One of my friends and I had lunch the other day. Turns out that his girlfriend has been suffering from some massive migraine headache as of late. Further on in the conversation about this, he mentioned about how she has had these headaches pretty regularly since she was in a coma in her teens. At this point I sort of went a bit blank: We’re all in our late teens/early twenties, and I’ve known her for about a year. It never struck me that she might have been in a coma. This sounds sort of stupid, I know, but I just never figured that I knew anyone that had been in a coma.
It turns out that when she was 15 she was in an accident with her on a bike. She was in a coma for three days. When she came out of it, she had changed in some subtle and some not so subtle ways. According to her mom, her personality changed a bit after she woke up. Also she had some changes in her habits and likes/dislikes. In addition to this, she has some medical problems related to the head injury that bother her to this day.
This got me thinking as I was walking across campus, how many people that I’m passing might have had this happen to them? I didn’t expect that she should have worn a sign saying that she was once in a coma, or that she should have had some obvious disability that would have hinted at her past; but it just sort of shocked me that I actually knew someone who has no real obvious indications as to having suffered a significant brain injury, but had in fact laid in a coma with a pretty serious brain injury.
Have any of the members of the Doper community had family, friends, or themselves in my friends girlfriends sutuation? I mean, can you tell that they have had anything happen? Would a stranger be shocked to know that they have been in a coma or suffered a significant head injury? Do they have problems related to their injuries years later?
I’m just sort of curious. Thanks.
My mum was in a coma after a seizure in hospital – I think it lasted a couple of weeks. (Not too sure now, after all the time since). But she had other stuff happening, strokes etc. – so yes, she changed, and it was physically and emotionally obvious, if not mentally.
I’ve only heard third-hand stuff about younger people emerging from comatose states with no ill-effects, or only slight ones. Comas always strike me as something so major, they have to alter something in the person surviving them.
Not a coma, but I once knew a guy who couldn’t remember anything from before he was 11, when he’d had a head injury. I found this out when I asked him something about elementary school.
I was in a coma after an auto accident 10 years ago when I was 21.
It’s all very odd, but one minute I was passing a gas station, the next was a week later when I woke-up in the neurological intensive-care unit of a hospital 100 miles away with wires everywhere and tubes in places they shouldn’t have been.
I really don’t think that anyone could tell by looking at me that this ever happened. I do have other physical injuries from ye olde wreck that are a bit more obvious, but I think I pass myself off as a reasonably normal person.
In terms of issues resulting from the brain injury, there are a few:
[ul]
[li]I am more prone than ever to migraines. Until they recently found a decent medicinal mixture, I had a headache 24/7.[/li][li]My memory is shot. With long-term memory, I can’t remember almost anything before college. It too me an extra week-and-a-half to recognize my parents after I woke-up. I still have to strain to remember people I know pretty well, just because the chalk on the mental blackboard gets so easily erased. My short-term memory and concentration are just about as bad. For all of these issues, I leave these god-awful trails of notes around so as to remember who people are, where I’m going, what I was doing, etc.[/li][li]According to my friends and family, my temperment changed (not in the Meyers-Briggs sense). I am much less patient and much more nervous/edgy.[/li][li]My ability to reason-out some relatively simple problems has gone down the tubes. According to the doctors, one part of my brain that took a good amount of the damage was the reasoning area.[/li][/ul]
The oddest thing for me is my concept of time. One of my doctors told me that comas can really screw with the concept of space and time. It’s like a cockpit recorder on a plane. If it doesn’t run, there is no record of what/why/and who went wrong. She said that the brain is trying to reconcile the fact that it is missing data that it knows exists somewhere out there.
To be honest, the thing is that many of these issues are more problematic for those who have known me for years since they have a comparison to draw between me today and me ten-plus years ago. I have been reminded on many a time that I have changed. In my eye, I have no comparison to make; I am the same as I remember myself being this morning. Ah well, you can’t please everyone.
An friend of mine, several years before I met him, drove his Harley into a fencepost and was in a coma for nearly three months. He suffers from some pretty bad emotional issues (an inability to form emotional attachments chief among them).
Like frinnofranco, he does the same thing with time. He once met my sister and b-i-l for lunch, ordered a diet Pepsi, chatted for no more than two minutes, and walked out before the Pepsi arrived. He had completely forgotten how long he had been there.
You wouldn’t know this to look at him, though; if you’d notice anything it would be his odd walk and sitting position from his back injuries.
Thanks for the welcome (Ice Wolf) and the responses.
The more that I’ve talked to people since I started this thread, the more really amazing it all seems. I guess that alot of the problem lies in that if you are in a coma, the chances are that you will have also suffered other injuries. I guess that a lack of obvious physical injuries sort of hides from plain view the long term injuries that can result from a brain injury since they are not quite so out in the open.
The whole deal with time as a problem as mentioned by chique and finnofranco sort of confuses me. Is there a problem in the idea of time in the present, or is it in the past? Is it both?
The time issue is both in the past and the present. In the present, I’m really prone to losing track of time, where I am, and what I’m doing. I’ll be convinced that I’ve done something that I haven’t; or, I’ll completely lose the distinction between night and day. These probably also have a good deal to do with my concentration problems.
In the past, it’s sort of like the period around the accident is like a film where your only seeing every hundredth frame. My brain lost the entire time that I was in the coma. After I woke-up, it was like I was watching my life in the third-person. I have little or no connection to what took place through most of 1992. I have snippets here and there, but it’s like they’re things that I saw other people do without my involvement.
It’s really hard to explain in any meaningful manner. I’ve reread my reply over and over again, but I can’t really express what I think/know in any way that seems to really make sense. Sorry if this just sounded like more garbage.