Okay, it is only fair that I make you people aware that I have sustained two traumatic brain injuries in my lifetime. They have not been detrimental in the least. They have been terrific learning experiences and I feel I am better off having had them. If I could go back in time and avoid them, I wouldn't.
Head-injury #1. My first head-injury occurred November
sixth of 1996,
election night(coincidentally), the night Bill Clinton got reelected. I had
enlisted in the Navy and my ship-date was November 21st. Why did I join the
navy? Well, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. The only
interests I had was mountain biking and I wasn't good enough to go race for a
living. I graduated high school in the summer of 96 with a 76 GPA and I felt
dumb. No one was going to hire me, I thought. The recruiters came to my school and
told me everything I wanted to hear. So stupid me, I enlisted. I was in the
delayed-entry program. Right before I joined the Navy I had bought a non-working 78 Porsche 924
for $1400. It was going to be my project and I wanted to get it running. I was
seventeen. I didn't know how to work on cars or anything. I just bought parts for it
and hoped it would work someday. I was working at Albertsons and every paycheck
went into saving up for that car. I bought a Jacobs electric ignition for it and
everything. I twiddled around with that German piece of crap for eight months before
I finally gave up and threw it in a shop. In a couple days they got it running. So when the Navy asked me what my interests were I told them I liked
working on cars. They put me down to become an engineman. Enginemen are the
mechanics that work on the motors of ships/subs. Wups, this is another story,
back to my head-injury. The night of November sixth my friend Darrel Azar had snuck his parents Kia
Sephia out of the house and came to pick me up. We had started hanging out at
the all-night Jim's restaurant on Bandera/410. From this point on I have no
memory of what happened, but here is what I was told.
Darrel started showing off and speeding down Guilbeau Road which is very
hilly. We ended up T-boning a Ford F-150 going sixty miles per hour. The people in the truck
that we hit were some janitors coming out of the parking lot of this daycare
center. I'm pretty sure I was wearing my seatbelt like I always do. My head hit
the windshield and I got knocked out. I am six foot six and I was in a Kia Sephia. No broken bones. I was ambulanced a block away to the Albertsons
at the top of the hill, where
I used to work
and airlifted to BAMC(Brooke Army Medical Center) at Fort Sam Houston. I was
sent to BAMC because they supposedly had the best trauma center in San Antonio.
I got this big laceration over my right-eye where the
windshield had cut. My eyelid was cut really bad and was hanging off.
The doctors were able to stitch it up and miraculously, the lens of my eye
wasn't even scratched. I had no loss of vision in the eye. I like
the scar. It raises my right eyebrow a bit, giving me this permanent
inquisitive look. Hmmmm.
I was in the intensive care unit at BAMC for six days, then transferred to
the Rehabilitation Institute of San Antonio in Medical Center. I was an
in-patient at RIOSA for thirty nine days then two and a half months of outpatient therapy. The
doctors said my only remaining deficits were minor short-term memory loss and impulsivity(not thinking things through before doing them). To that I told them,
"What are you comparing anything to? You didn't know me before my accident.
Umm, I smoke weed. Who's got a perfect memory? And it's not that I don't think
things through before I do them . . . I just think them through real fast."
Stupid doctors.
When I woke up in the hospital I talked to the Navy and they told
me I had a new ship-date. I was bummed out but I said okay. After they called I
talked to my doctor and he asked me if I wanted to go or not. I told him that I
had already changed my mind about two weeks after I swore in and had gone to talk
to the chief. The chief told me that I wasn't a man. That my friends weren't
going to be there for me like the Navy was. He said I had signed a legal,
binding contract and that I had to go, so I thought I had to. Well, the doctor
was cool. He wrote the Navy a letter saying I wasn't fit for active duty. Bam,
medical discharge. I am soooo glad I had my head-injury.
One thing I remember about RIOSA was one night I didn't want to lay down in
my bed and sleep, so I started walking up and down the halls of the hospital. I
was restless for some reason. The nurses commanded me to get in bed and I
refused, so they strapped me to the bed with a gait-belt. I hated that belt. I
even called the nurses on the intercom and lied to them, saying I had to go to
the restroom, just to get them to take if off me and I would start walking down
the halls again. Hey, I know that sounds crazy, but I had just had a
head-injury, damnit. So they finally wrestled me back in the bed and fastened
the belt again. I tried to fall asleep but having that belt strapped to me
didn't let me. I tried calling again and telling them that I really, really had
to go. They didn't believe me and told me to stop crying wolf. Thing is, by that
time I really did have to go. I just turned to one side, undid my pants and peed
all over the floor, just because I knew they weren't going to release me again. I waited about another hour then I finally got fed up with the belt. I grabbed
the bed control that was hanging on a metal hook on the rail of the bed and tore
the metal hook off of it. I started chopping away at the thick fabric belt. After about an hour of chopping I got all the way through it. I felt like
Houdini. I got up and started pacing the halls again with this huge shit-faced
grin. Hehe, the nurses were shocked at my escape. I walked up to them, looked
them straight in the eye and said, "I hate that belt! Don't you ever put it on
me again!" I told them that I was tired enough then to go to sleep and I would,
provided they didn't strap me down. I also told them to clean up the mess I made
on the floor or put me in another room. Hehe, got my way.
My ex-step dad Luis was an attorney, so of course his firm was hired to
settle my case. Luis' partner Oscar Villarreal ran the show though. Luckily,
Darrel's parents had insurance on the Kia and I was also able to collect some
money from the insurance of the janitors in the truck. After all my hospital and
lawyer bills were paid, I ended up with $29,000. So basically, since I don't remember going through any pain it was like I
woke up, was in the hospital a bit, and got paid in the end. Ahh, it felt great
having money.
I blew all of that money in only
eight months. I wasn't working. I moved out
of my mom's and into an apartment with some friends, bought another Porsche(I
know, I hadn't learned my lesson yet) for $6900 and I was eating out all the
time. That car sucked all my money up. It was a 1986 944 that I had bought out
of the classifieds. It would break down about every two weeks and was always in
the shop. It's because you can't drive them the way their designed to be. There's no Autobahn here.
Everyone who found out I was sitting on some money
suddenly became my "friend" and
of course, I loved the attention. So I was happy, temporarily. Talk about luck,
eh? When the money ran out I said, "Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to get a
job like normal people." I went to West Telemarketing, the highest-paid cheating
job in the world. I'll get into telemarketing on another story.
Okay, four years later. Next election year, coincidentally. October
third
of 2000, around ten thirty at night. I was living with my now ex girlfriend(who thinks I am
crazy now) in a nice apartment on Vance Jackson and Huebner. We got in a bad
argument over money or something and I stormed out of the apartment to go buy
some cigarettes at the store on the corner. After I bought my smokes I went for
a walk in the neighborhood across the street from my complex. I was walking down Orsinger Lane with my back to traffic, only because I was getting near my
apartments and my unit was closer to that side of the road. I was hit from
behind by a car, did a flip in the air and hit my head on the street. Head-injury
number two.
I was ambulanced to University Hospital,
where I was an inpatient in
for thirty days, then again two months outpatient therapy. This time, I had a noticeable deficit. I acquired a minor, random tremor in
my right side. My arm, leg and jaw would sometimes shake a little. I also lost a
lot of dexterity in my right hand. I am normally right-handed so my handwriting
has been impaired permanently. I have since taught myself to write with my left
hand, to compensate. I'm all about the compensatory-strategies now. I just make
up for stuff. It doesn't bother me one bit. I could be dead.
Small price to pay.
At first, the vision in my lower-left peripheral, when I would glance to
the left and down, would double. That has either gone away or I've gotten used
to it, because it doesn't bother me at all now. Hey, I could be dead. I now always look at the brighter side of everything.
How many people have two closed head-injuries in their lifetime and come out normal(depends on who you ask)? I also have no memory of this accident. Lucky me.
The doctors told me that if I hadn't had my first head-injury, my second one
would've probably been a bad concussion and now that I've had two, I am twice as likely to have a third, so
I should be careful.
I was due for one in 2004 and I made
it through alright. I think the election-year curse has been lifted. While I was an inpatient, I was placed in the Reeves Rehabilitation Center
on the sixth floor of the hospital. I'm not too sure when I start remembering
things again, but again, I felt more or less okay.
Now, because the guy who hit me(I think his last name
was Larry Roe) was nice enough to do the right thing and call the
ambulance, I didn't sue him. He could've left me for dead. I
settled with his insurance company. My old lawyer Oscar Villarreal who had
represented me in my first accident was hired by my mother again. I ended up
getting a measly nine thousand dollar chunk. My lawyer got about the same amount and he didn't
have to get hit by a car. What a jip, eh. Anyway, I was a little smarter with this money. I bought a new computer, of
course. I even bought me a California-king-size bed. I got some furniture for
the apartment and I moved my girlfriend and I into a nine hundred square foot one bedroom
loft in the same complex. Finally, another car out of the classifieds for
twelve hundred dollars.
That money went away quick too. Oh well, back to the telemarketing place.
- Victor Antonio