gf's name (after 8 years together). At one point I devoted myself to remembering it and it took about 5 minutes; however, that did not re-establish her name the next time I would have used it (instead of just "hey")!
Just as learning something new, I was learning relatively fast during the first month with so much room for improvement, and progress slowed as I had less and less improvement left to make.
Today, I still have some problems retrieving a word every now and then. We all have the "word on the tip of my tongue" experience, but I recognize that it is too often for me (maybe 10 times in a week as opposed to once). I also have to be realistic and note that my "get up and go" is not as ready as it used to be. I like to think I am still slowly improving, but given the potential for much worse outcomes, my quality of life is very good and I cannot complain. As an account to emphasize that, after the surgery, the doctor told my gf "All we can do now is wait and see", my gf said "what do you mean" and the doctor replied "if he makes it". I feel like the same person and it is only if I really examine myself that I notice compromises in my ability.
For example, I believe constructing this post took more time than it used to; however, I also believe that the readability/coherence of this post is pretty much on par with a post before the accident!
Thanks again for the positive thoughts! I am sorry I have taken this long to log back on and give an account.
Some other interesting points regarding my accident are:
1) My head never hit the ground, I landed on my elbows, but the resulting jarring of my head tore a few blood vessels to allow the bleeding.
2) If we had (and there was NO apparent reason to) gone to the hospital immediately after my fall to get checked out they would have released me because these are small blood vessels slowly leaking and would not have shown on the CT scan until there was more time for the blood to accrue. -
3) This accident probably would not have happened had I been in the US. I slipped on a ramp which was an alternate route to using the two steps next to it. The ramp is for a caterer to use when pushing a hand truck and at about 25 degrees slope. It had been recently painted and when wet was extremely slippery. In the US, because we are such a litigious society, there would have certainly been sand added into the paint or some other means of providing a higher level of friction. This is the first experience in my life where I realized that the US propensity to law suites proves beneficial!
Cheers,
Kurt
