Concussed

 

Fence post driver image ripped from the internet

After nearly five decades of fairly clean living, I managed to give myself a concussion for only the second time in my life. The first occurred only seven or eight years ago when someone blew a stoplight and hit me nearly head on. Fortunately it was at fairly low speeds at the time of impact so I only suffered from a mild case of whiplash, which my doctor informed me is the same thing as a concussion. I hoped at the time that would be a one and done event. Nowhere in my wildest did I think I would ever give myself a concussion with my own hands!

While cleaning up our garden for the year, I noticed the deer had trampled over our garden netting fence and trampled through the strawberry beds. I guess they did it just to see what my reaction would be. Besides uttering a few choice words which I can't repeat here, I decided to reinforce the fence by putting metal fence posts in the corner to allow me to stretch it so it couldn't sag, much like it had been earlier in the year. I grabbed an extra fence post and my fence post driver seen above and often memed about as a "guess this gadget" or "only those of this age know how to use one" device. 

After over a month without rain, the ground here is extremely dry and hard and so I was applying some muscle on the downward stroke to get the fence post drive into the ground. On the fifth or sixth stroke, on the upstroke when I lift the driver up to allow it's weight (and my added force) and gravity to do it's thing, I made a subtle miscalculation. The driver came just off the top of the fence post so that the post no longer guided it's path. As I applied force in the downward direction, the top end of the fence post caught the lip of the fence post driver creating a hinge point. I was applying force downward and with hands on each of the handles, gravity and force did it's thing and the 40 pound driver (plus applied force I was exerting) had no place to go besides hinge over and hit the top of my head!

ISO Tunes Ear Muffs

Fortunately, in my old age, I splurged several years ago on a set of the ear muffs seen above. They connect to my cellphone via blue tooth and allow me to listen to music while out in the yard or in the garage. Due to the loud nature of a metal fence post driver slamming at high speed against metal fence posts (and my noggin!), I was wearing these at the time of impact and fortunately, the impact occurred on the top padded portion of the ear muffs that were between the fence post driver and my skull. 

Don't get me wrong, despite the padding, the hit knocked me immediately backwards to the ground like a sack of potatoes and I may have even exhibited a "fencing response" with my left arm. Although I never lost consciousness, it did take me at least 10 seconds of wondering what had just happened and wiggling finger and toes to verify I was still alive, before I finally staggered to my feet, picked up the fence post driver and finished the task at hand. 

I continued until I got the fence back up in place and hopefully deer proof again but already my lower neck and shoulders were starting to ache and I knew I had taken a pretty good blow. I went inside where my wife, unaware of my brief lounging stint in our garden, looked me over and said I had given myself a concussion. I was told to avoid all bright electronic screens for the next 48 hours and give my brain a chance to heal. 

Fortunately, the ear muffs made my concussion pretty mild on the scale of things. On the list of side affects, I didn't loose consciousness, didn't slur my speech, didn't have dizziness, headaches or confusion. The only symptom I did have was a sensitivity to light, especially from a computer, television or phone screen for a day and the previously mentioned neck and shoulder pain for a couple days. 

Thankfully I'm still alive to tell this tale. Hopefully minimal brain cells were damaged permanently.