A series of disturbances, funny in retrospect.........

Before I get into this, today I received an article proclaiming a breakthrough in the understanding of a source of ALS. I will research all available information and get back to you.

Some lines of thought point to trauma as a possible cause, or at least a contributor to the onset of ALS. With that in mind, lets explore my past, focusing on those incidents I can recall involving my cranium or any other body part involved in mayhem. I need it to be known that not once have I ever lost consciousness, broken a bone (that I know of) or spent the night in a hospital. I've taken only two ambulance rides, separated by 35 years, but never visited an ICU. I have never been declared dead and have never been given mouth to mouth after near drowning. I have, however, cracked my skull numerous times and have the remnant scars of dozens of stitches and staples. Let me explain. Don't fear the following- none of these atrocities proved to be fatal. I have never awakened in a morgue.
In somewhat reverse chronological order, as I recall:
Several years ago, maybe 2006, we were building a house. Wait. No. I am not writing a book here. I refuse to frame these incidents. If I ever write a book, you can buy it and read it, complete with fleshed out scenarios, scene description and body. For this, I strip it down to skeletal. So, I stepped across the corner of a stairwell, containing no stairs yet, but for some reason, my left foot stepped into air, I spun clockwise and dropped horizontal, back first into the hole. A 16' 2x4 spanned the opening where my head was to travel, so I broke it in half (with my head) on the way down, forcing my chin to my chest long enough to avoid bouncing it as I lit on the concrete 12 feet below. My landing was basically flat on my back, with my hammer under my right hip, which proved to give me the most lingering problem with this mishap. I bled like a stuck pig from my lacerated scalp and for a minute, after I filled my flat lungs with air, I thought I broke my back. As is me, I put all my body parts through the ringer to see if they worked. Hurt like hell, yes. Broken, no. Jim, (best working partner and friend in the world), looked down and asked if I was okay. I said something stupid and he called 911. An ambulance came, the EMT's checked my blood pressure, pretended to listen to my assessment of my condition and gurneyed me into the van, where they checked my blood pressure a second time because the first test was normal, and it had to be wrong. I tried to explain that this was not, in fact, my first rodeo. Again they pretended to listen as they duct taped me to a sheet of plywood. The rest of this is boring, so I go to another fiasco of common sense and caution.
I'm on a roof, some 14' off the ground, I'm cutting excess roof sheathing from a gable end while Jim is behind me, nailing. The saw is in my left hand and I am sawing down from the ridge. My weight shifts off center of the sheet I am sawing from and on (figure that one out) and the inside of the sheet rips free of the nails, catapulting me, teeter totter fashion, off the roof. Head first. Clutching the saw in my left hand, traveling feet in the air and lighting as follows- first, my outstretched left arm pile drives the saw into the ground. My arm bends upon impact and the right side of my forehead hits a stack of plywood, skidding the top sheet off and wrecking my glasses, followed by my lazy right hand and then my body, ending up in a heap. For some reason, I jumped up immediately without a second thought and bound up the ladder onto the roof, where I found Jim nailing away. He thought I just climbed down. I was somewhat pissed at the fact that nobody saw me go down. Kind of like the tree in the forest thing . Follow? I finished out the day and had a sore shoulder for a week. No doctor visit seemed necessary.
So, we're finishing up the day and rolling up extension cords and the like when I grab a cord that runs to a second floor window opening, but I find it's snagged on something and won't release. Being who I am, I tug and whip and tug to no avail, but will be damned if I'm going to put a ladder up just to unhook it so I give it one giant heave ho and the cord rockets from the opening and the end cracks me over my right eye at 100 mph, raising a knot the size of a small turtle. Went home after that..........
A ways back I was sliding joists out to build a floor system and the joist I was standing on gave way, sending me head first into the basement. I was very happy the concrete had yet to be poured when my head impacted 8 inches of pea gravel. I'll never forget that sound....
Way back I was turning up a jack post with a screwdriver when the bastard screwdriver broke and I punched myself in the face as hard as I could (you can't make this stuff up).
In '85 I dropped a circular saw blade 1-1/4" into the top of my thigh, missing the femoral artery by less than an inch. I needed some 40 stitches and a 16" long drain tube (I took both stitches and tube out a couple weeks later in the shower)- missed a canoe trip and 3 days work.
This one? At home. I am safe nowhere. Our bedroom is on the third floor. The stairs down follow a U shape. Find a door at the bottom of stairs. Find me, in a moment of anti-clarity, deciding to jump into the hallway- from the landing above. I crack my head on the header over the door and project myself into my daughter's bedroom across the hall- on the fly. I only tried this once.
Still in the house: So I'm taking a shower, you see, and the old tub had a nasty bolt or screw protruding from the drain, and while I'm washing my hair, I slip. My right heel is punctured by the screw and as a reflex reaction I propel myself upward, only cockeyed, and my propulsion shoots me out of the shower backwards, the shower curtain acts as a body condom and envelops me as I crack my head on the vanity and yell bloody murder. Amy comes running and finds me, naked of course, flooding the bathroom and hugging the toilet. She begins to laugh so hard she actually snorts.........................
As a kid, (chronology just left the building) I had more than my fair share of "neck up" injury. Could be I picked up ALS in grade school; I am a slow learner, ya know. When I was 5 or 6, I clothes lined myself on electrified barbed wire while running through a barnyard, dashing into the farmhouse bleeding from the neck and scaring the wits out of my mom and her friends; later that summer I found myself playing in a 100 year old corn crib (in the same barnyard)- I would run up the slope of corn, turn and slide down. For some reason that escapes me, I decided to turn and jump instead, blasting my head against a huge wooden cross member, knocking me (more) senseless. I guess I forgot that day when I lit from my stairwell landing years later. As I stated, I'm a slow learner. I guess some things I never learn.
In 8th grade I was on the playground flipping a football around with my friends, eventually going out for passes, catching most, when with a full head of steam and my head turned right to look for the ball I clocked an aluminum light pole full on, raising a bump over my left eye so tall I could see it as I stumbled to the office. Realize, in those days nobody called a doctor, as was the case here.
Along with these small episodes could be added other, lesser injuries, such as 4 stitches in my head to close a wound caused by a swung belt terminating in one of those giant 70's buckles during a fight when I was 14, or burying a utility knife into my thumb and having to tug to remove such, or smashing my thumb so bad I heated a needle and plunged it into and through my thumbnail only to get IT stuck as the needle cooled down, or when I rolled a circular saw over my right thumb deep enough to expose the tendon below, or driving a microwave into a cabinet and nearly de-gloving my middle finger, or bouncing my head in my garage trying roller skates for the first time, a similar fate with ice skates to follow.....
You get a pattern here? If ALS can be encouraged by trauma, I've done my best to bring it upon myself. If not, the fact I've survived all these years leads me to believe the disease may hobble me, but will not put me down. I figure Dr. Death has tried his best, and failed. I remain a hard nut to crack, and, more importantly, impossible to extinguish. I'll be pecking till the cows come home.