The concussion

It was early December, what was still considered a fall day in Michigan , since the leaves were falling unusually late this year. There was still no snow on the ground and despite our several attempts at leaf pickup so far, our neighbors late falling leaves would manage to pile themselves up in tidy piles against the exterior of our home. Jeff and I decided to dress like we were hardy lumberjacks and clean the garage  so we could keep the cars clean when winter would eventually descend on us . Jeff was in the backyard shed  storing bikes and wheelbarrows while I intently focused my efforts into moving kids scooters around to keep them out of our way all winter. I had this genius idea of  storing the three scooters in the 2 1/2 foot gap between the top of a garage cabinet and the ceiling. I decided using a ladder was a waste of  my time since I could clearly just throw the scooter in the air and it could easily land in its intended winter storage location. It was a short distance to toss a wimpy little scooter. I tossed it up and it landed perfectly on the cabinet as I knew it would...like I said : genius.

I turned to see  scooter #2 laying  against the wall. I picked it up considering a repeat maneuver. Immediately I noticed its weight was a bit heavier than scooter #1.  It must have been made of recycled  cast iron bathtubs or something. I was perplexed because the weight didn't seem to match the object. It was unusually heavy.  I held it  in my hands lifting it up and down  to consider its weight for a few moments pondering   exactly what kind of metal it was made from or where on earth  it even came from. "This couldnt't have been purchsed at a store could it?", I decided it was likely welded together in one of Miles friends garages and left behind some summers ago. I moved on to the task at hand next considering  if I could pull off another cabinet toss to get this thing out of my way.   I decided my plan was still brilliant and settled on the toss in the air storage method. I lifted it above my head and kind of gave a 1-2-3 before I released it in the air.

I'm not sure if it was my horrible scooter tossing abilities or just the sheer weight of the thing that thwarted my plans, but the scooter hit the front corner of the cabinet and returned  towards  me at  twice the speed. I have no idea which part of the scooter it was that hit me on top of my  head ; but by the feel of it, I'm 100% certain it was the heaviest section , probably the end of the part you'd stand on over the back wheel.. It hit me so hard on the head it knocked me off my feet and sent me to the cold harshness of our oil stained  concrete garage floor.

On the garage floor, I thought for sure I would  be dead in a few  seconds realizing the gravity of what had just happened and coming to full terms with how stupid I was for attempting such a thing in the first place. I yelled Jeff's name quickly thinking in a moment I would be unconscious and laying in a pool of my own blood and brains. He never heard me. Still conscious, I got on my feet  and ended up in the house crouched on the kitchen floor holding my head crying and praying out loud.  I was feeling my head with my hands and then quickly  viewing my fingers expecting to see all my blood as I  asked God to protect me from my own stupidity.  Moments went by and I then I realized I was spared.... there was absolutely  nothing. There was  no blood. I never lost  consciousness. There wasn't even a mark or a bump swelling anywhere on my head!  It looked like I was going to survive my own foolishness.

I  wandered outside to find Jeff still in the shed so I could tell him what had just happened still amazed I was even alive.  I was a bit dizzy from the hit and we both supposed I'd experience at least some sort of concussion. We came inside and he attempted  to check my pupils using the flashlight method.  Soon realizing neither of us had a clue what we were looking for. "Are my pupils supposed to be tiny? Are they supposed to be too big? Is the size changing at all? Wait, Im facing the sun with a flashlight in my face,  is that interfering with the light from the flashlight"? We abandoned our attempts at playing doctor.  I was just so thankful i wasn't dead realizing how hard I'd been hit.

"I'm just going to lay down on the couch for a little while"

"Don't fall asleep though, I think you'll die if you fall asleep"

There I was, awake on the couch recovering for nearly an hour before I decided to suck it up and  carry on with my day. I wasn't about to spend another winter with a cluttered garage. So, I  finished  the garage, I went grocery shopping, made dinner, and  salads for the work week for my husband. Yea, I had some dizziness, a bit of nausea, but was relieved to be alive thinking the concussion would pass in a day or two.

The next day I went to coffee with a friend and  played pickleball and seemed to be okay. The day after I played pickleball again and started realizing  I wasn't  exactly  okay. Elderly players, twice my age,   who  had no business beating me were slaughtering me in every game.  As the hour passed and I continued to play, I started having  double vision, dizziness, slow reaction times. I knew something was wrong.  The third day, Wednesday, I worked a full day on spreadsheets and payroll software. I ended my day bundling up and taking a hike  around the neighborhood before bed.

 I woke up Thursday morning with full blown concussion symptoms.  It was time to call my doctor who  had me in her office by 10 am. She confirmed what I already knew; I had a concussion.  There's not much a doctor can do from a medical standpoint for a concussion except admonish you for being so active. Evidently exercise and thinking exacerbate concussion symptoms.  She prescribed  me  two weeks of "brain rest", restricting my driving, walking, Christmas shopping, and pickleball. I was told to go for a short walk a week later  and come back immediately if the symptoms were triggered again to reassess the concussion. She put me in a time out three weeks before Christmas.  It was in that moment I realized the mercy of God on me that somehow this year I had managed to get all my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving...something that I have never once in my life accomplished.

I set out to do nothing in my den for the next 7 days until that glorious day I could walk and put an end to this "brain rest" foolishness. I sat in the lazy boy with a book  trying not to look at facebook on my phone. It didn't work. Pretty soon, I found myself debating a mob of liberals and admonished one  for using the wrong spelling of the word "their" in her sentence.  When she quickly, and correctly,  pointed out it was actually used in the right form, I was horrified at my failure as an annoying grammar Nazi to makes such an obvious mistake. So I apologized and turned my phone off to save myself further embarrassment.  I tossed some wood in the fireplace and decided to just sit and do nothing...all.day.long.

My mom had called me earlier in the week to tell me, to her devastation, that  Bob was leaving...... most likely forever.  I tried to put a positive  spin on the news to cheer her up assuring  her we were thrilled at the prospect of her coming to live with us so we could take care of her during her battle with pancreatic cancer. Months previous, we had set our house up anticipating and hoping for her arrival. I'd purchased new bunkbeds in both the boys bedrooms so Jeff and I could share one room and the twins the other, freeing up  our large master bedroom and private bathroom for my mom.

 A few days before Bob flew back to Florida forever and a few days after my concussion,. He decided he wanted to stay in a hotel and asked my aunt to pick up my mom. She wasn't at my aunts place a full day when my aunt realized how sick she was and decided to bring her the emergency room in Ann Arbor where she  had been doing chemotherapy. The next morning sitting in a quiet hospital room with my aunt and her cancer doctor, still reeling from the devastating news that Bob was leaving, my mom told her doctor she wanted to discontinue chemo and said she was done, she wanted to die.  We found out she had several large blood clots in her lungs that could end her life at any moment. She didn't want to be treated for the blood clots and she wanted a dnr order. The doctor agreed with her plan . My aunt was half convinced too. Even if she wasn't, she was told she couldn't change the orders since my mother had been in her right mind when she expressed her wishes to die. That was a hard phone conversation I had with my aunt. It was Friday, day two of brain rest when I received the news. I started planning my trip to Ann Arbor to get my moms spirits back up.

It wasn't enough that my mom was in the hospital initiating Dnr's while I was prohibited from my doctor in making a three hour drive on icy roads. I spent my morning trying to figure out who could drive me. Jeff would stay home with the boys, Miles was working. Zoe asked her boss if she could go and she said "no" initially. If things weren't chaotic enough, they were only about to get worse. I  received a call from the twins school secretary,  notifying me they were out of meds for the kids 1pm adhd med dose at their school located 30 minutes away. So  I  started searching for someone to get the boys medication to their school. Jeff was at work, I was restricted from driving.  I called their dad, who answered his phone in  the emergecy room  an hour away with his new son for a cold.. I called Miles who was at a friends house. He'd planned on getting blood drawn that morning at the hospital and didn't have class until 11:30 am. I pleaded with him to until he finally agreed. He'd have to go to the hospital first since he was fasting for his labwork, stop and grab fast food, drive 15 minutes  home to  get the twins prescriptions,   make the 30 minute trek to their elementary school,then drive back to town before his class.  I called the twins school secretary  to let her know the plan and  filled her in on my  concussion dilemma.

At 10 am I received a phone call from a nurse at the lab. "Is this Miles Lamaires mother?" I figured she was calling to get permission to draw blood for his labs since he's 17. She wasn't. "Um, Miles was here to get labs done and um... when he got to the counter to sign in, he fainted and hit his head...pretty darn hard on our counter "...."we uh, called 911  and they took him to the e.r, you'll probably want to come down here"  I said "you have GOT to be kidding me?"  Next thing you know, , I'm driving a car again, with double vision,  on icy roads. Fortunately it was close by.

Miles ended up being okay and concussion free. But it didn't stop the e.r. from holding us in an obnoxiously brightly lit room (in the humble opinion of a person with an actual concussion) for two hours. I called the school secretary again to tell her my son, who was going to bring the meds in, was now in the hospital for a possible concussion himself and no meds were coming, and to apologize to their teachers on my behalf for whatever was about to happen with my med free twins in their classrooms that  afternoon. . I'm sure at that point she firmly believes I'm a serial liar, because the story is honestly just too far fetched.

 The lab Miles fainted in was actually in the hospital right down the hall from the ambulance services that "transported" him to ER. So when they called 911, they literally pulled a stretcher down a hallway and wheeled him down another hall to the emergency room, same floor, theres wasn't even stairs or elevators involved in this process! My insurance paid $600 for this.

 Miles told me his version of events. He was in a crowded waiting room about to sign in, he fainted...woke up to a crowded  waiting room full of people staring directly at him. A woman who'd been standing behind him said she tried to catch him but failed as she was little and he is 6 '2. The lab technicians wouldn't allow him to move or get up  until the "ambulance" came because he'd hit his head and they feared the worst..... so he laid there for 10 minutes on the floor as a waiting room spectacle until the stretcher arrived. When the stretcher arrived, the much less concerned "ambulance" worker simply said.." just get up yourself  and lay on the stretcher" as Miles stood up, laid on the stretcher as they rolled him 150 feet down the hallway.  Miles and I had a great laugh about it all in the obnoxiously lit continuously beeping curtained off e.r room.

The next day I managed to convince Zoe to drive me to the hospital in Ann Arbor to see her grandma Patty for possibly the last time. After driving with my 19 year old daughter 85 miles per hour on icy roads fiddling with her iphone to change her spotify song on the radio every 15 seconds, I was  convinced I would have been safer just driving myself concussion and all. Somehow we both  survived both the trip there and back, although I'm sure I left indentations on her passenger side door handle. Today is three weeks and three days since the concussion. I've managed a trip to Ann arbor, another trip to Detroit to sit by my mothers hospice bed in my grandmothers den for the remaining six days of Hannukah , her death, planning a funeral, attending her funeral, coming home to celebrate Christmas , and starting the process of designated trustee per my mothers will. Who has time for "brain rest" in this life? RIP mom.