{"id":54,"date":"2019-02-22T03:43:58","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T03:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/omp.space\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2019-02-22T03:43:58","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T03:43:58","slug":"a-bump-on-the-head","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/a-bump-on-the-head\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bump on the Head"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Bump on the Head<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are always three parts to any good story \u2014 just as in a drama there is the beginning, the middle, and end \u2014 or even a fairy tale – the sisters diss their youngest, she is visited by a fairy godmother and attends the ball but oops, then she meets her prince. My brain story only has two parts \u2014 I am living, waiting for the third.<\/p>\n

I was about 15. My parents had gone away for the weekend with my two younger siblings, leaving my older sister and me in charge of ourselves. My sister was a year or two older, with her first serious boyfriend \u2014 but still shy enough that she could not see him solo, so a threesome visited. The boyfriend, a friend, and his girlfriend. It was a pretty, early spring day. One of the first warm days, but not an out-of-sorts warm day, but the kind that gave an inkling of the strings of warm days of summer.<\/p>\n

We were playing outside – in the front yard. Our house was small – a compact three story, with upper story rooms where my brother and I slept, which had sloping ceilings, and a separate heating unit. It had not really been built with three stories, but had been repurposed to hold our family of six. My sister and younger brother shared the second floor with my parents.<\/p>\n

The front yard was sunnier, and more pleasant than the back, although the privacy from the street in the front was only because the yard was raised about 24 inches above the sidewalk. For the neighboring houses to the north, a series of row houses, front yards were at street level. A concrete parapet about a foot high on our side with a peaked top served as a retaining wall for our yard and provided a boundary to the neighbors whose yards all ran together the length of the row houses, separated only by concrete paths leading directly to the front doors from the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

It was early afternoon. I was the fifth wheel \u2014 the only one without friends – but we were playing in the front yard, by a large tree in the corner away from the house, bounded by the sidewalk and the concrete parapet. A projecting branch held a rope – with a large knot at its end – that we used for swinging, usually by standing on the knot, or for batting practice, when we were really bored. I no longer remember where the rope came from, or who put it up, or when, after we moved in it was put up. It had sort of always been there for us.<\/p>\n

We played a little together on the rope swing \u2014 until my sister\u2019s boyfriend thought of a game where he would hold the tail below the knot and swing the person in a widening circle then let go the end. It was like the crack-the-whip game and took a certain skill to stay on the rope after being launched. I quickly became a willing target \u2014 the girls squealed too much \u2014 I was a guy; I wouldn\u2019t squeal – I was also slight, small for my age and wiry \u2014 an easy lift for the larger boy. I was spun around, more wildly and more wildly, grazing the bark of the tree\u2019s trunk. Then the rope broke – I crashed, back of my skull onto the peak of the parapet. Rag dolled.<\/p>\n

I remember none of the rope swing, the breaking, who might have been there, or even how the day was. It is all hearsay, so will the rest of this part of the story until I woke, three days later, in my brother\u2019s bed. He was the youngest. His bedroom the pokiest but it was across the hall from my parents. I had been placed there on return from the hospital. We had played at amnesia as kids – pretending to not know who we were, sort of in the same way of freeze tag, or a staring contest – how long could you keep up the ruse – how soon before you would be discovered ending the game? This, however, was real amnesia, and along with the headache, a surprisingly dry mouth, and a general wooziness, it was not the fun game of just not knowing. It was a hole in time – a blank that I would never really know what happened.<\/p>\n

To reconstruct – and I have reconstructed the events so many times for so many years that I know it so well. Friday evening I remember. Saturday morning I remember. I was an early riser – it was a pretty day. I had to do something with a watch, needing to see a jeweler. I took the bus downtown. An early bus, way too early for the stores to be open – I think I had planned on the jewelry counter at Gimbles. It might have been because I needed the strap adjusted \u2014 it was a fancy linked steel strap, for my first serious watch.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t mind being downtown as the stores opened. I went to the square where Nicolas Coffee was roasting beans a more potent advertisement than just brewing coffee. I then backtracked up the street past the nut shop that also exuded the warmth of roasting nuts. It is likely I bought a small bag of freshly roasted Spanish peanuts \u2014 it is likely because that is what I generally did, but I have no memory, although in my mind\u2019s eye I can clearly see myself doing so. Whether I had my watch serviced, how I got home, what I had for lunch, what time we had gone outside, how many of us there really were, are all unknown to me. I can imagine the scene, but I have no memory.<\/p>\n

On finding me splayed on the ground by the wall, my sister did not seem too worried at first. I had not seemed to have passed out. There was no blood. But I was not acting myself. She first called a family friend. We had a system, when my parents left us, either my sister and myself, or all four of us, they would leave the number of a professional colleague of my father. He would be the first to get the call. Then maybe my parents would be called. I don\u2019t know because the only time the procedure was ever put in place was for me – and I have no memory. My sister called Raj. I think an ambulance was called next to transport me. But it could have just as easily been my sister\u2019s boyfriend who took us in his blue Chevrolet with the black vinyl interior, but I doubt it. I think he bugged out as quick as he could. I don\u2019t think he came back round the house much after the incident.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m told the usually hospital things happened. I\u2019m told the only thing I really seemed to care about was my headache. There had been no blood. I seemed perfectly normal, except I wasn\u2019t. But I don\u2019t know and will never know how I was.<\/p>\n

As I said earlier, three days later, I woke up in my brother\u2019s bedroom. I was puzzled but needed to go to the bathroom. I have a vague memory of startling someone on the landing from the bedroom to the bathroom \u2014 then I think everyone crowded around me – leading me back to the bedroom that was not mine. I think I argued strenuously to let me return to my bedroom. I think I skipped dinner. The next day, the routines were as they had been. The only thing different was that my last memory was being downtown three days earlier – and that three days had happened without my knowing anything about them.<\/p>\n

That is the first part of the story. The second part was some five years later when I was enlisted in the US Navy. In filling out the medical forms, I had noted that I had had amnesia \u2014 I think it was specifically amnesia and not the more generic and now common head injury.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The checkbox was on the flimsy paper that made up military medical records. It was determined (much in the military when you are a junior enlisted person \u201cwas determined\u201d for you – the agency being some vaporous higher authority) that I should have a full neurological work up.<\/p>\n

The medical clinic and small hospital where I was assigned was not staffed to complete the tests. I would have to travel to Jacksonville, almost a day\u2019s drive away, for the tests. Of course, when I got to Jacksonville, I had to go to the eighth floor. I always wondered, if the facility at my home base had had eight floors, could I have just gone there. Or did we confuse the 8th floor with the Section 8 discharge – that would be the irony that no bureaucrat\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>had seen, an 8th floor for the Section 8s.<\/p>\n

I arrived early in the morning (see, my youthful habit was destiny). I was given a good breakfast and led to the examining area. I first had a quick interview with a medic, then was led to a room with a operating style bed in view of a one way mirror. I lay down and had electrodes fastened around my head and to other parts – I was fully wired. The technician retreated and a disembodied voice came over a speaker – \u201cRaise your right hand if you can hear me\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There is a better than average chance that I raised my left hand, being slightly dyslexic, especially with directions. \u201cRelax, but don\u2019t fall asleep.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Time passes. \u201cOK, were done with the first one. Relax again, breathe regularly.\u201d I did. It was comfortable in the room, semi dark, the reflective window showing the white sheet on the bed and possibly the silver highlight of the microphone on the other side. I was warm enough. My belly was still full.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u201cDON\u2019T FALL ASLEEP!\u201d I was suddenly back at recruit training with the yelling and the confusion from not being in a familiar place. \u201cIf you fall asleep, we will need to start again,\u201d admonished the disembodied voice. I stayed awake, bug eyed awake. I wonder now if it is a ruse to get you all sleepy and really relaxed just to startle you to see what the brain trace will be.<\/p>\n

Then I waited. First in the waiting room. Then I was told to get lunch. Then back. Waiting. In early afternoon I was ushered into a large corner office. The windows looked out on the piers of Mayport Naval base. We were looking east, through tinted windows, in the early spring, but late enough so that we had changed to summer uniforms – whites rather than blues. The office was comfortable – a large desk, bookshelves, a seating area with two chairs and a small round table between them. A beige-gray wall to wall carpet, black leatherette on the chairs, dark stain for the wooden arms and the table. A very relaxed captain introduced himself as the neurologist who would conduct the exam. It was puzzling, no captain, with his four gold stripes, had ever addressed me, a mere E-3 just out of boot camp and wearing a patch of three thin blue stripes indicating my rank, as a person. I was even scared of the non-coms, let alone officers.<\/p>\n

The exam began. The doctor lost his glasses. He had set them on his desk. I pointed that out to him. He took a feather, and tickled my nose. He did the usual hammer tests on elbow and knee. He asked me to smell funny things. Ammonia was one. He asked me odd puzzles, like remembering a series of numbers or names, with different intervals between presenting them and having me respond. We talked in the interludes between test procedures. He indicated we had some nice pictures of my brain activity but really neuroscience was still in the 18th century and the best we had to test brain functions were these seemingly silly sensory tests. Then came the final test. Hoping around his office on one foot. Not just me hoping around, but me, the E-3, hopping around following a full bird captain around an office on the 8th floor of the medical facility looking over the cruisers and aircraft carriers at the piers. The exam was done. He returned to his desk and took up my record and his dictaphone. He signaled I could leave and I did as he turned in his chair to the window dictating the results of my full work up.<\/p>\n

Some years later, in transfer form one post to the other, I read my medical record. The report was long. At least a full single spaced typed page with two corrected typos and two that remained. Despite my amnesia there was nothing unusual to report, except, and I quote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe perhaps importance of a grandmother who may have been left handed. The patient is left handed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some thirty years later, I had an MRI. It might have been precautionary after a report of headaches; it might have been \u201cdefensive medicine\u201d because I had just become a patient of a new primary care physician. I was happy for it – I had heard about MRIs but never had the procedure. Would it be as reported. This time rather than being wired, I slid into the tunnel of the MRI machine, headphones played my selection of music. Again there was a one way mirror at my feet. This time the disembodied voice was more a whisper in my ears than a echoing speaker high on the wall. The machine clanged. I was again reminded not to fall asleep. I concentrated on keeping my head rigid against the neck brace as directed by the technician.<\/p>\n

My doctor assured me the MRI was completely normal \u2014 despite a notation by the radiologist of an irregularity at the bottom of my brain. On the MRI it was darker. I like to think that is where the inaccessible three day memories reside. They are there in my brain, just inaccessible. That is amnesia – there but not really there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Bump on the Head There are always three parts to any good story \u2014 just as in a drama there is the beginning, the middle, and end \u2014 or even a fairy tale – the sisters diss their youngest, she is visited by a fairy godmother and attends the ball but oops, then she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}