Head end.

So this is the concluding chapter of the Concussion Saga, and I don't have too much more to say. Recovery was slow, a little better every day, unless I did too much one day, and then I would feel a little worse the next day. After a couple of weeks I was almost normal. I no longer was getting dizzy spells, not even walking up the stairs -- for some reason the dizziness would hit me going up or down stairs, which is the worst possible place in the house to get dizzy. I was able to resume my usual duties. I am still trying to get more rest than I used to, though, and that hasn't been easy as I've had a lot of work to catch up on.

Concussions, they say, can cause depression. I can see that. For me, I don't think it was the injury to the brain per se, but just the lack of ability to do things. The Saturday afternoon following my fall I was sitting in the house doing nothing -- I could not work in the cellar, the next stage of the Grand Reorganization Project; I could not work on the computer, nor play on it; I could not watch TV. I could not drive anywhere. I couldn't listen to music on earbuds. I couldn't even read. The dogs wanted to do things and I couldn't. I'd even napped out at that point. It's the kind of thing we fear about old age, the inability to do anything useful or pleasurable. Just sit with folded hands and be miserable.

Mostly, though, I am grateful that I didn't get hurt worse. A fellow I know told me his diminutive wife got a bad concussion when her car was hit and the airbag deployed. I met a guy at church who has to walk there because he got a severe concussion and his driver's license was medically suspended for a year. A friend of mine was in a terrible car crash years ago and suffered traumatic brain injury, the kind where you have to learn to walk and talk again, and these simple activities still require a lot of effort from him. So yes, there's always someone worse off than me, and lots of them.

But I am still plagued by minor disappointments from the whole affair. For example, if I had to get a bonk on the coconut, couldn't I have gotten a big cartoon lump to show for it?

And why not some dramatic amnesia? Not that I want to really forget anything; maybe just for a week. Then I could get a cable movie made about me. The Man Who Forgot His Sandwich (And Everything Else).

Even better, I could have temporarily gotten a new and better personality. Like when Gomez Addams got hit on the head and turned into a normal guy, horrified by his morbid family. A second hit would cure him, but with everyone in the family trying to help, John Astin probably got thumped a dozen times in that episode. A similar thing happened to Fred Flintstone, when a blow to the head made him an opera-loving sophisticate. We could use a little sophistication around this joint.

Failing that, maybe I could have started a dance craze. Don't tell me we don't have dance crazes anymore -- look at the Backpack Kid's Floss dance! In the Flintstones episode "Shinrock-a-Go-Go," Fred invents the Flintstone Frantic after a bowling ball lands on his foot. But at the end of the story he accidentally invents the Flintstone Flop when he falls on his head.

Of course, I could become a supervillain. Indeed, noted Egyptologist William Omaha McElroy became the notorious King Tut after taking a brick to the head at a peace rally.

Pharaoh-worthy sneer

Perhaps I could have become a villain themed with something I know a lot about. Syndicated Sitcom Man! Baron von Junkfood!

So that's my thoughts on this whole stupid injury, and I'm glad it's behind me. I'm being very careful out there, though, as winter still has us in its icy grip and there's more nasty weather on the way.

🏥🚑

My wife asked me during this sad affair if I thought getting older makes us feel more fragile. I said yes, but not necessarily because we're weaker or more breakable. After all, kids are generally the most likely victims of concussions. No, I said, it's that once something happens to us, we never think we're immune to it anymore. "I've never had a concussion -- therefore, I'm concussion-proof!" The same goes for car accidents, broken bones, cancer, fires, floods, burglaries, layoffs, assaults, maybe divorces; if it hasn't happened before, then maybe it can't! 

And as we get older, and things from the "can't happen" column move into the "did happen" column, we start to wonder a little more what other items in the "can't happen" column will be shuffling over.