At 19:03 17-2-2003 -0800, Debbi Harrell wrote:
A less ominous but equally "efficacious" cause is closed head injury (also called Traumatic Brain Injury); even one significant concussion/CHI (that lands the person in the ER, frex) can result in degradation of higher ('executive') functions, as can repeated head blows even if they don't cause black-outs (look at Mike Tyson!).
Well, I *did* have a major concussion once (kept me out of school for six weeks), but that was some 25 years ago. I don't think it would take 25 years for any brain damage to become apparent.
Goodness! Six weeks? Do you mind sharing what happened?
As for myself . . .
One day when I was about 6 years old, I felt like doing something different (not to mention stupid), so I dismounted my bicycle by going over the handlebars without first coming to a complete stop (or indeed slowing down at all). I recall having a view of the tree in the neighbor's front yard as I flew past it, followed next by a view of the back side of the hospital as we pulled into the emergency entrance, followed next by waking up the next evening, ironically just in time to see the week's episode of _Ben Casey_. Seems I had cracked my occiput, and one of the doctors said there was enough bleeding inside that they couldn't read the X-rays for the blood. However, they just kept me in the hospital for 72 hours for "observation", by which time they were thoroughly sick of looking at me, so they sent me home and back to school�.
As far as evidence of brain damage from that incident: later on when the school ran us through the usual battery of standardized tests, they refused to tell my parents what score I had gotten on the IQ test, only that it was the second highest they had ever seen. Who knows what I could have scored if I hadn't cracked my noggin that Sunday . . .
BTW, the bicycle was undamaged.
Avis Maru
_____
�Twice later I _was_ kept out of school for about six weeks each time: a couple of years after the bicycle accident I had a bout of influenza which kept me out of school for six weeks, and then in high school someone whose sports skills must have been about as good as mine� tossed a "soft"ball which hit me in the back, damaging a kidney and causing the doctor to tell me to spend the next few weeks in bed. (Actually, I spent most of the time on the couch because (1) it turned out to be more comfortable under the circumstances than the bed and (2) I didn't want to miss any of the coverage of the flight of _Apollo 10_.)
�As I tell my students just before using a Nerf ball� to demonstrate things like Newton's laws of motion and transformation of energy from potential to kinetic, there's a reason why any scholarships I got were in math and science, not sports.
�Safer for both the students and the windows in the classroom than a harder ball would be, particularly if _I_'m the one who's throwing it.
-- Ronn! :)
Almighty Ruler of the all, Whose Power extends to great and small, Who guides the stars with steadfast law, Whose least creation fills with awe, O grant thy mercy and thy grace, To those who venture into space.
(Robert A. Heinlein's added verse to the Navy Hymn)
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