A couple of weeks ago I wrote about several people who were involved in automobile accidents in this area.  One of them is a patient of mine who was forced to run off the side of the road and as a result rolled his truck several times.  To make a long story short, he was sent home to nurse his wounds and his wife brought him to me at his request for care.  As I performed an examination on him it became clear to me that he had neurological damage from the trauma to his head so I instructed her to watch him overnight and if there was no change for the better, she was to call me the next morning.  There was no change for the better, so I referred him to a neurologist who promptly sent him to Atlanta for specialized care.  As it turns out, it could be up to a year before his life is back to normal if it is at all.  A grueling regimen of therapy lies ahead for this patient and things we all take for granted, such as being able to walk, must be painstakingly re-learned.   Not only is his life affected by this incident, but his wife is forced to be away from the family business and his job is definitely halted as he tries to recover.

For this person an unfortunate accident that he couldn’t avoid caused the head injury.  There are many instances when people can prevent injuries which are life-changing but throwing caution to the wind becomes somehow more important.  I hear stories every Monday of how weekends were spent with friends doing this or that but the most disturbing one I hear is that of people who ride four-wheelers without helmets.   I personally have never ridden a four-wheeler, but if I did I would do so with a helmet on.  This column is a solemn request for those of you who do ride to consider yourself and the lives of the family members who would care for you in the event of a tragedy and put on a helmet.  It is very difficult to learn the alphabet the second time around, and putting on a helmet can save your life.  I have had the experience of seeing first-hand what head injuries do to people, and lives are stolen by head trauma in the blink of an eye.  Consider the story of a friend of mine from Savannah who decided one day to ride without her helmet.

Leigh was a pretty young girl with a promising career as a personal trainer well under way.  Her fiancé was a physician’s assistant with a well-respected orthopedic surgeon at Memorial Medical Center in Savannah.  One Sunday afternoon the two of them went for a ride on their four-wheelers and Leigh decided she wouldn’t use her helmet since they were going to be in the country and she could feel the breeze in her hair.  Nothing was unusual about the day other than the fact that they were going to a friend’s place outside of town to ride on some rare hills.  When Leigh went up one of the hills, she was moving faster than she thought and the vehicle flipped over backwards and she was thrown off, hitting her head hard on a rock.  She lost consciousness immediately.  Her boyfriend was right behind her and saw it all happen.  He did everything he knew to help her and quickly phoned for paramedics to rush her to the ER.  She suffered massive head trauma and compressed two vertebrae in her neck.

For a while the doctors weren’t sure if Leigh was going to live, but she did.  The last time I was in Savannah this past March several friends held an oyster roast and silent auction to raise enough funds to buy an electric wheelchair and ramp for the van in which she is driven everywhere.  She cannot do anything now without assistance because she is a quadriplegic.  She cannot feed herself nor go the bathroom without help.  There is no fiancé anymore because he couldn’t take the drastic change in their lives and was not prepared to care for a vegetable at home.  Their plans changed suddenly as a result of her decision not to use a helmet.  Was it worth it?  Certainly not.

I’m  sure there are tons of people out there who have ridden for years without helmets and have done so without incident, but it takes only one time and no one can predict when that will be.  Use your head and wear a helmet.  Treat your body well.