Rachel Wise. Hawkes Bay Today
This week was Brain Injury Awareness Week and although brain injury is very unfunny, in the spirit of "if you can't be a good example at least be a horrible warning", I'm happy to share my cautionary tale.
April 6 will be the 10th anniversary of my "moderate traumatic brain injury".
I remember rushing home from work to exercise the horse I was selling, in a rush to make sure it was well-rehearsed for the potential buyer coming to ride it in the weekend.
It was just after a particularly mean drought had broken and rain had fallen on the dry beaten earth of the horse paddock, leaving it with a slippery slick of surface mud.
I ignored that.
I was happily cantering in ever decreasing circles when the mare's hooves lost traction. She scrambled to stay on her feet but down we went with an almighty thud. I remember the noise when my helmet hit the ground and I thought, oops.
The oops was because this wasn't the first time I'd head-butted the ground and I had a fair idea the outcome was not going to be wonderful.
The first time I recall using my head as brakes was when I was 11 and freewheeling down a hill on my bike ride home from intermediate.
A kid stepped on to the road in front of me and with all the disrespect an intermediate kid has for a primary school kid I ran right over the top of him.
It didn't go well. Turns out you can't really "run over" someone while riding a bicycle.
When I came to I was lying in the gutter with several people peering down at me. I had walloped the curb with my head and I'd taken skin off my face. I still have an impressive scar. Okay, it's not impressive. All right, it's barely visible.
I told all the helpful people I was fine and pushed my bent bike home and scared my mother with my bleeding face and swollen eye.
Telling people I'm fine when I have banged my head and patently am not fine turned out to be a bit of a habit.
The next time I was fine-but-not-fine was when my kids were little and we had a cute but obese Welsh pony called Pudding.
We had walked down the paddock at dusk - can't remember why but I remember deciding it would be easier to catch a ride back to the house on the pony than walk.
Shoulda walked.
The pony took exception to my hijacking it mid-paddock and ran off and plonked me on the ground. I had no helmet on.
"I'm fine," I said. And have no memory of the rest of the evening.
Another time, a pony flung me earthwards on a Saturday when my husband was away and I had two small children to look after.
"I'm fine," I told the friend who came and took my groggy self and my children to her house and put me to bed for the night.
The next time was breaking in a much, much bigger horse.
I thought, "I probably shouldn't get on this horse all by myself", but I did anyway and it was a bad idea. I did have a helmet on. I remember it being split in half by the impact.
I remembered a friend's phone number and she took me to the doctor. The rest I forget.
So that evening 10 years ago I knew I was in a spot of bother.
My husband came and told me to go to the house. I told him I was fine and promptly wandered in the complete opposite direction.
We went to the hospital and there I stayed for the night.
I wanted to go to work the next day but the doctor said no. He said I could go on Monday.
I went to work on Monday but I couldn't remember how I got there. Nor could I recall how my computer worked, or how to read the papers on my desk.
My boss sent me home.
I veered to the right when I walked. My eyes didn't both look in the same direction at the same time. I went into rooms and wondered why I was there then went out again. I forgot words in the middle of sentences. Names of people escaped me (sorry), as did names of objects. Many items became: "The thingy. You know, the thingy for the wotsit."
It was 14 months later before I finally did get back to work full time.
I'd had a helmet on and still ended up feeling very sorry for myself, so please be aware of brain injury. I got off lightly.
I'm off now to put the thingy on the wotsit. Mind your head.