This story makes it all too believable so far! because it basically happened to me in late November, 2023. The first 10 minutes for me, when I first came to, were the worst--woken by a phone call from a number I didn't recognize but answered anyway. Male voice I didn't recognize said, so you fell and hit your head and lost consciousness? And all I know is that I am sitting on the front step of a familiar house and my dog is licking blood from me (head wounds just like to bleed). Blood is clearly dripping down the side of my face. So I said, "uh--I guess so?" (did I fall? who is this? how does he know?)
... turns out the fall-notification feature of my brand new apple watch called 911 for me. He asked if I knew where I was, and I struggled. Really was an odd feeling of familiarity without context. I said I think...I do. He asked for an address. That was a mental struggle but it came slowly out of the fog. He asked whether that's where I live. That was also a hard question to answer--it was so familiar, and I gradually remembered it was one of the houses I had considered buying 15 months ago. And, um, I think I bought it... so I said, "I think so?" He repeated the request for an address. Probably took me 2 minutes to come up with first the street name and then, wild guess, like I was pulling it out of thin air, a number.
That's when the ambulance pulled in. They immediately went to work on me, checking vital signs, getting me onto a stretcher, and asking lots of questions. "How did this happen?"
Realized I didn't know. Realized I didn't know why I was on my front step. Tried to backtrack, had this distorted memory of a bunch of people discussing something inside the house about which I had to make a decision. Don't know what the issue was, or the people, or whether they also lived there.Tried to backtrack from there to earlier in the day, and basically a blank.
While riding the 15-ish minutes to the hospital of course I was trying desperately to fill in the blanks. I was gradually remembering that it *is* my house and that I *do* live there. In short, no there were not other people in the house, And there was no discussion about anything. I wonder where that image in my brain came from? I started to remember things from earlier in the day and used that to build the day gradually, hour by hour, to where I had my dog on a leash for a walk and was reaching for the front door.And then I was sitting on the front step, bleeding, and my phone was ringing.
That blank space has never filled back in.
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| Still with head/neck support, right out of the ambulance to the emergency room to wait for a CT scan: |
Sooooo there's my memory experience. I had 2 friends in recent years take bad falls, hitting their heads for concussions. Neither lost memory, but they both suffered for months with, yes, headaches, pain, irritability, confusion, trying to remember how to do normal things, not able to read (could make out the words but otherwise was too hard), even watching TV took too much work to process what was happening. Trouble sleeping. Trouble walking. Yep, you've pretty much covered it. I mostly had none of those symptoms, but realizing that I must have fallen somehow and not knowing why made it suddenly frightening to contemplate stairs or simple stepladders or rough surfaces of any kind.
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| Me the next morning. In my hospital bed. Lacking sleep from all the activity and shuffling and noise etc. You can barely see the wound--it seemed like nothing so much as a giant blood blister. |
I'm considerably better over all. Thank YOU.
but here's the fun blip to this story: no more than a month before this happened, my Fitbit that I had relied on for several years died, and I tried to decide whether to replace it and if so with what. Since I already had an iPhone, I finally decided, With gritted teeth, to shell out For an Apple Watch. I spent some time setting up a bunch of things, including my medical information and my emergency contact information and whatever else seemed important.
Turns out that whenever you have a sharp shock to the watch – – such as If you fall on a hard surface (Or slam your hand hard down on a table for emphasis, I discovered later) It automatically Sounds a little alarm on the watch and if you don't respond to it within a certain time, it calls local emergency, as in 911.
It also calls all your emergency contacts. That revealed a mistake in my set up: I put almost all my relatives in as emergency contacts, so several people from all over the West Coast were calling to try to find out what was happening. After that, I limited it to just a couple of people.
I kept thinking, what if I had just bought a Fitbit again? Which, as far as I know, has no capability like the Apple Watch. it was a cold winters evening and I was on a cul-de-sac without much in-and-out activity from the neighbors. I wasn't dressed to sit or lie around in cold weather; I had a light jacket because I was taking the dog for a walk. What would've happened then?
I seem to have suffered no long-term effects. There are probably some, because I did have a concussion that they were worried about, which is why the initial hospital put me in to the life flight helicopter and flew me to the head-trauma center on the other side of Puget sound. But I don't notice any Lingering effects. Even at the time.
Just the missing 10 or 15 minutes in which I fell.
It was a bummer that my first helicopter ride was with me strapped down while my glasses were in a bag elsewhere in the helicopter And all the lovely views that I would've gotten were just big blurs out the window. Oh well, I'll have to find a safer way to get a helicopter ride.
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| In I go. Spent One day, two nights here. In general it was an excellent experience. |
BUT WAIT! HERE'S ANOTHER FUN POINT: Earlier that day, I had told my sister that I discovered that the local senior center had a "balance class" and that I figured I ought to start going the next morning. That was my plan. I didn't really need to have an accident to prove that maybe I needed it. Grumble grumble. I did start the class eventually after I was fairly recovered. And it has helped immensely.
