Editor:
With the long weekend out came the bicycles. The weather was perfect, the last week has been perfect. Only one thing bothers me: people that ride without bicycle helmets.
Sure, parents are good about having their kids wear helmets, and if you see any kids under age 10 on a skateboard they usually have a helmet on too. What I have noticed is about 40 per cent of adult bike riders don't wear helmets, teenage skateboarders don't wear helmets and a majority of kids coming out of the high school on bicycles or skateboards aren't wearing helmets.
It's like there's a switch somewhere that says, "Hey, mom and dad, don't wear a helmet. Why are they making me look like a moron?"
A friend of mine last summer was wearing her helmet, fell off her bike and got a concussion. It happens, depending on how you fall. It took her a good six months to recover and it wasn't fun. She was in pain a lot of the time and couldn't drive her car. There's one solution to traffic.
In February I started to do really silly things. Then one day I couldn't talk without slurring my words and I couldn't print, much less write.
I went to the ER and did not have to wait in line. I don't remember much of it, but I have seen there was a CT scan done.
I'm basing these events on what others told me because I honestly don't remember a full week of my life.
Apparently I had a subdural hematoma. I don't remember hitting my head but apparently this thing had been silently and unknowingly bleeding under my skull for at least three months.
I got to stay in a bed in the Delta Hospital ER for two days because there aren't enough ambulances and not enough beds at Royal Columbian Hospital, even in the ER.
Once they got me to Royal Columbian, I got to spend seven days in the ER because there were patients that came in that were in worse shape than I was (probably fell off their bikes), plus there were no beds available on the post surgery ward, not even in the hallway.
Finally I got to have two holes drilled in my head with a drain left in one of them to try to get rid of the excess blood.
I was one of the lucky ones. Most people are left with some sort of deficiency and it can also be fatal.
It was my eyes for a while. It took two months for things to stop being blurry. I wasn't allowed to drive for at least six weeks because I had no peripheral vision. I had the staples pulled out of my head at three weeks post op.
Please everyone, risk looking like a moron and wear a bike helmet. Then I can stop having these urges to stop every time I see someone not wearing a helmet.
Shirley MacNutt
