So i got up this morning, has breakfast, marked a few papers, posted briefly on AD, then got changed into my kit and went and met a collegue to walk down to the local Rugby pitch.


* (Scene Missing) *


Then I remember sitting in a waiting room, covered in mud and blood about 5 hours later. Apparently I took a tremendous hit coming out of a line-out, and suffered a mild concussion. The concussion is not too bad, I'm back at home and thinking is fuzzy and brutal headache, but no other side effects, except that I have completely lost about 4.5 hours of memory, a total blank.

It is the weirdest thing I have ever felt, i walked down to the pitch, changed, warmed up, practiced a bit, then played 3/4 of a game of rugby, got clobbered and then walked (with help) to a nearby doctor's office, all coherent and fine, but I don't remember a shred of it. Did I play well? What conversations did i have?Did anyone tell me anything I should know? Did I make any promises or the like?

I have never had any experience with memory loss, apart from some fuzzy details after a few undergraduate benders, and it is utterly bizarre. Anyone else ever deal with anything like this? 4 hours is hardly important in the scheme of things, but it just feels weird as all get-out.

I've taken more than my fair share of hits to the head and the closest I came to memory loss was the time when I can recall a fist approaching my face, and then being pulled up off the ground.

Take this incident as a cautionary one though, concussions are poorly understood and not to be trifled with.

uggh, play football it's safer.

I had a similar experience to UJ but I didn't figure out that I had lost a little time until I compared stories with a friend a few years later. We basically got jumped out at a parade and I got hit in the back of the head trying to get between my friend and the jumpers. We had to take him to the emergency room and the short memory gap work out just fine in terms of getting to him and getting him in a car. I couldn't figure out why that bump at the base of my skull hurt though.

Been there twice. At 7 I got hit by a car. I pretty much don't remember anything from the first day of second grade until about the first day of the third grade. Nothing. Not a moment. Don't remember the hospital, being home, learning to walk again, nothing.

Second time I was in college. There was a boot on my car tire. I called campus security and the guy was basically trying to shake me down for money. I literally saw red and the next thing I remember I was driving away and covered in blood. None of which was mine. It was pretty scary. The next day the school asked me if I wanted to press charges. I declined.

My God, Vermillion, I am sorry to hear about this.

I can't say that I've ever had an experience of losing time that way. I have something called orthostatic intolerance that makes me pass out from time to time, but it's only for minutes, not hours. I probably "lose" five minutes maximum when this happens. Five hours is a significant chunk of time. I hope you have had this checked out? I think you should, just to be sure you're okay.

Well, bummer, mate! I miss rugby, but this is one of the reasons I stopped playing (didn't even start until I was 41, but that's another story). Just decided I didn't want to risk the injuries anymore--although worst thing I ever did was break my finger, and that was in practice. Played two games that way before I realized it was broke, though. Generally, the response I get when I tell people that is 'Rugby players...sigh'. Which I'm sure you'll get a maore than a few of with your story! )

I can imagine how weird that would feel. As you said, some of the undergraduate benders might be similar...and I didn't particular enjoy the disjointed feelings then. How disoriented were you when you when you 'came too'? I would also agree with UJ--carefully consider things before playing again. I love rugby...but it ain't worth permanent brain damage.

I lost most of a week-end at college once due to a combination of Quaaludes, synthetic morphine, stupidity, and beer - though that was self-induced and, at the time, unsurprising. I evidently went to see Klute, trashed a McDonald's, participated in a Battleship marathon, and had sex with a dwarf, none of which I recall. That was the last time I did Quaaludes or synthetic morphine (Rush Limbaugh's drug of choice). The stupidity and beer-drinking persisted for a while.

I did have another experience, though, that I suspect was somewhat closer to your "weird as all get-out" memory loss. I underwent a minor surgical procedure about ten years ago and evidently had some bizarre reaction to whatever anesthetic they used. For several hours after regaining consciousness, I lost words. Common, simple nouns and verbs were just missing - or, almost as bad, substituted with completely different words. I knew I had the wrong word, but had no idea how to find the right one: "After I was... swim - no, um... make - made back - no... brought back. After I was brought back to the, uh... pencil - no, um, the... brick... er, the..." "The room?" "Uh... yeah." It was baffling, frustrating, troubling, and somewhat amusing all at the same time. Fortunately, it was short-lived. After a night's sleep, I was fine.

For me, it was almost as frightening to lose language as it might be to lose memory. But, mostly, it was kind of sobering to realize how fragile one's mind is. And it gave me a bit more empathy for those living with things like Alzheimer's or neurological disorders. Anyway, I resolved to avoid anesthetics unless absolutely necessary. You might want to consider a similar resolution in relation to rugby. Good luck with your recovery.


EDITED TO ADD:

I made up the part about the dwarf.

Years ago I had a high fever, and I had the delusion, which probably lasted less than a second, that I was an 18th century military commander. I suppose it was like a waking dream.

I'm told that lost memory after concussion is quite normal, but you should keep an eye open for spots in your vision over the next few days. Apparently these are a symptom that your brain is still not quite functioning properly and you may lose more time in small black outs. If this happens, then naturally see a doc asap.

Good luck.

Always knew sport was bad for the health.

Ah - rugby - the real man's way to get cauliflower ears, broken noses and concussion.

This weekend's Six Nations contests should be entertaining (well, let's hope so - so far the competition has been less than sparkling for everyone, except possibly France).

Vermillion Sorry to hear about your brainache. Rugby is properly dangerous, being as it is a full-contact sport with little or no body armour (like those American Football shandy-drinkers get away with). In a way you're lucky to come out of it with no lasting damage. Did you win the ball? Did the player who trashed you get carded for dangerous play? Did he tackle you while you were in the air?

I had concussion when I was hit by a car while at college. Like you, I not only lost my memory of the hours following the accident (which any lay person would quite reasonably expect to be the case), but at least four hours afterwards. I'd left my last lab lecture, crossed a busy road to go to the refectory for dinner, crossed back again to go the the library for a couple of hours, and then been run over as I crossed back again on the way home. The last thing I could remember at the time was lunchtime, before the last lab lecture started.

What was extra frustrating at the time was that there was nobody to fill in the gaps for me. The police could only tell me what time the accident had been reported, and couldn't even tell me who had been driving, or whose fault it was, in case any court proceedings ever came about. I still know very little about it, and it seems unlikely I will ever find out what happened with any clarity.

Vermillion – hope this isn’t anything serious.


Are you sure? Anything is possible on disco biscuits.

Early in a soccer match I conked noggins with another player going for a header and continued to play for another eighty minutes. Didn’t realize anything unusual until the next day when asked if we won or lost, I had no clue and couldn’t recall anything about the game. And I agree with you Vermillion, it was just an odd feeling realizing there was this huge gap of missing time.

But I had driven myself home, stopped by the fish market, showered, and fixed dinner. I didn’t remember any of this and only went by the “clues” left behind. The mind is an amazing thing considering I was on auto-pilot and still managed to drive, shop, clean and cook.

Vermillion,

I hope you are feeling better. Concussions are a very serious matter and one in which you have a large loss of memory is particularly frightening. I hope you take it easy for the next few days.

What is the saying ... Football (soccer) is a game played by gentlemen, watched by hooligans, and rugby a sport played by hooligans, watched by gentlemen.

Hope you are feeling better. And rooting on the Scots in the Six Nations.

Oh, it's quite possible - though I expect I would've heard about it from someone.

Memory loss? Holy um yeah! I've been conked on the head, or maybe I should say my head conked on the pavement in a helmet, hard enough to black out for a long enough time that the paramedics were working on me when I woke up. Then this jerk of a highway patrol asked me who my insurance company was. I couldn't remember anything like that, where I lived, full name--shoot, as far as I knew it was all a dream.

So I told him to go to, um, you know, that place down there *&^%$!, which is a word I could remember. Then he ordered drug and alcohol screens from the paramedics who ignored him as they boosted me into the ambulance for patchup work.

To this day I'm not sure exactly where this happened along Route 50 outside of Chantilly, VA. I do remember trying to avoid a string of stopped cars upon coming around a curve at speed limit, 55 mph, hitting the brakes while leaning (big mistake) and heading toward the pavement with one thought in mind:

*(&^%! this is gonna hurt, but not right away.

While out I had all these crazy and confused images running through the old skull, thought I was dead. Didn't have a right mind for weeks, or maybe never got back to where I was before the accident. These are hard things to pinpoint. The noodle seems to be working well enough. I can do tech gigs, play fingerpicking guitar, learn new things, follow the Dale Carnegie training to avoid throttling managers doing stupid management tricks, that sort of thing.

But yeah, keep in touch with the docs and let them know about anything right off. The brain's pretty tough and can redo lost connections, like what Wertz was talking about, but if it slams against the inside of the skull just so . . . who knows? Maybe get a cat scan just to be sure nothing's too whacked out?

You get used to them after a while. Ask any extreme sports athlete LOL

I think I was 23 at the time of the incident. I awoke for lack of better words with absolutely no memory of anything. Subsequently my memory of having no memory was one with no thoughts really, just feeling and for the most part fear. I put my hand out in front of my face as if reaching for whatever it was, the dark I guess, but again, no thoughts, no words, nothing. I hope such does not ever happen again actually.

Vermillion, the subject that you raise is a question for science.
I have experienced a couple of memory losses through bangs on the head. I also suffered many from the drunkenness in my youth. I have thought about this subject many times.

A few years back, I joined a friend for a drink. He seemed sober, but told me that he had been drinking slowly all day. We visited a bar and watched a soccer game. We had a good night. Next day, he called me in a panic. He remembered nothing after my arrival at his apartment. He was scared that he had done something terrible and blocked it from his memory. All he had done was watch a game and engage in intelligent conversation. Four hours of is life was unrecorded and lost forever.

Think about hard-drives and their capacity to store memory, then imagine how big the hard-drive is in the brain, that has recorded everything that has ever happened to you, but archives it in order of importance.
Then think about old-fashioned cassette recorders. You press a record button, but if you hit the "pause" button, nothing gets recorded. It is my own unscientific opinion that the brain has a buffer zone whereby it records current events and some hours later sends them to the memory vault. IMO, a bang on the head/drugs/alcohol disrupts the process and those memories never hit the hard-drive, so they are gone. You shouldn't worry about it unless it becomes a common occurrence.

When I have had alcohol induced memory loss in my younger days, and no it didn't happen that often, it wasn't that I had NO memory, its just that details were missing and things were blurry, but I could steill rmember, to a point, the highlights of the evening. This is a total blank, like a gap in a record.



Apparently we lost the game by 21 points, so its not like I really WANT to remember it anyways...

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted here...

Cool/entertaining story, Vermillion. Such stories are great to tell to friends, etc. when there is a story to be told.

I was skiing last year, and I was doing some 720s that day (I know, I rule). The jump was one of the smaller ones, so it was sort of a mid-air rush to actually spin the 720 and get my feet straight and my body prepared. I landed about two or three that day, and each one was basically a combination of instinctual and adrenaline-triggered reactions. Each time I had fell, my head sort of whipped against the ground, but I would get right up.

I wake up laying at the bottom of the jump, with a few snowboarders standing over me and an old male ski patroller and a female ski patroller, and with someone saying "he's coming back." Obviously, I'm surprised (not to mention very confused) and so I sit up. They force me back down to make sure I don't have back or neck injuries, then they check all my limbs to make sure I'm not paralyzed or have anything broken. The ski patroller asks one of the snowboarders how long I was out, and the snowboarder tells him I was out for five minutes. All the while I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. The only thing I remember saying was "I'm not gonna have to go to the hospital, am I?" thinking about how my dad would probably kill me for taking a ride in an ambulance. They strap me in the sled, and snowmobile me down to the ski patrol office. While I'm laying down, I'm racking my aching brain to try and figure out what has happened and how I got hurt.

So, I wasn't able to remember the 1-2 minutes preceding the jump, or how I got knocked out. However, in the coming week, images filtered back to me (and I assume they will with you as well). I remember that, right before my jump, I was thinking "alright, it's getting windy and it's getting crowded, one more 720, and I'm done." How coincidental! I remember landing with 630 out of 720 degrees spun, and I remember my head whipping and hitting the ground. I remember thinking to myself "aw, that was a hard hit, but nothing I haven't experienced before." The problem is is that I couldn't remember myself getting up.

I suppose I don't exactly "remember" this as I remember that I just went skiing today. It is more an educated guess at what I thought happened.



This is easily the best story on the thread, by the way.

I TOTALLY had the same experience! I had just had my daughter by c-section. The night after, well morning really because it was about 4am I lost WORDS. Lost connectivity to reality really. It was VERY frightening. After about 4 hours it was gone. I still have no idea why though.....

The Human Brain is so complex we understand only a fraction of what it can do and what makes it tick....