Severe Brain Damage

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Bacon was born in the summer, in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and fifty-five. He hit the stage a rebel. Descending from the rebels of the Robert the Bruce era, who freed Scotland from England, restoring its independence as a kingdom. Through his veins flows the blood of the James’, (Frank & Jesse). He was a born outlaw surrounded by a sea of religion and normality. He was proud of his notoriety. By many it is said that he was Cache Valley’s first “hippie,” which may or may not actually be the case. This, it is important to remember, was a time in which hippies were outlaw rebels rather than the touchie-feelie liberal buzz-bugs  the modern version has become. He happily accepted the mantle.

A parental challenge right out of the gate. Scourge of the K-12 education system, (until they kicked him out.) A biker… No, not the spandex variety. However he toyed with spandex for a time, (competition mountain biking) although he wouldn’t want me mentioning that. He was party-boy; booze, drugs, rock ’n roll, and a powerful affinity for members of the “weaker” sex, this accompanied by a respect for the fairer sex that has now passed away. Or was it thrown away? In any case modern society is working hard to turn women into men and vice versa. Above all he had, as do I, a driving hunger for adventure. At that time he could entertain his hunger on skis, cliffs, backwoods adventures, hunting expeditions, running hounds, Harley Davidsons, ATVs, 4-wheel drives, interpersonal conflicting… on and on it goes.  He did things that I can only remember. I see sparkling reflections of the thrills he enjoyed. I see abnormal performance in the yoke of adventure. Reemerging memories of his past increasingly spice the sedentary life I now occupy bearing a frustrating desire to go back and dance again.

His life was a diversity of endeavors, but there was a commonality that ran through it all. He was driven by focused intensity. One of his interests was fitness. Not that he had any ambition to run a marathon, but his vision of himself was “tough hombre.” And because of his intensity, tough he was. Which is why he’s alive today.

He was nearing the end of an interest he had in religiosity (Mormon). He had recently walked away from a 17 year profession as an inventory analyst. He was anything but traditional in either his professional nor his religious interests. He was as close to self-employment as an employee could hope to be. The religious pursuit pulled strings of external control he couldn’t/wouldn’t tolerate. He was looking for a new path. An entirely new adventure. The likelihood is that he would have become a paramedic. An interest of his at which he was already engaged, being a 1st class EMT, until he stubbed his toe on bizarre reality. 

He was a handful, for sure and for certain, but those around him knew who he was and what fueled him. It may have been said that his behavior was a mystery, but to him it was no more mysterious than the sunrise. Having spent over half a century challenging normality at every turn. Often risking his existence for the payoff of adrenaline and mortal novelty, his temerariousity came to an abrupt halt while doing something quite unremarkable. He was calmly minding his own business, heading home from a long day on a farm tractor when the gods of fate finally kicked him in the teeth.

My memory of his life ends with him on a tractor, cutting hay. I’ve no memory of him getting off the tractor, driving home, the accident, nor of the next 3 months. The doctors referred to this vacation as a “coma.” A “functional coma,” they said, but I can find little to verify what that actually is. In any case, I awakened each day and created the me that I would be. Pirate one day, coal miner, the next, college professor, and on and on. While I have no memory of any of this, it is said that I went through interesting phases of behavior, such as only singing (beautifully they say), or speaking in Spanish. This last was interesting since a hispanic nurse who worked with me, said I was as fluent as if I’d been raised in Mexico, but although I did speak Spanish, I was far from fluent, but there ya go.

Having been an EMT and weeks away from becoming a paramedic and a life flight paramedic at that! It was friends who arrived at the scene of the accident. His 4-wheeler had been hit by an SUV traveling over 70 mph. He was thrown 250 feet and lit on the asphalt, head first. His left leg had been torn off below the knee and the bleeding was severe. There was little hope for survival. The damage had been severe enough that it was decided to put him on a life-flight helicopter to Salt Lake City where there was a better likelihood that he could be effectively treated. The emergency doctor flew with him. On the flight to SLC the doctor officially pronounced Bacon “dead” three times. Coming back from “pronounced dead” is not unheard of, but coming back from bleeding to death is exceedingly rare. Bacon was a tough son-of-a-bitch!

Before my accident I had been suffering for well over a decade from severe panic disorder. I was an absolute classic case. I’d always been rather high strung and had suffered from panic attacks as far back as age 7. I had no idea what was happening at that age, but I was terrified of a friend I thought was trying to poison me. I don’t remember many such circumstances, but at age 22 I was managing the shipping and receiving department for a metal processing plant in Salt Lake City which did heat-treating, machining, and various types of plating (black oxide, chrome, zinc, cadmium, anodizing etc.). At one point I needed a bucket and found one in the heat-treating department. Its inside was coated with white crystals. To clean it, I dipped it in a vat of hydrochloric acid. As I was swishing it around, it occurred to be that the crystals were probably cyanide, a chemical we used in the heat-treating department. In other words, I’ve just accidentally killed myself.

What I was fearing turned out not to be the case (I didn’t die), but my anxiety had been reawakened in the form of full blown panic disorder. Within weeks I quit my job because of an intense fear of the poisons and fumes I had worked around. I’d not given any of this a second thought before. But now I was in constant fear. Wearing a respirator. Always keeping track of how far it is to the nearest hospital. Taking trips to the hospital because I thought I was suffocating. Psychotherapy, which might have helped had the therapist any true understanding of panic disorder. It all turned out to be the end of what probably would have been a fruitful career. In fact, considering the relationship I had with the owner of the company it may have evolved into some kind of partnership over time. Instead, it evolved into Bacon returning to Richmond, Utah, with his tail between his legs, and living the next two decades engaged in a constant 24/7 struggle against intense, unreasonable fear and embarrassment. 

I developed strategies to deal with my fear and actually achieved some level of normalcy in which I was able to function on a high level and hide my absurd fears from most of those around me (thanks dad for spawning an adventurer). The panic attacks were still there, but I dealt with them as one might with an unpleasant brother. A resignation to the fact that the panic would be there and I have to try to ignore and live with it. Which I did, and which brings me to this:

One of the few actual memories left from my hospital stay, was my “awakening.” Recognizable consciousness hit me while I was laying in the hospital bed. There was a breakfast tray before me upon which was a breakfast I can’t remember, but a cup of coffee that I can. “What’s this?” I asked the nurse as I pointed at the coffee.

“That’s your coffee Bacon.”

“I can’t drink coffee, it makes me crazy.”

“Well, you must be completely insane, because you drink coffee every day.”

While there wasn’t much that I could recall about my past, I didn’t remember the years of dealing with panic disorder, but I did remember what panic attacks were, that I hated them with a white-hot burning passion, that I’d given up all hope of living without them, AND that coffee was a sure trigger. Yet, I drank the coffee. The blessed result? No nerves, no panic. The next day I consciously drank coffee, cup after cup all day long. No nerves, no panic, and a subliminal recognition that I’d somehow actually been born again. And so the new life begins. There IS a cure for panic disorder, get your leg tore off and your brain scrambled!

My memory of his life ends with him on a tractor, cutting hay. I’ve no memory of him getting off the tractor, driving home, the accident, nor of the next 3 months. The doctors referred to this vacation as a “coma.” A “functional coma,” they said, but I can find little to verify what that actually is. In any case, I awakened each day and created the me that I would be. Pirate one day, coal miner, the next, college professor, and on and on. While I have no memory of any of this, it is said that I went through interesting phases of behavior, such as only singing (beautifully, believe it or not), or speaking in Spanish. This last was interesting since a hispanic nurse who worked with me told my father that I was as fluent as if I’d been raised in Mexico. Although I did speak Spanish, I was far from fluent, outside of obscenity, but there ya go. 

One interesting and humorous tale from the time is of a day a local L.D.S. Bishop came to visit during a phase in which I was being radically profane. Thanks to my background I had (and still have) an almost artistic propensity for the use of obscenity in the form of words. Brother (. ???  ) tried to correct me. “Now Bacon, you don’t need to use that kind of language.” Which, of course, opened the floodgates of discourse from Hell. Apparently I enjoyed it thoroughly. I really do wish I could remember!