Where I Was

One month it's the demands external activities make on your time. The next it's head trauma. At least I have a good excuse for being gone so long. Ironically, it was at the very job I had taken to sand-off the rough edges of inflation where I incurred my injury.

I work in a store that dabbles in many things; furniture, home decor, women's clothes and odd bits of gourmet food. I do a little of everything, like most people on the payroll. On this hot and humid Saturday, I was preparing to liberate some overstock when I collapsed, resulting in an unscheduled meeting between my head and the store's cement floor.

Afterwards, I briefly regained consciousness and surveyed the damage. But I soon lapsed back into the netherworld of unconsciousness.

My next waking moment was in an unfamiliar room with oddly-dressed people I didn't recognize. I was in a bed and felt intensely uncomfortable. There were monitors and tubes and catheters connected to me. Where was my job? Where were my clothes? What have you people done to me? I felt like I had been kidnapped and then disabled. 

The nerve-endings in my head were abusing my central nervous system as if it owed them money. My fight or flight mechanism was gearing-up and preparing for escape.

I needed to get the fuck out of there.

Then there was a voice.

“La Piazza?”

It was a nurse, standing next to my bed.

“Is that your name?”

“Yes” I replied weakly.

“Do you know where you are?”

My memory began its long, slow emergence.

“A hospital?”

“Yes. Do you remember what happened to you?”

I pondered. There was a vague memory of the fall, which now seemed like a long time ago. Then blanks. There were questions: how did I get here? How long had I been here?

“I fell at work.”

“Yes. You hit your head and did quite a bit of damage. An ambulance brought you here and we performed brain surgery and your anesthesia is just now wearing off. How do you feel?”

Collecting such events and reducing them to a four-word question seemed woefully inadequate. But given the circumstances, that four-word question was the best that could be managed.

“Tired.”

I remember shifting in my bed, unaware of the significance.

“Okay. Drink some water first. You're really dehydrated.”

I obediently drank and then drifted off to sleep.

The next few weeks are fuzzy, with sketchy memories of incessant checks on my vitals, random personal visits and scattered phone calls. Then there were the unending entreaties from the medical staff to eat. (I lost ten pounds in my first two weeks and didn't resume semi-regular consumption until I was threatened with being fed via a nose tube.)

In my brain's distorted view, my personal doctor had set-up a personal diet years earlier and I just didn't need these interlopers interfering. Left unanswered was how I would consume—much less obtain—that food from my hospital bed.

Eventually I was able to leave the confines of my bed and begin various forms of therapy. Beyond the relief of escaping my room was the challenge of recovering my muscle tone and making sure my brain was capable of handling the mundane but essential rigors of everyday life.

It is noteworthy that on the eve of my discharge, the speech therapist went back to one of our initial visits and shared my responses to some questions she had asked about a short story. To put it nicely, my answers were unrelated.

I remain ignorant of how my brain repaired itself—all things being relative—but it is one of the wonders of my life.

Accompanying my emerging appetite was behavior that, while hardly qualified for a Miss Manners forum on civility, at least wasn't outright hostile. If I have any regrets (aside from falling on a cement floor, of course), it's the uncooperative manner in which I initially treated the medical professionals attending to me.

It's par for the course for people with head injuries to treat all concerned with distemper and disregard. It's the byproduct of the shock, dislocation and confusion that accompanies a head injury.

I am thankful for those who had the wherewithal to see through those temporary conditions and focus on bringing their patient to the best realization of their post-fall potential. I have never participated in that profession, but I am positive it is as challenging as it is fulfilling.

It is because of them I am able to write this. And am able to operate a computer, measure a tablespoon of paprika needed for the Hungarian goulash I ate last night and recall where I stored a spare bottle of body wash many months ago.

It is the wildest of understatements, but it could have ended so very, very differently.