Matt Sarad
Member
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- 900
My TBI was March 22nd, 2013, the result of a bike accident. While car camping, we took clunker bikes and in a rush didn't take helmets. We hadn't planned to climb a road we had hiked in the moonlight the night before, but chugged up to the top for the ocean View in Morro Bay, CA.
On the ride down I hit a pothole and bump in a shady spot and flew about 20 feet with a terrible landing. Broken collarbone, collapsed right lung, numerous broken ribs and vertebrae, hairline skull fracture, hemorrhaging, contusion, concussion, and a lot of my blood on the pavement when I awoke to someone calling my name.
I was out for about five days and came to when my girlfriend, now my wife, appeared in my consciousness in my ICU room. I left there after a week and moved to a rehab facility and the Centre for Neuro Skillsfor cognitive, work, and physical rehab.
I didn't play guitar for two months while the collarbone healed. The shoulder was pain ridden for a year, which meant that I went from 15 minutes playing time to an hour after that first year. Grip strength was lessened considerably.
My brother and friends put me in their blues band where I couldn't remember the names or chord changes like I had pre accident. 60% loss of hearing in my left ear and tinnitus replacing the loss made playing music live a challenge. At one gig it sounded like we were all in different keys so I had to stop mid song on stage. Pissed off the bassist who refused to play anymore, even though we had been in our first band together as teenagers in 1969.
It took three years to remember all my original dadgad tunes on acoustic.
Another bassist refused anymore gigs after I " threw him under the bus" while changing tunes mid song, something I don't remember.
So now, I notice that I can't play complex songs I used to know with precision. Songs I write are played differently about 80% of the time. The drummer gets it. The bassist scrambles to follow my directions.
Anyone else have similar stories from head injuries, strokes, the DTs?
On the ride down I hit a pothole and bump in a shady spot and flew about 20 feet with a terrible landing. Broken collarbone, collapsed right lung, numerous broken ribs and vertebrae, hairline skull fracture, hemorrhaging, contusion, concussion, and a lot of my blood on the pavement when I awoke to someone calling my name.
I was out for about five days and came to when my girlfriend, now my wife, appeared in my consciousness in my ICU room. I left there after a week and moved to a rehab facility and the Centre for Neuro Skillsfor cognitive, work, and physical rehab.
I didn't play guitar for two months while the collarbone healed. The shoulder was pain ridden for a year, which meant that I went from 15 minutes playing time to an hour after that first year. Grip strength was lessened considerably.
My brother and friends put me in their blues band where I couldn't remember the names or chord changes like I had pre accident. 60% loss of hearing in my left ear and tinnitus replacing the loss made playing music live a challenge. At one gig it sounded like we were all in different keys so I had to stop mid song on stage. Pissed off the bassist who refused to play anymore, even though we had been in our first band together as teenagers in 1969.
It took three years to remember all my original dadgad tunes on acoustic.
Another bassist refused anymore gigs after I " threw him under the bus" while changing tunes mid song, something I don't remember.
So now, I notice that I can't play complex songs I used to know with precision. Songs I write are played differently about 80% of the time. The drummer gets it. The bassist scrambles to follow my directions.
Anyone else have similar stories from head injuries, strokes, the DTs?