On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 3:56:20 PM UTC-7, jbeattie wrote:

Did you have to stop working because of your head injury? Are you still receiving treatment? Not to pry, but I'm wondering what the long-term effects were.

I haven't had your experience with CF, but if I did, I'd probably quit riding CF forks, too.

I have absolutely no memory of the year and a half I spent from the concussion to my real neurologist medicating me. During that time I lost 42% of my body weight. None of the doctors I was seeing could figure out why because I probably wasn't remembering to eat. The grand seizures were destroying other memories but perhaps not permanently since as time goes on I can remember more and more.

The initial medication that made me "come to" did not stop the grand seizures but they were the sort that you cannot remember afterwards so I simply had no way of knowing I was still having seizures. While at the doctor my younger brother told him I was still having seizures and he added a second medication and almost over-night I began to feel better.

Because my weight was so low I had extreme depression and considered suicide but as I was eating like an ox that very soon went away. I still have people saying "Hi Tom" whom I do not recognize. Others I recognize but without any idea of where or when.

The paper I wrote plainly shows that over the time when helmets went from zero use to almost universal use there was no change in deaths. There are only poorly documented statistics on injuries, but my experience with motorcycles tells me that head injuries on two wheelers are rare because it is a human reaction to protect one's head. So most head injuries are sudden and violent. I have spoken with Bell Helmets long ago as they were developing the first helmets and even at that time we discussed the fact that concussion tended to be worse than mild skull fracture and that perhaps it would be better to make helmets to protect from concussion first.

But then when calculated there simply wasn't enough room for an effective helmet of such a type. And DOT got involved making standards that were for protecting the skull and not what was inside it.