Fighting to get back into shape and restore my fortunes: It only recently has transpired that I sustained a serious head-injury, resulting in a fractured skull, and damage to my left hippocampus, and scaring on my brain, when I was 21, working on a show for Sammies, at Earl’s Cour.t
I fell 3M, off of a road box, onto the back of my head – this alone would have killed most people; all I remember is sitting up, and all the cerebral fluid discharging from around my brain, out through my nose, in a very ‘Aliens’, fashion. I passed out, and only regained consciousness when I was in the attending ambulance, as the crew were cutting off my clothes.
In hospital I was told I had simply broken the bones at the top of my nose, which to this day leaves me with no sense of taste or smell. I don’t think CT technology existed back then, and the skull fracture, and brain damage was only recently discovered by a Consultant Neurologist., meaning the good old NHS has been barking up the wrong tree for the last 20 years.
The scarring on my brain leads to extended seizures, of up to 40 minutes, and I have twice been found dead in the corridors of this very building due to seizures.
As a scholar of the ancient world, I can relate that in the Greco/Roman world, seizures were very fashionable. One was thought to have been literally ‘seized’ by the Immortal Gods. It was known as ‘The falling sickness.’
Julius Caesar was said to suffer from it, but his arch-enemy, who hated him, Cicero, said he was just faking it.
Be that as it may, seizures, as I have related above, can cause me cardiac arrest, and are taken very seriously be the Medical Profession. I find the ‘aura’ or the sense that I am going to have a fit terrifying, and, under medicated, I would hit the scotch to the tune of up to 3 bottles a day, to stave off a seizure.
Forever I was presenting at A and E at my local hospital, the Royal Free, either detoxing or plastered. I have done every sort of treatment for alcoholism from AA to rehab. But then a bright spark upped my sodium valproate to 800mgs from 500 mgs. And all was well I stopped even getting the aura.
Now, I have not had a drink at for 8 months – I had been experimenting a bit to see if the AA hypothesis applied to me, and found I can take a two or three pints without consequence; however,
An ambulance crew informed me that ethyl alcohol, and anti-seizure meds were commonly known to be fatal; rat poison I call it: so I simply don’t drink. Superstitious naysayers in AA would predict my downfall, but I don’t.
I also have obstructive sleep apnoea, which went undiagnosed for decades. Now that is soon to be fixed.
But I am still very much alive, very creative and I remain an ambitious man. Not meaning It as a compliment my de facto manager Jacques, who is an Oxford MA physics, a MBA and a famous name in the City, referred to me as a renaissance man, meaing that I needed to focus. Well that I am doing!!! Rebuilding my fitness job no 1. Whilst II have been used to a City Banker income most of my adult life, I am now on the package of a teacher or a nurse. As I don’t any longer have to dink 3 bottles of scotch a day to stave off a seizure, I feel comfortably off, and can save. Cool.
Tony Carrick 