I was in an induced coma for three weeks in the neurological unit attached to Haywards Heath hospital. The medical staff tried to bring me out of the coma after about 10 days, but it was too early. I've got no medical notes about my time in hospital, but my family and friends were there every day. My coma was marked grade 3 in the Glasgow Coma Scale: the deepest one you can be in but still be alive; luckily I didn't need brain surgery.
When I started coming round I was moved to my local hospital. The strangest thing was that the first words I spoke were French. A friend asked the nurses whether he should speak to me in French; they thought it was a good idea, to encourage communication. So he would ask me a question in French, and I would reply in fluent French. No one knew why, but I had done both German and French at O-level almost 30 years earlier. After a while, the doctors decided speaking French was not helping me, because I'm English. So posters were put on the wall asking people not to speak in French.
Before my coma I'd never heard of foreign accent syndrome, which can occur when people wake up from a coma and their speech is affected; people sometimes perceive it as a foreign accent. What happened to me is different, because I really was speaking French, and not just for a few seconds - for two weeks.
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I still don't know why. I've never had any desire to visit France, although there has always been talk in our family about our French ancestry, which can be traced right back to the grandparents of Cardinal Richelieu.
Six months before the accident, I had directed an opera by Gilbert and Sullivan and two of my friends came to the hospital to play the overture from Iolanthe, hoping it would inspire me to become fully conscious. My heart raced when the music was played and went back to normal when it stopped. There was a book for visitors to make notes - for example, when I said an English word, or smiled. My father used to sing nursery rhymes to me and was really pleased when he sang, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" and I replied, "Once I caught a fish alive." That was quite a milestone and a relief that I was speaking English.
I was in my local hospital for a couple of months and then moved to a brain rehabilitation centre where I stayed for about a year. I still wasn't making much sense, and had to relearn everything, including how to breathe on my own.
I don't remember this period at all: it's a blank. Friends tell me what I used to say and do, such as saying numbers and doing sums out loud, but it really does sound as if they're talking about someone else.
I eventually went home and was looked after by carers; I have never married and don't have children. I don't remember learning to read again, but I do remember being attracted to books I had read as a child, such as Charlotte's Web. It was almost like trying to start life again.
Before the accident I had run five half-marathons, and as I was recovering, I couldn't bear to see people jogging. I walk with a stick now, and I can't use steps unless there's a rail to hang on to. I will never be 100% back to normal because I have diffuse axonal brain damage, which affects spatial awareness. When I am walking, my feet don't know when they are going to hit the ground.
Three years ago, I heard Esther Rantzen talking on the radio about her charity The Silver Line, which matches volunteers with lonely and isolated older people, and they talk on the phone once a week. I rang up straight away and was assigned a "friend" who is 75. The role has changed my life and helped me to feel useful and normal again. It's lucky I didn't lose my ability to speak English, or we would never have been able to communicate.
- As told to Kate Morris
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I can tell you there is little, if any, difference between the two. In both, time seems irrelevant and one is shocked at how short or long they were 'out', such as being knocked out for ten seconds and wondering if it was hours, knocked out for 10 minutes
and thinking it was only seconds, a four hour surgery feeling like 6 minutes, etc.
Post those head traumas, I also could well feel my brain ‘rewiring’ itself after those ‘KO’s’.
It seemed I almost always got hit on the left side of the head (logical, mathematical), which was my stronger side, in the sense of IQ, etc. Thus, I had to start using more of my right skull, (spiritual, creative) which seems ‘logical’, I guess.
What was interesting is that, as a result, I became a better singer, and a less ‘mechanical/mathematical’ guitar player in favor of a more ‘soulful’ and rhythmic style. So there’s still a lot about our brains vs. souls that we don’t know.
The human body can sure take some punishment.
R.C.
*From cancers and orthopedic injuries.
** Most came from sports, such as skiing, racquetball, biking, etc.
Only one time came from a fight, which I had ‘won’ by kicking the guy into a wall, and even earlier had decided to not grab a pistol and legally shoot the bastard. He obliged me by, as he was leaving, throwing a an office roller chair with a five arms (each made of folded over 3/16" steel plant into horizontal steal bars & roller feet), base-first at me as I sat in a chair. I put up my hands and legs, and each grabbed and blocked one of four of the arms, which left one to swing sideways to my left temple. Argh. (That was about 30-50 seconds ‘out’. FWIW, he got convicted of a felony.)
Also, I have recently been reading ‘Phaedo’ by Socrates/Plato, (it was mentioned in an article here) and it provides excellent insights into the issue of the soul/ life after death, etc. Here’s a link to a free download of it. [Link] (NOTE: It begins with the translator’s extensive review of the original ‘Phaedo’, only to be followed by the original work’s translation at the end.) I recommend you read the latter first, and then, if you wish, read the translator’s rather ‘Christian’ analysis of it.)***
***In reading that analysis, you wonder just how much of ‘The Bible’ was stolen from the Ancient Greeks, along with ‘Who really came first?’ E.g., Jesus, Solomon, Socrates, or, as wise Solomon disclaimed when he wrote, in Ecclesiastes, ‘nihil sub sole’,
(there is nothing new under the sun). (Granted, he said/wrote it not in Latin, but in Greek, which is ‘Greek to me.’(Hamlet.)
RC
R.C.