On the Fine Art of Concussions

I apparently am the poster child of concussions. I have had more than the average bear, that’s definitely showing my age. Anyway, back to my concussion.

I fell in February. I slid on a petrified piece of rock salt on the stoop at the laundromat. I had already put down the basket before I turned to close the door, and when I turned back around I slid. The stoop is concrete, two big steps, and my brain must have tried to save me because I came down draped across the concrete edges of them. On my left forearm, my right knee, my right shin, my left chin, and my right forehead. Cracked my glasses and rung my chimes.

Couldn’t get up, wiggled around to change my seat but couldn’t go any further. Wound up calling 911 to bring out the ambulance. At the hospital, I got x-rays and a CAT scan.

I knew I was concussed. I’m an old hand at a concussion. Voices sounded like they were underwater. All other sounds were filtered through cotton batting. My neck hurt from holding up my gigantic head. My ears hurt, too, from all the water rushing through. I could hear my heartbeat. So loud.

The lights in the ambulance and in the ER so bright, and everyone is loud and there are beeps and announcements and I need it all to stop.

So, I couldn’t drive home, my kid was with me but doesn’t drive and anyway the car was back at the laundromat, so I called my oldest daughter. She hates hospitals and is not alone in that hate.

So, I got a walker to hunch myself out to her van, for her to drive me home amid the headlights. I appreciated it and told her so, but I hated it almost as much as she did.

Here are the party favors that accompany concussions. Double vision, then watery vision. Headaches, or more to the point HEADACHES!!! Queasy feelings, like you are going to pass out, or throw up, or both. A sore nose, right at the base of your eyes. An uneasy feeling of urinal doom, like I’m going to have to pee sometime, should I go now?I should probably go now, what if I wait too long? Fun stuff. Then over the next few days to weeks, the bruises, and the swellings.

I have fallen twice since then. I think that I got over concussions easier when I was younger. Every one takes a little more out of me now.

The first of the two I was in my breezeway bring the laundry in. We have a handle to help the step up, I slid down the handle and wound up falling on the buckets full of firewood my husband had stacked there. He’s never met an open piece of real estate or a flat surface that he couldn’t fill up. I needed to call the ambulance to get me up. At least I didn’t hit my head.

The second fall was early Saturday morning, today is Monday. I went to the bathroom about four in the morning. No glasses, and tripped on something, coming down on my head, and stomach onto the carpet, and everything else that was on it, hitting my head on a hammer in the corner. I told them to leave me there. They wouldn’t. I sent my husband downstairs to get dressed and go ask the neighbor to call the ambulance, my kid brought in the walker. Because I didn’t want to go to the hospital again and not in my underwear, I crab-walked up the wall and using the windowsill went shakily from knees to feet and told the kid to head off her dad. I still had to pee, and so had the kid leave a second. They walker-ed to my bed. The second day, all the bruises are up, my face is swollen and I have a hell of a shiner. Best part? I’m driving my husband to a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. I’ll be okay, I promise.