No Brain Damage

[LGT]

One night in 1993, my wife and I were sound asleep at 2 am when the phone rang. I answered and the voice on the other end says, “Sir, we don't think your son has any brain damage.” Wait! What!? Let me back up a little bit. What happened was this, our son received a serious head injury when he ran his Chevy Nova into the back of an 18 wheeler as he was entering south bound SH 360 near Six Flags in Arlington. He and the friend with him (who sustained only a broken arm) were taken to a nearby hospital emergency room. Someone was supposed to have called us earlier, but they did not. So we had no knowledge of the accident or its seriousness until we got that 2 am call.

 

We rushed to the hospital where we were told about the odd nature of our son's head injury. He had taken a hard hit to his forehead which did not fracture. However, a nickel-sized piece of bone broke out of the back of the sinus cavity behind his forehead, allowing the brain sack to protrude through the hole. Miraculously, the brain sack did not rupture, but the injury required immediate surgery. Our son was no longer covered by our health insurance and he had no insurance of his own, so the staff at the Arlington hospital arranged his admission to Parkland Hospital in Dallas. We were allowed to transport him to Parkland in our car and hospital staff were waiting for us when we arrived.  They took him immediately into surgery.

 

The procedure required that they cut his scalp from ear to ear over the top of his head so they could pull the skin down and expose the frontal bone to allow drilling a hole in it to access the hole in the back of the sinus cavity. Well, that's enough of the gory details. The successful surgery put our son back together, leaving him with a metal plate on his forehead and an impressive scar over the top of his head. Incidentally, you might have guessed that there was a third passenger in the car that night. His name was John Barleycorn and he was not injured—he never is.