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I Forge Iron

Been offline awhile...


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Hiya folks! Have been out of circulation for a bit. Last time I did any forging was last winter, January or February, can't recall which. On the evening of February 15th, the day after Valentine's day I was walking near the house on the side of the road on the road my street connects to. Sometime in March, about a month later, I woke up in the I.C.U. Seems a drunk driver hit me, left me laying in the road with a fractured skull, multiple other injuries and he vamoosed. Usually when there is a hit and run involving a pedestrian the offending driver is never found and oh well, good luck with that, end of story. This time our hero returned to the scene and was noticed by the troopers there watching from his car as the paramedics worked on me. They checked him out and yup, DRUNK. Blew a .18 BAC. He also had his passenger side front fender caved in and was missing his side view mirror, go figure. Anyway, Wednesday night I went up to the local firehall two blocks from here where they were having an all hands meeting, I went because I knew they would all be there, to thank them for saving my life. Big applause, much appreciated :) I was in the hospital five months, in a coma for the first month and was released July 3rd. There was no July firefighter's meeting, so I made the next one. I am still on the mend, constant tinnitus and double vision. On the 20th I am having a surgery to correct the muscles in my left eye but it could be worse, I could be dead. Having just buried my father in January after 55 years of marriage I don't think my mom could take that. Anyway, keep the faith. Am looking forward to getting back into some forging :)

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I don't know you but I am glad you made it out of that ordeal alive. Many times we can take our life for granted , we tend to focus on the negative and take for granted the positive .

Even If the actions of others have left us less than we were , and we have to fight with our anger and pain , we still can cling to the gift of life. Give thanks to your maker and take your pain and forge things of beauty !

Sorry for your loss both in your family and physically

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I am VERY pleased to welcome you to the, "Lucky to be alive," club Ferrous! Having known what it's like to wake up in a hospital wondering how long I'd been there I know what it means to be Lucky. Lucky on many counts, Deb found me immediately because the dogs were raising a major ruckus, lucky Station 6-2 is less than 3 minutes away lights and sirens, etc. etc.

It'll be 10 years Sept 28 this year and hard as it is to believe I keep getting better. The whole family will be able to use counseling just to cope, everybody close to you were injured by that drunk. You'll be going through the grieving process every time you run into something you can't do or don't do so well now. It takes time to learn what all the price is. 

I'm not trying to frighten you, just a little advance notice about what to expect, I still discover things I'm not so good at. I know. 

PM me if you need someone to talk to, I know a lot of work arounds to deal with TBI issues. No pressure, never, I'm here though.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thank you to all who replied. Just keep in mind that our health is ever subject to change with little or no warning so make the best of it while you can. I just turned 52. When I was 12 in 1977 I started playing guitar. Now with this constant tinnitus roaring in my ears I may be done. 40 years of guitar playing gone for naught. Irondragon, Old Crew and Glenn, thanks much! 

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Yup, I'm learning all about TBI. No fun. The doctors told me I suffered a fairly "massive brain bleed" which left behind a high concentration of iron from my blood in my cranium, mostly under my eyes. Busted my left cheekbone too. Had an MRI done back in April, "with contrast" which was a heavy metal they injected me with so it ain't gonna flush out of me any time soon because it tends to settle. Randomly I will feel it circulating around my body and it is beyond frigid, like ice water flowing through my veins. Back in my Marine Corps days I got bumped, tripped over some Aussie dude's leg and fell backwards out the open door of a huey helicopter but I didn't get half as banged up then as when that car hit me. Falling out of a helicopter sounds dramatic but it was just lifting off so I only fell maybe 15 feet. Fortunately the ground was there to break my fall, ha! Anyway, I have a long road ahead of me and no guarantees. I have an eye surgery coming up, "Strabismus" to get my eyes sorted out. Keep your fingers crossed so when its over my eyes ain't!

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I'm with you all the way! Prayers on the operation, just don't blink, :rolleyes: it'll be Okay.

What you feel circulating in your bloodstream is likely your brain talking to itself, you'll get a lot of random sensations that ain't necessarily there let alone so. I was complaining about smelling funky for weeks, then I'd progressed enough they let me take a shower. Talk about heaven a shower all by my lonesome, not counting the two orderlies and nurse standing outside the half open door just in case. Anyway, the shower smelled funky too, just like I did. 

I had an internal cerbral bleed so they couldn't even crack my skull to relieve pressure, drug induced coma and crossed fingers. Anyway, there was a lot of damage so your brain is rerouting things and some stuff gets cross wired for a while. The tinnitus will ease up, a lot of that volume is Audio Recruiting. Your brain isn't getting as strong a signal as it should so it's concentrating more cells on hearing it. Makes some sounds painfully loud, I had trouble feeding the dogs, I had to learn how to dump food in their stainless dishes without the sound hurting. A single piece of kibble hitting the pan was like driving a spike in my ear.

A lot of weird stuff is going to happen, bear with it, it'll heal or you'll learn to deal, I'll help. Brains and nerves heal, don't let anybody tell you differently! They may never be the same but you're still there and it'll get better.

Frosty The Lucky.

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TIME  it will take a LOT OF TIME to get back some things; don't give up though.  (And blacksmithing is a great craft to pattern your reflexes again.  Of course you have to start simple and not get upset that you are not where you once were.)

My TBI was minor compared to y'all; I had a couple of insulin crashes and fell and did a concrete pad/skull bounce test; unfortunately having 2 concussions within a month's time seems to be contraindicated.  I lost a lot of more recent things; I could remember trivia from the 60's but not parts of my job and hd to ask my boss to be retrained..  Time has helped me a lot; as learning to accept that some things may be gone for good.

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Yup, its a tough go to be sure. I may or may not be done playing music. After 40 years as a guitar player I am not quite ready to let that go, was looking forward to forming another blues/rock band too, ugh. For now the Les Paul and Stratcaster sit in their cases, along with a few acoustics and a banjo too. I am determined to play again, so just waiting on my hearing issue to resolve. My skull fracture was on the left side just above the ear, temporal lobe. Also busted my left cheek bone, one end of that is rooted right next to my left ear so too much trauma in one locality it seems. Time will tell. Am looking forward to forging again but for now it will have to wait. Take care Thomas, Cheers.

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Don't be jealous just because the voices in my head only talk to me :rolleyes:

The icey cold I feel randomly circulating around actually is the dye contrast I was injected with for an MRI. It is called Gadavist which contains a heavy metal called Gadolinium which can remain in the body for several months to years. No worries though, this is minor league stuff. I am used to it. When I was 12 I got severe frostbite. Temperature that day was 0 with windchills of -35F. Froze my fingers solid and then lost all the skin from the last knuckle forward on all ten fingers. Had "frostnip" since then more times than I can count because my hands are permanently hypersensitive to cold.

Anyway, being funky from lack of showering may actually be an asset. Tends to keep the bears away;)

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When my office mates would gig me for having a "non-standard reality" and hearing voices; I'd sometimes scrunch my eyes up like I was really concentrating and look over their shoulder a bit and then look at them and tell them "They don't like you---they don't like you at all!" (A variant on how I used to get elbow room when I had to program in the university cattle cars...)

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On 8/12/2019 at 6:20 PM, ThomasPowers said:

"They don't like you---they don't like you at all!"

I've got to remember that one, I know a few folks that need a little unreality check.

I've been a fan of Adam Savage's saying since first time I heard it. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Frosty The Lucky.

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On 8/10/2019 at 10:46 PM, Frosty said:

Brains and nerves heal, don't let anybody tell you differently! They may never be the same but you're still there and it'll get better

There's an amazing amount of plasticity in brain architecture. Your brain is gonna take some time to re route some things and during the interim there could be a lot of strange things happening in there. I heard music. It eventually turned into a murmur and now it's gone. Smells, sensations, changes in personality all can happen. A lot of it will pass. As Frosty said what doesn't, you'll learn to come up with work arounds and strategies for dealing with those things. 

Good luck and let the healing happen. It won't be fast enough for you but it will happen.

Pnut

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My sense of smell and taste changed, the senses are still working, just different. This has had a big impact on cooking I love to cook but it's really hard having to follow recipes when I'm a "By guess and by gosh cook." My palate is still really sensitive just cross wired, getting better but it's a chore learning what things taste like now and how to get them to interact in pleasing ways for folk with undamaged senses. 

Used to be I'd look in a cook book to see what they THINK should be in a dish then do it my way and cooking times. Steaks, etc. and pot dishes are easy, I need help with roasts and the like. Cooking is an art, baking is science, for anything but basic bread I follow recipes. I used to  know when the bread was ready to come out of the oven by how it smelled, now I have to use a timer and thermometer. <sigh>

My temp control was thrown off but it came around quickly. My sight and hearing are what they are, especially adding Shingles to my left eye. My left ear is improving, tinnitus has diminished to just a steady ringing but doesn't overpower most sounds anymore. I should get it checked again, it's been almost 10 years but Deb keeps on me. I have too much nose I can cut off to spite sometimes. The TBI didn't improve that trait of mine. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

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