Concussed

Junior Seau - Suicided as CTE took over

The Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway and my post about it yesterday brought up an issue both Ernest and I have in common. We both have dealt with an abundance of head blows in our lifetimes. Granted, Ernest's incidents were all more serious than any of mine, but we both tended it seemed, to put our heads in danger without any thought to the potential repercussions.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy ( CTE ) is a medical condition we really have little information on. At this point, its existence in our brains can only be confirmed by autopsy after we die. Suffering a series of blunt blows or sudden stop traumas to the head over time is believed to be the primary cause. It can go undetected for years. But there is no doubt that any hit on the head can create the beginnings of nightmares in our futures. How some folks seem to live with the damage just fine and others are affected harshly the rest of their days is I guess still a puzzle. There is no doubt however that any blow to the noggin will leave traceable evidence in its wake if anyone is inclined to crack open our skulls to check us out after we pass onto the great beyond.

CTE has been around well, forever. Only in recent years has it been given the attention it deserved. We can thank the NFL for finally acknowledging its existence among their player ranks as the primary reason we even know about it. After all, the players of the National Football League are the perfect poster children for this life changing condition.

All this new information on just how fragile the contents of our heads are makes me wonder just where I stand with regards to this problem. I have had so many blows to the head over the years, I can only remember the ones that knocked me out and/or sent me to the ER for stitches. 

Hmm ..............

I stopped writing so I could try to pin down as many head banging incidents in my life as I could. A few or more moments have passed now and I have decided the list is most likely endless. There are some stand out moments though that rocked my brain hard and had residual effects later. 

My first known encounter with objects as hard or harder than my head was at age four. I have no memory of the incident but I am told I slipped on a throw rug while running in the house and fell cheek first into the corner of a coffee table minutes before my parents were about to leave for a trip to Japan. Seven or eight stitches closed the cut, but my vision didn't recover for several days. My parents still made the trip but only because my father had control over the flight as it was his assigned plane. I understand it was the first of many actions on my part that would piss him off over the years.

The years following were full of intermittent visits to various emergency rooms to have my scalp sewn up followed up by strict directions to keep me awake for 24 hours until my pupils regained their uniformity. The head blows were always different. A brick thrown over a wall once on a dare that I would not move to avoid it sits near the top of the youthful stupidity I was so full of. That was the first time I remember waking up after being unconscious. The dare I took to be the one who climbed the highest in that tree and then found the one limb that refused to hold me. The kids who gathered around my unconscious body later claimed I was out for many minutes.

And on and on and on; I continued to lead with my head sure in the knowledge I couldn't hurt a billiard ball. How many blows did I suffer from by participating in contact sports up to and including college. I broke two windshields in college and suffered concussing effects; one riding my bike on York Road and the other defending a pass from Bill Frank while playing intramural flag football. To add to my pain, I had to pay for the damages in both incidents.

My self inflicted punishment did not stop when I became a responsible adult either. I broke 5 helmets riding and racing bicycles. I once walked into an unforgiving steel part of a trailer that knocked me out. I was in the back field safety checking the empty trailers we used for hauling scrap and salvage. I think I lost a half hour at the least. The blood on my face was dried up by the time I got back to the office. The receptionist squeaked a little when she saw me. That one took over 10 stitches and I had headaches for several days.

So I have had a lifetime of head blows. Based on what I know now, there has to be some long term accumulative effect. And that is okay. I am lucky any damage has not ruined me. But it makes me wonder if I had been more careful, would I be different than I am today? Just wondering is all.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..............................................

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Music for this post is ....... uh, I don't know yet. Hmm ..........

After screening a series of unsatisfactory videos about blows to the head, concussions, etc. I remembered a Pink Floyd tune from my college days. It was a tune I had become convinced was the best pot smoking song ever............ until of course the next one came along. Here is "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd from the their break out album "Dark Side of the Moon". Enjoy.

The song seems appropriate somehow in that while I have not ended up comfortably numb. I have enjoyed though, the many years of searching for comfort and numbness.