This event was chosen to recount because at the time of this writing it was the most recent significantly profound example, with the most profound impact yet that I've experienced. Or, maybe not.

A while back I was riding my motorcycle. It was a very neutral ride, just coasting in neutral, no hurry, no "testosterone" action, an intended half mile coast to a friend's house. The road was quite safe, no traffic, smooth, wide, uneventful. In actuality, I can't state as a fact that this describes the situation for this specific event at all. Why? I had made this same ride hundreds of times over several years in this same exact way to this same friend's house at the same time of day. So I am assuming I made this ride in the same way. But on this day, the bike went down. Since it was intended to be a very short slow ride within a gated neighborhood with very little traffic, I was not wearing a helmet. My head hit the pavement, breaking my skull in several places. The resulting loss of consciousness and trauma meant that while I certainly had the ride in my short term memory, the ability to transfer that to long term memory was now offline. Short term memory being volatile means that after a little while, the memory of what happened was lost. This is typically observed for many accidents of this type. But in my case, not only did the ability to store long term memory go offline, but several other rational, analytical, and spiritual functions that together I understand as me went offline as well. As an example, my ability to store long term memory was offline for about two weeks. Really.

Importantly, I have fairly hard bones. I rarely break anything, and when I do the impact is usually very hard. Usually, very hard impacts, even with my head (I am tall) do not result in anything broken. So, a broken skull means the impact was probably very hard. With no memory of the accident or how it happened, I have no idea. The impact did result in concussive injury as the brain gets rattled back and forth inside the skull. It caused bleeding within the skull, above the dura. There was no subdural hematoma (which is a good thing) and no breakage to or puncture of the dura into the brain (another good thing). However, the bleeding within the skull above the dura soon caused pressure on the brain. The result was that the brain was squeezed, shrinking it, and pushing it off to one side. If the impact didn't cause me to lose consciousness, that certainly did. In addition, this condition begins to starve certain areas of the brain for oxygen. And for an injury like mine with no puncture, the anoxia is the event that eventually induces serious injury. Same reason that drowning or suffocation or a stroke eventually results in serious neurodegeneration.

Someone did saw the fall as it happened, called for an ambulance when I didn't respond to get up, the ambulance got me to a hospital 25-30 minutes away (for an aggressive driver) and a neurosurgeon who had just completed an earlier surgery happened to be walking by as I was wheeled in. My head surgery began less than an hour from the time I had left my house to go to my friend's - more good news.

I may later produce and link [ > here < ] other of the interesting details describing my treatments and behavior during the first two weeks in the hospital. They would be interesting in both a macabre and in a human life story and relationship sort of way. What very little that I will say now that may have spiritual significance is that my wife and kids (all grown, independent, and most not living locally) were all with me from time to time. When I was occasionally brought out of sedation, I would become agitated (again, apparently normal for head injury patients, who are not "online" and are confused about the strange surroundings and restrictions they find themselves in). While I have no memory of my family speaking to or with me during those first two weeks, apparently I responded to them specifically and would calm down as they encouraged me. I recognized them when they were with me even though my ability to form memory was not yet online.

At some point in the first two weeks I vaguely remember that I realized I was in a hospital but could not figure out who I was there for. After a day or so I figured out that I was in the hospital because something was wrong with me. After another day or so I realized I had had an accident and that was why I was in the hospital. I say this only because it indicates how fully offline my awareness and memory ability was. My situation during those first two weeks was actually such that there would never have been any doubt whatsoever to anyone with three neurons firing and the ability to see what was going on that something terribly wrong had happened to me. Enough said.

After two weeks I had improved enough that they moved me into my third room, a recovery room, and some of my ability to form memory began to come back online. After a day or two, they brought a wheel chair, helped me into it, and had me wheel myself down the hall to the elevators with the goal of not bumping into the walls. From there they took me to physical rehabilitation (rehab), where I would do what they asked, or try my best.

I remember after two or three days of that, and them being very congratulatory to me, I asked them, "Do you really think I am doing well?" To which they responded most positively, and earnestly. So then I asked them, "Well, if you think that I am doing so well, then how f**ked up was I when I came here?" They smiled, but really didn't answer that. I still did not realize how badly I had injured myself, or how.

I am told that I had been informed of the specifics of my accident numerous times during the first two weeks when I was in intensive care. However, my ability to form long term memory was not online back then. In fact, I am told that I would often forget the content of conversations I did have during that time within 60 seconds or so.

Jumping ahead, I was released after 3.5 weeks, and had 2 months of occupational and speech therapy at home. That ended because I was doing so well. That was not the expected result for me, however. Docs did think I would improve after returning home, because many do, and I was healthy before the accident. However, while the range of recovery for individuals is broad considering the whole group, full recovery is not expected. I had recovered nearly fully within 4 months of the accident, which caused unexpected and astounded surprise to the physicians and surgeons that had treated me. A more usual recovery period is 12-18 months, and does not result in full recovery.

There are only two people who had not been worried at any time about my making a good recovery. The first was my mother, who had seen me at my worst, days after the accident. The second was me. And for different reasons.

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