one week later: recovering from assault and a concussion

[DIS­CLAIMER: I’m not a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al and this is sim­ply my own post-con­cus­sion ex­pe­ri­ence. Head trau­ma isn’t well un­der­stood and re­cov­ery will be dif­fer­ent for every­one. How­ev­er, I hope that my ex­pe­ri­ence can be help­ful to oth­ers in a sim­i­lar situation.]

I’ve been told (more than once) that every man should know what it feels like to get punched in the face.

Well, I fi­nal­ly got my punch and I dis­agree. I also have no mem­o­ry of it and got a con­cus­sion in the process.

One week ago I was as­sault­ed in broad day­light (about 3:30 pm) in San Fran­cis­co at Sev­enth & Mis­sion, while walk­ing home from buy­ing cat lit­ter at Tar­get. I still don’t know ex­act­ly what hap­pened but ap­par­ent­ly I was punched in the face and knocked out by a teenag­er (pos­si­bly play­ing The Knock­out Game) who im­me­di­ate­ly ran away.

I woke up on a couch in the lob­by of an ad­ja­cent ho­tel, thor­ough­ly con­fused, jaw aching, three teeth chipped, but oth­er­wise just scraped and bruised. Noth­ing was stolen and my glass­es were mirac­u­lous­ly undamaged.

Af­ter speak­ing with the para­medics I de­clined the $2000 am­bu­lance ride and got my­self to the ER in a $10 Lyft. My CT scan looked good (no in­ter­nal bleed­ing or oth­er messy stuff) so I was dis­charged with a steep ER co­pay­ment and a few pre­scrip­tions for pain meds.

I ar­rived home, ex­haust­ed, head throb­bing, still dazed, and tried to re­lax. I felt con­fused and scared, un­sure what to ex­pect the next day. I was a vic­tim of as­sault and didn’t re­al­ly know how to feel about it.
 

the next day
I woke up feel­ing well enough (apart from a hefty head- and toothache) so I de­cid­ed to go to work (and bike there — mis­take!). I’m a web de­sign­er, and my job is to look at screens and use my brain pret­ty much all day (two things you should not do when re­cov­er­ing from a concussion).

I was okay for most of the day. I felt most­ly sharp but a lit­tle hazy, and for­tu­nate­ly didn’t have any im­por­tant meet­ings to wor­ry about. I had a break in the mid­dle of the day to go to the den­tist and get my chipped teeth tak­en care of (which I also biked to – mis­take!) but then I re­turned to work.

By the af­ter­noon my head was a lump of jel­ly. I wasn’t feel­ing like my­self, my face was all numb from the den­tist and I just want­ed to sleep. I knew I had pushed my­self too hard and need­ed rest.
 

get­ting educated
That evening I ad­mit­ted to my­self that there’s no such thing as a mild head in­jury and that I need­ed to take my rest more se­ri­ous­ly. I did some re­search to bet­ter un­der­stand what I should be do­ing for myself.

The rab­bit hole of in­ter­net med­ical re­search can be dan­ger­ous though, and I also start­ed to wor­ry about caus­ing per­ma­nent brain dam­age by do­ing the wrong thing. It turns out this fear was un­war­rant­ed; push­ing my­self too hard would make me un­com­fort­able and might slow my re­cov­ery but caus­ing per­ma­nent dam­age was ex­treme­ly unlikely.

I need­ed cog­ni­tive rest. Sleep as much as pos­si­ble, eat good healthy foods, avoid screens, avoid stress, don’t try to go back to work right away. It’s no dif­fer­ent from a mus­cle in­jury; you wouldn’t go for a run the day af­ter you pull your ham­string and like­wise, my brain just need­ed some time to heal itself.

It was also help­ful to hear the sto­ries of oth­ers who have had sim­i­lar in­juries, and un­der­stand that the symp­toms I felt were com­plete­ly normal.

Here are some ar­ti­cles I found useful:

·  What Can I Do to Help Feel Bet­ter Af­ter a Mild Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury

·  Brain In­jury As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca: Mild Brain In­jury and Concussion

·  The Worst Part About Re­cov­er­ing From a Concussion

·  Feed Your Body, Feed Your Brain: Nu­tri­tion­al Tips to Speed Recovery

·  Brain Stew: Post Con­cus­sion Nutrition
 

the days that followed
The phys­i­cal symp­toms were much eas­i­er to deal with than the men­tal ones. My phys­i­cal pain was eas­i­ly reg­u­lat­ed but feel­ings of wor­ry, lone­li­ness and anx­i­ety were haunting.

I felt sud­den mood swings; one mo­ment I was fine and the next I felt help­less and start­ed cry­ing, al­most in­vol­un­tar­i­ly. These ta­pered off as the week went on but it was very much an emo­tion­al rollercoaster.

I would lie down to try to rest but feel­ings of anx­i­ety crept in. It was es­pe­cial­ly frus­trat­ing be­cause I had no mem­o­ry of the in­ci­dent. I tried to fill the mem­o­ry void in my head, won­der­ing what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened in those min­utes that were for­ev­er lost to me.

And why me? Why was my face the most punch­able on the side­walk that af­ter­noon? What could I have done dif­fer­ent­ly? Why didn’t any­one chase down my as­sailant? Will he ever be caught? What was he think­ing? What did it feel like to punch a com­plete­ly in­no­cent per­son in the face?

Think­ing about the whole thing still makes me feel un­easy. But with a lit­tle time I was able to ac­knowl­edge those feel­ings of dis­com­fort, al­low them to ex­ist, but then push them aside and fo­cus on the pos­i­tive things.

I be­gan to see my week of rest as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take a break. I was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear my mind, re­lax and lis­ten to mu­sic. A chance to slow down. I didn’t need to wor­ry about cross­ing off every­thing on my to-do list. In­stead, I could fo­cus en­tire­ly on my own health.

Of course, it still got bor­ing. Oh how I yearned to fire up some video games or watch a movie! Through­out the week I al­lowed my­self small dos­es of these things but it felt more men­tal­ly tax­ing than usu­al so I eased back.

By the end of the week I was much bet­ter at slow­ing down and nour­ish­ing my brain. Here’s what I found help­ful (and not):
 

what helped

·  Rest (and lots of it). At first all I want­ed to do was sleep. I soaked up as much shut-eye as I could, sleep­ing for 14 hours the first night. Even if I couldn’t sleep dur­ing the day, ly­ing down with a t‑shirt over my face was help­ful. As the week went on I grew more rest­less and took mela­tonin to help reg­u­late a more gen­er­ous sleep sched­ule than I’m used to.

·  Mu­sic. Lis­ten­ing to mu­sic (es­pe­cial­ly jazz) pro­vid­ed just the right bal­ance of stim­u­la­tion and re­lax­ation. I would lie down, throw on an al­bum or two and close my eyes. Spe­cial thanks to Pat Methe­ny, George Duke, Ryuichi Sakamo­to, Jean-Michel Jarre, Ah­mad Ja­mal, Hi­ro­mi, Bob­by Hutch­er­son, Her­bie Han­cock, Chick Corea, Bill Evans and St. Germain.

·  Com­e­dy. Lis­ten­ing to standup com­e­dy was one way to stave off the bore­dom and keep my­self feel­ing pos­i­tive. There are a ton of standup spe­cials avail­able on Rdio, Spo­ti­fy and Net­flix (or YouTube for that mat­ter!). Spe­cial thanks to Steve Mar­tin, Matt Braunger, Demetri Mar­tin, Jen Kirk­man, Chris Hard­wick and the Wel­come To Night­vale podcast.

·  Guid­ed med­i­ta­tion. When I felt anx­ious and wor­ri­some thoughts creep­ing in, I put on a pair of head­phones and loaded up a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion on YouTube (there are a ton!). It helped me to take a step back from the sit­u­a­tion, set­tle my thoughts and re­as­sure my­self that I was okay and re­cov­er­ing well. Spe­cial thanks to Michael Sealey and The­Hon­est­Guys.

·  Good brain food. Cook­ing was one thing I could do that didn’t feel men­tal­ly tax­ing. I kept it sim­ple, but made sure I ate well, fo­cus­ing on good pro­teins, veg­eta­bles and an­tiox­i­dants, sup­ple­ment­ed with omega‑3 fish oil. Spe­cial thanks to salmon, quinoa, chard, eggs, pota­toes and blackberries.

·  Yoga. Al­though I had to avoid any­thing phys­i­cal­ly stren­u­ous, I found that do­ing some light yoga was a great way to re­lax my mind. Even just a few min­utes of stretch­ing re­al­ly helped. Spe­cial thanks to Yoga With Adriene.

·  Cats. Some of the best ad­vice I re­ceived was to “cud­dle up with the cats and fol­low their lead for a few days”. I al­lowed my­self to lie down and nap when­ev­er I could, wedg­ing my­self be­tween my cats on the bed and shut­ting my brain off. Spe­cial thanks to these guys.

·  Clean­ing. I dis­cov­ered that or­ga­niz­ing and clean­ing (while lis­ten­ing to mu­sic, of course) was a great mind­less task that helped me feel pro­duc­tive at the same time. My apart­ment has nev­er looked so good!

·  Friends check­ing in. It’s al­ways nice to know that oth­ers are think­ing of you, a re­minder that you’re not go­ing through it alone. Spe­cial thanks to every­one who checked in on me through­out the week and shared their own experiences.

·  Chal­leng­ing my­self a lit­tle bit every day. I want­ed to have a mea­sur­able form of progress dur­ing re­cov­ery. At first I tried just walk­ing a few blocks to the li­brary to re­turn some books. Or, I’d walk to a near­by park and sit in the sun for a bit while lis­ten­ing to mu­sic. Or walk along the wa­ter­front and en­joy the calm San Fran­cis­co Bay. I usu­al­ly felt ex­tra tired by the time I got home but push­ing my­self just a lit­tle bit every day re­al­ly helped.
 

what didn’t help

·  Go­ing back to work too soon. I fool­ish­ly thought I could just shake it off so I went back to the of­fice the day af­ter the in­ci­dent and tried to work. Al­though I didn’t try to work a full day, by the time I got home I felt ex­haust­ed and my head was throb­bing. I wound up tak­ing the rest of the week off to rest and it made all the difference.

·  Push­ing my­self too hard. The day af­ter the in­ci­dent I not only went back to work but de­cid­ed to ride my bi­cy­cle there and then also ride to my den­tist ap­point­ment up some steep hills in North Beach. By the time I ar­rived my head was pound­ing, I felt dizzy and knew I’d made a huge mistake.

·  Try­ing to solve the crime. It’s easy for these thoughts to creep in. What re­al­ly hap­pened? Did the jerk who punched me up­load the video to YouTube where I might be able to find it and track him down (ap­par­ent­ly not)? Who else might have wit­nessed the punch and how can I find them? Al­though I may nev­er know what re­al­ly hap­pened, over-an­a­lyz­ing it just made me feel anx­ious and frustrated.

·  Won­der­ing “what if?”. What if I had tak­en a dif­fer­ent path home? What if I had left 5 min­utes ear­li­er? What if I was wear­ing a dif­fer­ent shirt? None of this helped me feel bet­ter. As these thoughts arose I tried to ac­knowl­edge them but push them aside and fo­cus on recovery.
 

con­tin­ued recovery
It’s been an in­ter­est­ing week. In the last few days I’ve be­gun to feel like my­self again and al­though I’m still wary of push­ing my­self too hard, I’ve been chal­leng­ing my­self a lit­tle bit every day.

I’ll re­turn to work to­mor­row but don’t ex­pect to feel 100% for a few more weeks. I’m ea­ger to re­sume my life again but for now I’m cel­e­brat­ing every lit­tle vic­to­ry with the con­fi­dence that I will get there soon.

And all of this with a lit­tle more pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing of myself.
 

If this post has been at all help­ful to you, please let me know. If you’re go­ing through a sim­i­lar re­cov­ery process please don’t be too hard on your­self! Cul­ti­vate pa­tience and look for the pos­i­tive things. You’ll be just fine.

—gar­ret voorhees

Flom­mist Gar­ret Voorhees is a se­nior de­sign­er & UX strate­gist, dj, ty­pog­ra­ph­er, the founder of Game&Type and pin­ball en­thu­si­ast. cc li­cense: Some rights re­served by the au­thor. Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on Medi­um.

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