Steven Transcript

Hello.

I had a bike accident. And no one saw what happened because I had a concussion. And there were no witnesses.

I was probably hit by a truck, with a very high mirror, who didn’t see me because I was probably not very visible. I was on my bicycle. And I was thrown hard over the handlebars and hard into the cement. And that resulted in a broken jaw, lost teeth, and concussion. For about two hours, I was really out of it. People were able to ask me questions, but I wasn’t able to choose to be awake. It was only if they roused me. I remember some of those things. But I can’t remember much more about that time– I was pretty much asleep, or blacked out.

And when I came to, I was in– when I really came to– I knew I was already in the emergency room. I was aware of being transported to the hospital. And I was even aware of where my bicycle was. So I had some, you know, have a lot of when I was alert, I have good memory of those conversations I had, but, or some of them anyway. But I’m told that being out for two hours after a concussion is on the severe side.

So the next day, after waking up in the emergency room, struggling through the night there, I was released. And it was the Friday, uh, If I remember right. I’m a teacher, I took the day off work obviously that day. And then the weekend came. By Monday I was at work again. And I think the marks on my face were easy to obscure because of masking protocol. So, it made it a lot easier to get in front of people and teach. I can tell you that during that time when I was initially right back at work, I could tell for at least a week that I was kind of foggy, kind of, kind of mentally just tired. But I wasn’t suffering from confusion, or dizziness, or anything I was I stopped riding my bike for a good long while the accident was in November and I didn’t get back on my bike until spring usually I would would have bike through the winter but not in this case. I was pretty um…

I was scared to get back on my bike. And it didn’t seem to make any sense.

So anyway, the tiredness at work the mental fogginess of that post concussion time frame for me ended within like a month or maybe maybe even another month after that there was still some lingering effects, but I could tell for the first month there were some lingering deficits in my cognition. And, you know, it was mainly because I would be getting tired from activities that usually just, you know of course, they were challenging but they weren’t they didn’t tire me out typically. Luckily, I had good support, good family. And I got through those few months without having to take much time or any– well just Friday, one day off work– which is nice.

So, that’s really it. I don’t have a lot to add beyond that.

Lots of people told me not to play it down as much. Really, I’m giving it to you the way it was. I’m not playing it down. Um, the worst part about it wasn’t the concussion, it was the rearranging of my teeth. I lost my smile. I’m still two years getting to be on this year and a half now. It’ll be two years before I have my teeth back to semi normal, normal smile. And I didn’t like having my jaw broken. That part was also a little uncomforting, but compare to… comparatively the concussion was just not a big deal. In the process much worse things were happening. And in my case, I also never had I don’t have a history of concussions, so could have been that my brain could take one whack like that without being too discombobulated.

Well, I hope that helps. Thanks for listening.