Concussion, part two

                I watch too much television. I turn the tube on all of the time and then sit down to do other things, like write on my computer. The TV in the background helps me to tune out the world so I can concentrate. Occasionally, something from the tube penetrates my brain and I stop writing and listen for a bit. Yesterday, I watched a slice of a new show on CBS, “Person of Interest.” In it, our main character was bashed on the back of the head hard enough to knock him unconscious. It would have been a pretty serious concussion, especially since this was a second head injury in only a few days, in the show’s timeline.  Eventually, he wakes up in the back of the cop car of a corrupt cop, about to be shot and dumped in the boonies. He is frisky enough to disarm the cop and totally outsmart the gang, killing one bad guy in the process. He is able to think far enough in advance to use the corrupt cop’s gun, forcing the cop to deal with the corpse by hauling it out to the boonies, and making the man his bitch.

                The problem is, I had a mild concussion last month; I was only knocked out for a few seconds. It wouldn’t have been bad enough for me to have stayed unconscious if someone had loaded me into the back of a car. It’s been over a month and I still have pain and balance issues – I can’t stay upright if the lights are out. My head still hurts. I made bad decisions for days after the injury. I’m a smart person and I couldn’t have outsmarted the cat (and she is far from the sharpest tool in the shed) in the days after my injury!

Why is it that, when someone gets a concussion on television or in movies, it is bad enough to knock the hero out but he is up and at ‘em as soon as he needs to be, with only mild discomfort? No one on television pukes from their concussion, a typical reaction for normal humans. Or staggers, unable to walk straight. I joked with my doctor that it was a good thing I hadn’t been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint, because I couldn’t touch my nose with my eyes closed. It’s also a good thing I’m not a television hero.

                If someone has surgery on TV, they are able to walk out of the hospital. They looked good in the bed before they had to go. When I had my emergency surgery, my hair was so matted it took me two days after I was discharged to get out the snarls. I smelled bad, too. And I left in an ambulance – I couldn’t walk because all of my abdominal muscles had been cut. You NEED abdominal muscles to do almost anything! When characters on TV are shot in the abdomen, they, too, would need a colostomy. It’s not pretty and it takes months to recover, plus additional surgery.  Yet, the main characters are back to normal the following week.

                I’m tired of television getting reality so wrong. It really ticked me off to see this silly show get something as common as a concussion so stupidly incorrect. But, it’s easier to move the hero and the plot by cheating, “knocking him out.” If real people had as many concussions are television heroes, they would have permanent brain injuries. But who would watch a show whose main character was in a persistent vegetative state?