the general public vastly underestimates the damage with head injuries, and Oliver Sacks essays underscored that

The general public also underestimates the extent to which Oliver Sacks is a good wrtier, but a terrible doctor. (This is according to my neurologist uncle who foams at the mouth whenever Sacks' name comes up, and an ex-patient friend of my sister's. The reason my sister's friend is now an ex-patient is because he was kicked out of the office for having a seizure in the waiting room. As in, he was waiting for an appointment, he started to have a seizure in the waiting room, and Sacks called security.)

Head Trauma Information

In brief...it depends. Penetrating injury or not. How much pressure in the brain after the trauma and for how long. Which part of the head got whacked and whether there's nerve damage in there.

I think we can rate him as a Mild-to-Severe head injury, though, from what we know. And as Trudy suggests...

The treatment of TBI has undergone significant change in the last 20 years.

Prognosis:

The Traumatic Coma Data Bank analyzed 780 patients with head injuries and identified 5 factors that correlated with a poor outcome, as follows: (1) age older than 60 years, (2) initial GCS score of less than 5, (3) presence of a fixed dilated pupil, (4) prolonged hypotension or hypoxia early after injury, and (5) presence of a surgical intracranial mass lesion.

Along the Main Line is nice but pricey. We lived in Bryn Mawr, though there are plenty of places along the main line where you could live and living as far out as Wayne wouldn't be undoable if you planned on commuting by SEPTA). My BATT's family lived in Bala Cynwyd for a bit (which I think is where Billytea lived), Mount Airy (which I loved) and Fairmount. All of those are suburbany.

Is this true? That's so... whoa.

Very true. A famous case, and well known around the Bay Area which is crawling with Gettys.

Okay, all this head trauma stuff is freaking me out and I need to be elsewhere.

Which surprises me.

A famous case, and well known around the Bay Area which is crawling with Gettys.

Oh yeah? Well, wehave a Getty CENTER. *TWO* even.

(probably not the same family, just wanted to be smug today. I'm done.)

They are the same family, Aimee, so be smug.

Ah, well. Smug smug smug.

Okay, all this head trauma stuff is freaking me out and I need to be elsewhere.

I'll quit talking about it. Sorry.

Sorry, ita.

David, the stuff you're quoting is the stuff that demarcates vegetables from the rest of us. The Times has been doing a series on the brain-innjured in Iraq (from Iraq, in the US now), and it's really startling the injuries people survive these days, ending up in non-vegetable format.

maybe unable to read; maybe halting in memory or easily confused or a hudnred other possible outcomes, but -- when you've seen a guy walking despite a fist-size section of his gray matter missing, you've got to be impressed at the brain's recovery abilities.