gershonb quoted
<You said that your whole life changed when you stepped of a curb while carrying a load and ended up on your back and hitting your head! Geez, amazing how little it takes...>

I did not fall. I just landed with my knee straight and locked and jarred my body from my left hip/pelvis to my head. An amazingly minor impact. Maybe about 65 G's at most by my calculations.

After my severe concussion in 4th grade. I spent a lot of time in elementary school zoning out. Teacher thought I was daydreaming. Maybe, I was extremely bored. But now, after having experienced more zone outs, I believe they were absence seizures.

Now, I have two kinds of absence seizures. In one, I find myself reading or looking at the same thing, over and over. In the other, I realize that a block of time has passed and I have no idea what went on. If I get stuck staring, my wife says I have a very stern look on my face.

In high school, I was put on Dilantin (phenytoin) and later phenobarbital. My brain settled down but the seizures came back in college. I had an especially hard time with memory freeze. In any stressful situation, I would lock up and lose my ability to recall information.

Now, the brain freeze up is a routine event. I can get stuck trying to recall the simplest thing, a good friends name, a simple word, etc. I can picture what I am trying to recall but the word to fit it does not make it to my mouth. Very frustrating.

All from a bad step off the curb.