If I Remember Correctly

V.V.: Can you say, Boomshakalaka, Boomshakalaka, Boomshakalaka, Boom?

K.T.: Maybe later.

V.V.: You’ll forget about it later.

Damned right. I was in a wheelchair at the time, and no one will make a Family Guy joke at my expense if I can’t remember it later. Turned out I forgot five seconds later.

***

If I remember correctly, I had my Memento moment this weekend when, for the span of about four hours, my short-term memory malfunctioned and I was reduced to repeating the same seven to ten comments over and over in a feeble attempt to reconstruct what just happened. Yes, I had a concussion.

We’ve started playing football again, a modified version of the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules. This is the third week that we’ve played the football (tackle), and for me, it may very well be the last. In that hazy retrospect borne of my inability to recall many of yesterday’s events, I’ve not felt that close to mortality since I was thirteen and had chronic chest pain. I need my snot-clot, and having learned that it might leak out of my nose were the concussion more serious, well.

The first game went smashing well. I intercepted two errant lobs, one from C.R., one from C.H., and returned both for the almighty touchdown. Then, to celebrate the occasion (which happens so frequently you’d think we were playing football), I emulated the almighty Detroit Lion Barry Sanders and calmly placed the ball down on the field (we have no referees to hand the ball to post-touchdown. Call your own fouls/No blood no foul.).

The second game, ah, that was a most mysterious occurrence. As I recall, S.P. received a short pass in the middle of the field. D.C. tore S.P.’s shirt off, resulting in a mild homoerotic situation, leaving him barreling straight at me. From what the observers tell me, I ran headfirst at S.P., bounced off his form, spun around, and attempted a second tackle. At this point, he threw out the stiff-arm. This somehow launched me into the air.

At this point, I recall landing on the back of my head and neck, and everything falling dark black, like tunneling underground. I think I tumbled backwards further, then somehow came to a rest on my stomach or back. There was a great light, burning in my face, until A.W. stood over me, casting a long shadow that blocked out the sun.

Here is where I started to hit mass repeat. The rest of this is based on my memory trickling back into my head and everyone else’s comments. Thank you all for making sure I didn’t stumble back onto the field.

C.H. and S.P. grabbed me under an armpit each, and tried to heft me to my feet. The vertigo swirled my inner ear like a coffee stirrer, and I had to spin in a complete circle before crumpling back to the ground. C.H. then asked me to remember the following: football, cone, and A.W. The first time he asked me what I had to remember, I said football. Thereafter, I had no recollection of him telling me to remember anything at all.

Throughout, I kept asking people what happened. Half the time, I had to preface it with, “I know I asked this already, but.” I also kept inquiring what my class schedule was, and what my paper topic was. If I remember correctly.

At this point, we started the cold, numbing journey off towards the hospital, the name of which eludes me to this point. I think I’d had to inform S.P. several times to go get my wallet and my insurance card, which he did. During the ride, I told C.H., S.P. and V.V. that my foot had gone numb. They replied, are you sitting on your foot? Yes, yes I was. I’d forgotten that I was sitting awkward on my own foot. This had now become my senior moment, five years too early.

While at the hospital, they seated me within a lovely wheelchair, the physical details of which again elude me. It was a wheeled chair, and I sat in it. There were vending machines, but no one had any dollar bills. Several times, I’d told them to check my wallet, neither remembering that I had no one dollar bills, nor that I’d told them thirty seconds previous to do so.

At this point, things start to blur.

Since my injury was a heady one, they’d fairly rushed me through the admissions process. Whilst talking to the nurse, lovely girl that I can’t remember what she looked like, C.H. launched into a perplexing analysis of my injury, chock full of peculiar numbers, such as “three” and “one”. Three? One? This is what I am reduced to, a number?

As it turned out, I was, for the wristband they placed on my wrist designated me with several numbers. Multiple times, I’d had to say that I had no middle initial, to which everyone replied the M referred to my masculine (in theory) status. That I couldn’t shut up and kept talking, about the same three things no less, that I expected everyone to wait on me hand and foot, and tend to my every need (which consisted of telling me what happened) confirmed my temp. status as a bubble-headed blonde girl.

C.H. wheeled me into the hospital proper soon after, as only one person would be allowed in with me, and C.H. was an R.N. I think. There were large plasma screens with multiple colored blocks, large desks at eye level when I was sitting, people in blue, grey, pink scrubs milling around, curtains everywhere. Or was this just my false recollection of any number of medical comedies/dramas?

Another nurse came in to see me in my new room, another beautiful girl whose face is naught but a jumble of vaguely human features, put up the rails on the bed so I wouldn’t fall over (when did I end up on the bed? Wasn’t I in a wheelchair?) and had me take off my t-shirt, leaving me clad in a tight Under Armour shirt, black and my AI shorts. Later, when stumbling back to the apartment, it occurred to me that it was extraordinary good luck I chose to wear the black shirt, and not the white, which tended to become diaphanous whenever I sweat, or stood there.

Aside: Are all female nurses beautiful? I suppose they are when you’re ailing, even if you can’t remember what they look like, sound like, their general attitude even. In times of trouble like de-winged angels scrub-clad they are. Is the converse applicable to ailing women, are all male nurses beautiful?

When did I go get the CT scan? I don’t know. Did I go get a CT scan? I must have, for that damnable rotating ring scared the senselessness out of me. Lying on the bed, the ring rotating and thrumming like a giant’s heartbeat, surrounding me in the open air, I recall feeling distinct, individual, clear, afraid. Not until that point did it occur that I might have a serious problem. Up until then I was hard-pressed to recall what I’d eaten last night. The C’s and the T’s buffeting me changed all that. Fearsome medicine right there, even if it was just a diagnostic tool.

As with any other wound, time started to heal my concussion, and my head started to piece itself back together. Various conversations actually led somewhere, instead of looping towards the same five points in twenty seconds. From there, the wait to the eventual diagnosis of nothing out of the ordinary was the hardest part.

Yet another beautiful nurse entered to discharge me. Again, I cannot recall her features, immaculate though they must have been, and beg forgiveness of female nurses everywhere for my base transgression. I shall repent by taking you all out on dates, at the same time. She asked how many days I wanted off, and at this point, I came to my senses. I told her that sounded like a set up, and it was. She wanted to laugh at me for requesting a week off, like my original internal request. Instead, I got two days and an admonishment that if I started projectile vomiting, I had to return to the hospital. Fair enough.

I still get dizzy for no good reason every once in a while, but its nowhere near as bad as it once was. I’ve had to write my paper this entire week, and so had already called out from work, so I’ve been a sole student this whole week. This has been an odd week, very uneventful, but I do think that I would not recommend any of you receive a concussion, under any circumstances.

If I remember correctly.