Head Injury

Most of my friends have at one time or another heard this story (or compilation of stories) so I apologize if this is old news to you. Wait a minute. I don't apologize. I take that back. If you don't want to read this you can simply stop reading it. No apologies necessary.

I have been hospitalized four times for head injuries. The first was at a mere few weeks old when I rolled over for the first time. You parents out there are thinking, "rolled over at a few weeks old? no way!" Well, I did and my mom wasn't expecting it either. She was changing my diaper. That's funny. I used to wear diapers. Ha ha. (head injuries: bare with me) Anyway, she turned around to grab a clean diaper and turned back around to see me rolling right off the counter and falling to the not-yet-tiled-cement-floor. Not that tile would've been any softer. Anyway, after freaking out and taking me to the hospital to be checked out all I needed was a butterfly patch to stop the bleeding.

The second head injury took place at the age of four or was it five? (head injuries: bare with me) Anyway, I was unfortunate enough to be under the fireplace mantle at my grandparents house when a clock fell off and landed on my head. It was like the one pictured here but was in the shape of a maple leaf. It's not very light and it took many stitches to close the hole it left me with.

The third happened the summer I turned fifteen. Dustin and I were riding our bikes in the middle of the night down a hill in Ozark. I tried to make a turn that I missed and wound up rocketing off the curb at about 30 miles an hour. My bike and I crossed one of those ten-foot-deep, cement-lined drainage ditches in mid-air. I smacked the other side of it head first and fell down into it. I would've probably died that night, but Dustin was smarter than I was and wouldn't let me get up after I regained consciousness. (Note to Dustin: don't get too full of yourself. It's not difficult to be smarter than a guy who was dropped on his head as a baby) A three-day stint in ICU and one half an ear sewn back on later I got to go home again. Blood clots suck.

The fourth, and the last one hopefully, was when I was eighteen and I spun out in the snow while delivering a pizza (ironically on the same highway about a mile from my third head injury site) and spun 270 degrees around to get broadsided by a Bronco going the other direction. My head went through the driver's side window and I wound up with a chunk of "safety-glass" that broke through my skull still inside my head. They found it with an x-ray and pulled it out with a pair of large surgical tweezers. A couple more stitches later I was as good as new.

The reason I write this blog is because last night my son, Jacob, got his first hospitalization due to a head injury. He's in Arkansas with his mother for the summer and apparently a horse kicked him in the head. It was "one of the new ponies" and I'm told that it just grazed him more that hitting him square. She rushed him to the hospital despite appearing to be okay after the inital shock. The hospital gave him a CAT scan which ruled out any injury. So, he was left with just a scratch down his face where the hoof caught him. I'm still more shaken up by the phone call than he is from the horse. Hopefully I haven't started a new Felton traditon.

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