April 10, 2002 at close 4:30 pm an idiot in a dark blue or green SUV passed a school bus on a marked double solid yellow line 2 lane curve. Not being into head-oning schoolbuses, and with someone pulled over to my right, and someone turning left in front of the school bus, I took my beautiful all original and even the clock worked 1962 Ford F-250 3/4 ton 352CID 4on-the-floor off the road through the woods , missed several kids in a driveway, and a house too, and slammed head on into into a well placed and securely covered culvert. This caused the cab/chassis mounting bolts to shear clean off... The cab went one way, the chassis and bed went another, and I ended up somewhere in the middle splattered all over HWY.64
Next thing I know it is almost 6 weeks later and somebody is asking me "Do you know where you are and how you got here?" I remember it well, I remember trying to tell her that something bad must have happened because I was in a wheelchair being willing and "this is obviously a hospital"
One minute I was one of the very few true ambidextrous people I had ever met. I could throw a football with either hand equally well/bad, could shoot a basketball left or right handed, and could pitch a baseball over-hand with much speed and pretty good aim either handed. I used to play raquetball quite well and frequently too, and had been "banned" from several courts for always playing without a tiecord from wrist to raquet so I could switch hands at will. I could write effortlessly with either hand too, and my kids used to take great joy at having their freinds watch daddy write with both hands at the same time. Plant mechanics wherever I was always found me quite useful to have around when it was advantageous to have someone around who could find their way around a peice of equipment "in the blind" left handed as well as right. I did tend to favor my left hand for a few activities like tying my shoes and eating and shooting.
What a shock to find that my entire left side was now visibly markedly reduced in muscularity from my right side, and that basically all I could do with my left hand was clap.....My face tended to sag on the left and, well, nothing wanted to work right.
The first meal I remember taking some woman volunteer sat down next to me and started cutting up my food. I asked her what she thought she was doing and she told me she was going to cut my food up and help me eat...I told her if she touched my knife and fork again she would be wearing them home...This brought me to a rather odd meeting with the head of neurology.....He told me he doubted I was being literal, but that I could not talk to people that way.
After quite some time we came to an agreement that unless I asked for help, none was wanted or expected for any reason.....
My wife and I were told I would never walk without assistance again, that I would never speak clearly again, that if I could re-learn to read I would most likely never regain the comprehension skills that I had developed, I was lucky to be able to speak and understand english and would never regain my ability to be somewhat bi-lingual again. And those were just a few of the things I was told....
The next morning I told a nurse I wanted to go for a walk, she called a neuro and a physical therapist in...They asked if I thought I could walk.... My response of course was "absolutely!" Less than a minute later I was a big puddle of jello collapsed on the floor , and that after exactly zero feet of forward progress. This really shook me up....I asked for a newspaper, somebody brought me one, I could read some words, but there was this odd disconnect between what I read and what it meant....mainly the words I could read I had no idea what they meant..A very strange situation indeed. I would become instantly confused and could just fall over sitting in a chair...
I was asking 8million questions a day and demanding to know things, a doctor took me and the wifey into a room and started trying to explain the severity of my injuries to me. He said, and I quote "you are the most amazing person I have any knoledge of, the only thing more remarkable than your showing any recovery at all (I didn't like him telling me that my "recovery", me in my situation was "remarkable") is your even surviving in the first place.".
Turns out that people who seperate their frontal lobes, destroy their balance mechanisms, hemorage their brainstem, end up with a whole mess of "the equivalant of stress fractured vertabrea", crush their neural tubes and have a whole list of "and, and, and, and, and" arent generally supposed to live, and if they do, to never wake up, and if they do, to never function again.
I don't know how true it is, but I was told that there are no more than 2 or 3 others in North America who are known to have sustained a similar scope of injuries and showed the ability to return to a somewhat "normal" life. Someone told the neuro's I was a big racing fan, and I was told that I somehow survived a greater extent of injuries than what killed Dale Earnhardt.
OK, so I never ever give up.....I have learned to read, an have no problems with it some days, and great problems on others, I have learned to speak clearly once again, I gave up M$Windows and the MacOS and went and learned enough Linux to have not used anything else in over 5 years now, and thank God I did too...I could not "live" without the stability of the operating system, the options it offers me, and the many wonderful Linux-geeks who have freely given so much of their time and skills that I might regain some of what I had lost....and I walk a minimum of 1.75 miles at least once a day with a massive and powerful 180 pound half Great Pyrenees half Anatolian Mountain Dog at my side.
I defied all the odds when 11 months later I returned to work, but shortly after I had to have the neuro's take me out as I have serious and severe "blanks" in memory and very brief and transient periods of extreme confusion. One cannot work in extreme speeds, temperatures, pressures, and complexities if one has continuos blanks and drops of/in memory....oh yeah and green, the color green, things in green, confuses me greatly.
Having to leave work broke my heart, I had a great job with a great company and was priveleged to meet and work with some of the finest process industry folks in the entire world. I looked forward to tommorow every day. I loved working period, I did a 43 day stretch at one plant and during a rebuild/start-up far from home I did 13 weeks at no less than 14 hours ever and only 2 days off. And me and a chem eng friend of mine once got severely reprimanded for doing 37 hours "on the clock" trying to start up a new and unproven process (but we did succeed at what we set out to do, something that was never even remotely considered do-able. I was very good at what I did, one of the best anywhere in the world. It's not bragging, it's just a fact). I still miss working, the people, the trials and tribulations, the challenges, the succeses, and not so successful too, the pressures, the deadlines, I miss it all. But I wasn't willing to keep quiet about what was wrong with me and risk getting somebody else killed...
I remember the first time I walked the 1.25 miles to Physical therapy, I went 2 days one week and 3 days the next for 7 straight months. "Where's your wife?" one of the PT's asked, "Oh, she's at home, she doesn't know I walked here" They thought I was kidding until she called in a panic looking for me....I had to endure an hour long reprimand from the neuro's over my daily excesses, they just didn't get it.... I told them I had not much else to do so I would do the PT exercises I was given every week and do them over and over for hour upon hour.
I remember to the first day I came home, I was sent home with a walker and a wheelchair, and told my wife and kids that they were to be kept away from me. I wanted to walk, it took over 2 hours to walk the less than 250 feet round-trip from the back door to the road and back. Everyday I would add a few more feet to my effort. I fell down a lot, I would sometimes have to stop and puke I would hurt so bad and get so nauseous from the vertigo issues.
One last thing and then I'm done , for now anyway, I really had no intention of writing any of this....
I told the neuro's the day I was being released that they could send me home with all the drugs they wanted, but as soon as I was out of their direct control, i was quiting everything and would take nothing. They thought I was kidding. I wasn't......
That's how I ended up "here". I have headaches of unbelievable terrifyingly horrific intesity. Neurologists seem to struggle with my refusing to no any longer take anything on a daily basis. I don't care what it is. But after breaking a 240mg morphine and all the fentynal daily I want habit, it will never happen again..... I am just about at the end of the line with the neuro's and their friends at "pain management" I refuse to take anything daily period, prefering to be in a state of full awareness at all times, and I am damn sure tough enough to handle everything but the headaches. I want something for when I get the headaches, the and only then, but all any neurologist wants to do is more tests and put me on larger and larger doses of powerful pain relievers full time. For some reason it takes a lot, they gave me 200mgs merepidine one night and that just made me feel better and after 2 hours observation I walked out of the hospital, went home and took the big dog on a several hour walk. I have taken (3) 120mgs morphine doses 8 hours apart didn't puke or yawn either one. They seem to think that was enough to kill me, but it didn't even sit me down.... And so, well more and more of stronger and stronger, that just ain't gonna happen brothers and sisters.
Pain management in my case is little more than passing a problem off, and peeing in a cup to make sure I not smoking pot while it's ok for them to see to it that I am taking lethal doses of real narcotics on a daily basis. That ain't gonna happen any more either folks....
It really doesn't seem to matter what I think though....I talk with neuro and GP physicians regularly and it is my opinion that I am as well educated, make that better educated about what is wrong with me than any of them are.They talk to me like I'm some sort of idiot, just once though, as they find out by the second visit just how capable, intelligent, and willing to endure pain and aggravation that I am..
My shrink asked me if I don't think I have a somewhat undeservedly high opinion of myself, but like I told her, I have gotten where I am today with a grand total of 7 months physical therapy and 6 weeks of cognizance "training and therapy" which was more like a huge 6 week waste of time. I quit a serious morphine addiction all by myself, I re-learned to do almost everything by my self I do whatever I want, with enough effort, and I never complain about anything except the headaches. So no, I don't have an overly high opinion of myself, I fully have a right to and deserve every accolade I bestow upon myself. I try hard every day to do at least as good as yesterday. I wake up everything hurts, if it don't hurt, it don't work.
All I want is help with the headaches when I get them that's all.....And yet all the neuro's can tell me is "you need pain management". It has been written that I am "uncooperative" and difficult" and "hard to deal with"....It would seem that neurologists, they all seeming to all think that they are just one foot from god-hood, it seems as if asking questions, doing one's own research (and my wife is a university research librarian too) and disagreeing with anything any neuro says is all it takes to be "difficult" "uncooperative" and uncooperative.
If I wanted to get a tatoo, it is rather apparent that it would be easier to get pain meds for that than for headaches so sudden in onset and so terrifyingly intense that one has to be rousted up out of a puddle of puke by the town police (thank goodness this is a little 3800 people town and we all know each other) in the middle of somebodys driveway.
I'm really sick of it.

Well, I just read what I wrote at 6pm, 2.5 hours ago....My my my I sure do seem like the angry young man I'd be if I was younger.....
Oh yeah, This is nothing like what I intended, but what the heck, what it is, is what it is
Hope I didn't disturb or upset anybody, too badly anyway....Stay tuned for pt.2!
"Riding bikes, climbing ropes, and doing other now stupid things".....

and to our little corner of the world!!!

So Glad you found us!!!


Feel free to roam around... if you have any questions ask away... someone will be about shortly to help you out.

Abbie

Hi Arthur and Welcome!

I think about all I can say about your story is WOW!

Wow...that is an incredible story.
I think many of us here have gone through an anger stage and many of us stiill have some of that anger within us. I think folks who don't fully understand this probably have not experienced great pain and/or injustices. Therefore, they are clueless and are unlikely to really "get it."
For the longest time I was so-so with reference to my health care. Then, after a lot of pain and frustration, I took a doormat approach to the situation. This not only led to no improvement, but contributed to depression.
I mustered up a new attitude...one that some might think is "undeservedly high." However, I found that discovering that I have high value and taking the time to learn what I needed to learn (because I am worth it), really paid big dividends. One thing I have learned is that sometimes I have to make compromises in order to accomplish what I would like to accomplish. I'm okay with this. Ironically, when these compromises are made, it is amazing what I can do. Outsiders (those folks...the cluelss above) don't always understand...but I press forward anyway. I'm worth it. And as you know, you are as well.

Hi, Arthur! Welcome to NeuroTalk!

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