 |
| That's 8x8 feet of roof, and 8x12 feet of 67.5 degrees of overhang. It's built of pure sexiness. |
Unfortunately, a few days ago, I took a pretty solid fall while climbing in the roof section of the kind of amazing huge home climbing wall. I am horrible at falling, which is so so unfortunate since I'm also horrible at climbing and fall a lot while I do it. I'm so bad at falling, in fact, that this fall brought on Concussion Number SIX. Six.
My poor little brain. You know who sustains head injuries at a similar rate to me? Professional wrestlers. Like, WWE wrestlers. Guys who consider regularly taking chairs to the head as a normal day at the office. It's not exactly a problem that the average stay at home mother deals with.
For those of you who have never experienced a concussion, please let me detail the effects and progression for you.
A few minutes after the fall, my vision started narrowing. I didn't black out, but man it was close for a few minutes. I remember trying to tell Tim that I didn't feel well, but I couldn't talk, just shake my head when he asked if I was okay. After a while I was able to ask Tim to take me inside, I needed to lie down. He helped me walk in and got me into bed, I assume, though I don't remember more than the first few steps of the walk.
I woke up the next morning with an absolutely miserable headache. I was so dizzy that I basically bounced off of everything I came near, and it doesn't happen often that I can be that nauseous without throwing up.
Loud noises make my brain stop. Literally. Havoc yells, and I can't move. I can't see. It's just for a split second, but it's terrifying and I hate it. He yells a lot, and often right in my ear.
I'm utterly exhausted, all the time. I'm needing several naps a day, and if I try to tough it out the headache and dizziness comes back with a vengeance.
The scariest part was, and still is, the impaired cognition. I remember staring at the remote that first morning, and crying, because I couldn't remember how to use it. I could see the buttons, and I knew somehow that those made the tv work, but I didn't know what to do. Sometimes, I'll try to read something, a text message, an email, and it's just a jumble of letters that my brain can't make behave and organize into words. I know there are words there, but they just refuse to make sense. Thankfully that is improving a bit, and it's by no means constant, but I'm still having a very hard time with it. It is much worse if I'm upset, or stressed, which is unfortunate because I have a two year old and that is basically the definition of stress.
I have no real sense of smell right now, which is awesome, because again the two year old, but sucks because I can't really taste much. So, I've almost completely lost my appetite, which is probably having something to do with the exhaustion, but it's hard to make yourself eat when everything tastes like cardboard.
I can't remember most of the day that I fell. As time passes, I find that I'm forgetting more and more parts of the days immediately following the fall, although honestly I'm not certain if it's because of the trauma or just because very little of that day was worth remembering... So I'm trying very hard to make sure I recall at least a few details of every day, like what I wore, or what I made for dinner. So far, I'm not making much progress, but I have high hopes of it getting better soon.
I've been doing a lot of reading about post-concussion syndrome, and traumatic brain injury, and what little research there is on the long term effects of multiple concussions... there isn't a lot on the latter, simply because most people have enough sense to, you know, NOT GET A WHOLE BUNCH OF CONCUSSIONS.
Basically, I should keep improving slowly but surely... but some of the effects may be permanent, and I have no idea of which and to what extent. I can tell you that the cognition problem has been getting progressively worse with each knock, and while it does get better, it by no means has ever completely gone away. That is likely skewed, though, by the fact that there's never been more than a year and a half between injuries, so it's hard to know.
Brain injuries are hard. Other times, I don't know what's going on, and that is a hard thing for the people around me, I think. Right now, I am okay and am able to type this out (and wow do I hope it makes as much sense as I think it does), but in twenty minutes I may be struggling to remember my middle name, or my kids birthday. Outwardly, I look fine, I look perfectly like myself, and some of the time I feel like myself, but my brain is hurt and there's not a damned thing I can do to hurry up the healing. I just have to be patient with myself, and hope that the people around me can be patient with me, and hope that it won't be much longer.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't climb anymore. Anyone want some slightly used 6.5 climbing shoes?
