I Caught The Fall With My Head

That's what Brian would be saying if he could remember the fall at all. Friday he went on a mountain bike ride with his friend on a lunch hour. He's been doing this Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a couple of weeks now. He bought all this biking gear which, lucky for him, included a helmet. Because Friday, after my 2:00 meeting I received a voice mail stating that Brian wrecked on his bike and he probably needs to go home. Possibly even the doctor's. He would be waiting down stairs in the locker room. Crap!!! This did not sound good.

I go to the locker rooms in hopes that possibly this was some kind of cruel joke. It wasn't. He comes out and his face is scratched and his ear is bleeding pretty badly. He looks a little dazed. I asked if he had the keys. "Should I have the keys," he responds. I gave him the keys to get his biking stuff out of the car. He tells me he'll look in the locker room for them.

As I wait his friend gives me a few details. They weren't helpful. He told me where he was scratched and that he hit his head. He didn't know how because he was ahead of him and didn't see the actual wreck. Brian comes back out. "Did you find the keys?" I ask, hopefully. His response? "Was I suppose to be looking for them?"

Okay, I might puke at this point. We are so getting out of here. We finally leave and drive to the nearest "Doc in the Box" I can think of. The entire way there Brian is asking what day it is and what time it is. Here's a little example. Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "It's 3:15"

Brian: "Where are we going?"

Me: "To the doctor."

Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "Around 3:15."

Silence.

Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "A little after 3:15."

And so on and so forth until we reach the doctor's office. Where we didn't even stay because they told us to go to the emergency room immediately. Puke.

We get to the emergency room and he's still acting very, very loopy. They did a CAT scan and his skull was not fractured, so that was a huge relief. He did fracture a bone under his eye which will heal by itself and is only a bit bruised. He has some nasty road rash that I won't even describe to you. And he has this memory issue. It concerned the doctors and so I finally convinced him to stay the night at the hospital. It was the right choice.

I think the doctors had little faith in my ability to convince Brian to stay. He was pretty adamant that he wanted to go home. Hello! He's a concussion patient. He doesn't remember anything that was said two minutes before. I'm pretty sure I could argue my case for staying at the hospital and win. And I did thank you very much. Sheesh!

Anyway, he still has a few memory issues, but he's much better. He did silly things all Friday night. Like ordering a ton of food from the hospital cafeteria and calling me four times that evening after he insisted I go home and take care of the dog and not remembering one phone call. He asked me probably 100 times what his parents said and where was Jillian. And he slept a lot. Which probably wouldn't be the case had he come home.

And now he's back at work. I told him to stay home, but he's here and he seems much better. He did say that today is fuzzier than yesterday which I don't like, but I'm glad he's doing well. The doctors said he'll probably never get his memory of Friday back. Maybe that's best.