Head Injuries: Tell us your story

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C'mon Julze...

--A

[Shuram Gudatetris]

Wow, I got a headache just reading through this thread!

I had several significant head injuries as a kid:

At 7, I got hit it in the mouth with a wooden baseball bat. My brother was throwing balls up in the air and hitting them, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking, and walked right into a full swing. It hit me in the upper lip area. My gums were so swollen that I couldn't close my mouth for several days without biting into them.

At 9, I fell backwards while ice skating and smacked the back of my head on the ice hard enough to see stars. I always thought it was a joke till it happened.

Later that same year, when I was 9, I had a sledding accident. There was a large hill with a big snow ramp in the middle of it. The snow started melting with warmer weather, but then a new burst of cold air re-froze everything. That whole hill was a solid sheet of ice, and sledding was dangerously fast. I went down the hill on one of those circular sleds, laying on my stomach. The sled turned around backwards, so I was going down feet first, laying on my stomach, with my head hanging over the edge. I went over that ice ramp super fast and came down chin first into solid ice. It broke a hole in my lower gums which they tried to stitch together, but didn't manage to do much with. The left side of my jaw was badly swollen for a while, I looked deformed. I couldn't even close my mouth all the way for a few days. That mangled bit of gum tissue, or maybe the bone underneath, has always given me trouble since then: whenever I am exerting myself, with my heart rate up and breathing hard, I get terrible pain there.

When I was 12, being a stupid 12-year-old, I put this metal star-shaped thing in a baby swing and tried to swing it all the way around the bar for no other reason than because the star thing was there, and the swing was there, and I guess I was bored. The metal star thing was about 18 inches wide and weighed probably five or six pounds. It had five or six spokes, each were about 6-8 inches long, 2 inches wide at the hub, about 1 inch wide at the rounded tips. It may have been some sort of farm machinery, I dunno. Anyway, I put that thing in a baby swing and tried to get it to swing up and around the bar that the swing hangs from. The first time it didn't go around, just went forward and came back. So, I tried harder the second time, gave it as much oomph as I could. I don't know (remember?) exactly how it happened, but I remember thinking it was peculiar that the swing was empty right about that time that my skull clanged. That got me three stitches. I think it must have ht me flat, because it seems like one of those star points would have really fucked me up.

I also had a handful of fist fights as a teenager and got my "bell rung" a few times without being knocked out cold. I had a car accident when I was 24 and hit my head pretty hard, but did not have a concussion.

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Clearly a trend amongst Watchers.

--A

[dANdeLION]

Having recovered from a variety of relatively minor head injuries when I was younger I often wonder if my IQ has suffered somewhat because of it. For whatever reason I sometimes feel like there is a smart person in my brain that wants to get out but is being blocked by some unknown force. Like Homer Simpson and the crayon shoved up his nose.

I submit to you the following examples of my own brush with head trauma.

1. When I was about 3 I fell and cracked my head on the living room coffee table. Needed stitches on my forehead. Too young to be diagnosed with a concussion.

2. When I was about 8 I was running through the house and crashed headlong into the corner of the wall. Split my forehead wide open. Needed lots of stitches. Whenever I tell that story it tends to make people wince. I wonder why?

3. My "friend" David Owens was swinging a heavy lead sinker at the end of about 30 feet of fishing line around in a circle as fast has he could and hit me on the side of my head above my ear. I fell down and blacked out for a moment. I needed several stitches on that one.

4. Like a brain damaged teenager I jumped into the shallow end of an in ground swimming pool, head first with my arms at my sides. Crashed into the concrete bottom with velocity. Needed several stitches on the inside of my mouth behind my upper lip.

Thankfully no other incidents of head trauma to report.

If anyone doubts the severity of ATOMICs brain damage, just read his posts.
BTW, Neal also pointed out yhat there's a 'tic' in idiotic.

[dANdeLION]

As for my head injuries, I read Flower of Doom.


Twice.

[peter]

Think I might have posted this before, but I got hit over my left eye by a cricket bat at school during a games class. Lots of blood and reeling about, a couple of stitches and a scar that I bear fifty three years later ........ possibly a duff eye as well, but that's disputable ( not that the eye is duff, but that the blow caused it).

[aTOMiC]

As for my head injuries, I read Flower of Doom.


Twice.

Oh no!