... Long Letters ...

-- The Accident --

< Warning >
{So... its hard to be me, and not write about my "accident" in a fairly glib way... Its also hard to be me, and not use the word "glib" without knowing what it means. Thank goodness that the Merriam Websterdictrionary is on the web.

The original purpose of this entire website was to give me a place to reflect upon what has happened to me, as well as share some of my thoughts with the people that I care about... So I appologize in advance if it seems as though I am writing this story in a whimsical manner, but trust me, at this point in time, its the only way that I can write about it at all...}

< Introduction >
Ever since I moved back to the west coast, after setting a personal family record for " shortest net time after college before going on unemployment", I've been doing things with my "family" here in the bay area. "Family" is left in quotes since I'm not even sure how some of these people are even related to me , despite their assurances that they indeed are my kin. "Family" is also left in quotes because it describes a bunch of twenty-something asian people (of varying levels of asian-ness) who get together (about) once a month for dinner at some place that a) can't be in the east bay, and b) is definately outside my budget. Anyways, as time has progressed, we've lost members , and discovered that we had more family in the Bay Area then I personally know what to do with . Once in awhile, we periodically do something that doesn't involve the act of eating...

And that's how this story begins....

< The Accident >
My sister asked me if I wanted to go do something on a weekend. And being in my latest health kick, I replied that I wanted to go hiking... She replied that she'd rather go biking (since she had just bought a bike with Jimmy's help, and her "boyfriend" Randy had an extra bike)... And, being the man of principles that I am, I stuck to the "wanting to hike" request, and got out voted, 3 to 1 (which concurs with the story of my life).

Before I go further, I have to point out that I have ridden a bike before. Before my freshman year of college, I went on a six day biking trip called Wilderness Reflections that went over 200 miles. Nevermind the fact that I swore off biking after that, but the point is that I *have* ridden a bike before...

So we decided upon a place called Crystal Springs which is about 15 minutes north of where my sister lives. Ironically, it was chosen at my request (over some more serious mountain biking places, because it is largely flat, smooth, and paved - which is perfect for someone as out of shape as myself... or so I thought). {Keep in mind the *paved* portion of that last sentence, it will come into play in a few seconds}...

We arrived there, and Randy (my sister's... um... "boyfriend?"... well... that's a seperate post...) offered me a helmet to go along with the bike he was lending me, but as you will see in the extended portion of this post, my head is rather large, and couldn't fit into the helmet... besides, we were riding on a flat, paved path, and I knew what I was doing... right???

< What I Remember >
We had to adjust the bike to fit me, and I thought that it was cool since it had full suspension, and those little plastic "cages" that hold your feet in place, even your foot was moving up part of each cycle. I remember stopping after less then 100 yrds to re-adjust the seat, so that I could fully extend my legs when peddling... leaving me unable to actually touch the ground with my feet while seated on the bike... I remember that my sister was ahead of me... and that I was trying to figure out the gear switching system (was 1 low gear?, or high gear?)... and then my baseball hat flew off...
--
I don't remember the actual fall.
--
I remember asking where Joyce was... even though I knew that she wasn't there...
--
I remember being on a bed, being wheeled down a hallway... and thinking that I was in a hospital... and this must be a dream... and that it really "sucked"... all I wanted was to be doing something else... like playing video games...
--
and that was it...

< What I've Been Able to Piece Together From Everone Else >
Randy and Jimmy were behind me... They didn't see the begining of my fall... They saw the end of it... They said that I didn't even bother to try to break the fall. (apparently, my Cal hat was *that* important, that and the plastic cages holding my feet in their place). My sister was in front of me, so I can only guess that she stopped after Randy and Jimmy told her that I had fallen. The doctors would later tell me that they checked the left side of my body, looking for cuts and bruises... but couldn't find any... Leading them to believe that I had absorbed all of the impact on the back of my head... (I digres...) Right after I fell, I apparently was bleeding from the back of my head, and telling my sister that it really hurts. If you can imagine how a five year old child says that "it hurts", that's probably what I was doing at that point. I'm not really sure of the order of what happens here.... but from the best of what people have told me: Randy went to go get his truck, to bring it down the trail to come rescue me. Jimmy was getting people to not hit me, as I fell in the middle of the trail, and my sister was trying to comfort me...

They say that when you have a traumatic injury to your brain, especially of the type that I suffered, that there is always a "lucid" period, right after the trauma. Apparently I had one, since the first thing that I said was "I don't need to go to the hospital". From what I understand, they started asking me questions (as the back of my head started to swell up), and for awhile, I was answering them... untill I started to just repeat answers to questions that they had stop asking... By now, another bicyclist, who apparently regularly rides the trail had stopped to offer assistance... and luckily he had a cell phone (as all of us had left our cell phones in the truck)... He called 9-1-1, and so begins what I can only imagine to be the worst night of any sibling's life...

< The Hospital >
On a lighter note, my sister later told me that when the ambulence came, they asked her if she wanted to take me to San Francisco General Hospital, or Stanford Medical Center (as they were equidistant from Crystal Springs). She replied that she wanted me to go to Stanford... (ignoring that we were both Cal grads)... because she had lived in the city for four years, and if she had to visit me in the hospital, there better be some parking there (San Francisco is known for its world famous lack of parking)... So I went to Stanford. not out of any medical reason... just because they have more parking...

So my sister apparently rode with me to the hospital, while Randy and Jimmy drove Randy's truck... They tell me that I was still conscious on the way to the hospital, and it was only a month later that people finally told me what had happened... (Ironically, it was on my birthday that I would find out most of the details around my arrival at the hospital)...

They sent me to the Emergency Room, and that was apparently where I had my last memory... I had a CAT scan performed on me, and that was when I blacked out... The CAT scan showed that I had an Epidural Hematoma which essentially means that I fractured my skull, severed an artery that led to my brain, and that I was bleeding into my cranial cavity - creating pressure... (forcing my brain against the right side of my skull...)

The ER paged the Neurosurgery unit, and apparently all of the neurosurgeons on call were already in the OR... Luckily, one of the doctors not on call happened to be in the hospital, and he began the process of saving my life...

I would find out on my birthday, that when he first saw me in the OR, my right pupil was fixed and dialated... and that I wasn't responding to any stimulus... In other words, all of my upper brain function had shutdown, and my brain stem was in the process of turning itself off... I couldn't even breathe on my own at that time... One doctor estimated that another 15-20 minutes without treatment, and I would have severe brain damage... or worse... another gave me an hour to an hour and a half...

< The Surgery >
They ended up drilling five holes into my skull, around where I fractured it, to relive the pressure on my brain. They CAT scan showed that my brain had shifted over 11.2mm by this time, and while I don't know what that means, I'm certain that it isn't a good thing... Then they cut open my skull to cauterize the artery that was bleeding... All in all, the surgery took about four hours...

< The Waiting Room >
In the meantime, I can only imagine what it would have been like for my sister, Jimmy, and Randy in the waiting room. I gather that she started calling the people that she knew that I kept in touch with... Joyce, Mike (my boss), Pat (my friend from college), but I can't imagine what it was like to try and tell them that I was in the hospital... I can't even imagine what it was like not knowing how everything would turn out... As time went on in the waiting room, my sister tells me that another group of people were there (about 20 in all), waiting for a loved one who was having a heart transplant... They had been in the hospital before, and that both groups became somewhat of a support group for each other...

Eventually the doctor came out... and said that I had survived the surgery, but it was too early to tell what the prognosis was.... whether or not I had a brain damage... even whether or not I would ever be able to leave the hospital... was too early to tell...

< My Mom >
My sister called my mom after the doctor came out.

I can't imagine what it was like to call our mom. Our mom who has been protective of us to the point of being overprotective... I remember when she once told us that we couldn't date until we were 27... But she did call our mom, who was stunned... to say the least....

As a side thought, I don't even think that I would have been strong enough to do that... And I truly hope that I am never placed into the position where I had to do that...

< The ICU >
I was actually in the Intensive Care Unit for about two and a half days... I don't remember much, but people tell me that there was an almost constant presence of people in the waiting room (waiting for the 10 mins an hour that they would allow people to see me)... Randy, Jimmy, Sehba (my sister's rooomate) Joyce, and my mom waited to see me... They tell me that Pat came by to see me... The doctors tell me that when I was in the ICU, the first few times that they tried to take me out of sedation, I would have seizures... but eventually I was able to return to a state of semi-consciousness... and so people began my telling me to squeeze their hands... testing to see if I was ok... The doctors also tell me that taking me out of sedation was kinda like starting a computer... my eyes began to track light, I began to breathe on my own, and some of my reflexes returned to me... My family tells me that all I did for the second day was try to get someone to remove the breathing tube from my throat... (I would later spend a good portion of a night trying to convince the nurse to remove my neck brace (again, I was in a semi-conscious state), even though it was the only thing keeping me from putting pressure on the soft side of my skull)... They eventually removed the breathing tube, and apparently the first words that I said were "Liar"... to Pat, since he said that he would take me to play golf when I got better... (Pat is perpetually busy... and the chance of him taking me to play golf, is next to non-exsistent, which made me call him a liar)...

On the lighter side, people tell me that when my mom first saw that I could speak, she asked me "Do you know who I am?" to which I replied "Yes, you're my mom"... She then repeated the question (as if the first time was a fluke), "Do you know who I am?", and I replied "You're my mother..." She then asked a third time... to which I repled "Nope.. have no clue who you are..." (she then freaked out...) before I said "Of course I know who you are, you're my mother..." at that point, I think that the level of worry dropped... but the road to recovery had just begun for me...

< Rejoining The Story >
At this point (chronologically) I actually rejoin this little story... for the most part, all of the parts from "The Hospital" to " The ICU" were recounted to me by the people who were actually there... for me, I was unconscious through out most of it... And... legally brain dead for some part of it... It is still hard for me as a person to still sort out all of my thoughts about what has happened to me in the past two months... and unfortnately, I will have to leave this to another post (since my left hand is cramping right now). For those of you who haven't seen me in awhile, things are alot better for me now... For the most part, my balance is back (I still suffer from vertigo if I spin too quickly), and my short term memory is taking shape (some things confuse me, but given where I was a month ago, this is alot better)...

Being in the hospital opened my eyes to alot of things... It also made me painfully aware of how fragile life is. If you had asked me if I thought that I would endanger my life by riding a bike.... I would have thought you were crazy... before the accident... but now... its harder to take things for granted...

On the other hand, it has also taught me that you only get one life to live, and you might as well live it to the fullest...

I still have yet to write about everything that happend to me in Rehab, or all of the things that I have thought about in the days immediately following my accident, and I apologize for not being able to write all of this right now... But I think that I need a little more time to formulate my thoughts, and continue fulfilling the purpose of this weblog...

In the meantime... below are some pictures of what I looke like after the accident (after they removed the staples holding my skull together)...