Blasting with Boyles
OPINION
It happened four Sunday mornings ago, February 15th. After completing the award-winning radio show on Saturday, I went home and I was dead tired and went to bed early — on Saturday night, Peter??
Woke up the next morning with the worst headache and I generally don’t get headaches; it’s the one thing that gratefully has left me alone. I normally have a Sunday morning breakfast with my biker buddies, and I didn’t have the strength to meet them and the headache continued.
My daughter said OK, let’s go to urgent care, and I argued against it, and she said you have to go. And the urgent care people, who were wonderful, said go straight to Swedish Hospital.
I went to Swedish hospital and ended up in the ICU for that night and the next day. Did an MRI and was told I had had a brain bleed. So, I’m writing this column as a warning for all of us about strokes and brain bleeds.
I was told all kinds of fun things like 50 percent of those who have a brain bleed will die before they get to a hospital. Of the 50 percent who make it to the hospital 30 percent will die there. And of those who survive 40 percent are left with some kind of cognitive defect. And in common terms, a brain bleed is actually an intracranial hemorrhage. In terms that I can understand, it’s a blood clot in your brain.
I’ll take it now to another level. There are two kinds: the spontaneous ones are aneurism or a stroke caused by trauma, but the most common type of brain bleed, the most common cause of death, is it’s secondary to a head injury.
That was some relief. The most common symptom is a sudden onset headache. Most of us describe it as the worst headache in their lives. And even people who get migraine headaches say the brain bleed headache is worse than any migraine. Some stroke patients describe having a bad headache. The symptoms come and go very quickly.
I received at Swedish one of the greatest experiences of my life: the migraine cocktail. Why I never knew about this before is beyond me. What a gift that is.
With a brain bleed there are people who fall into comas, and it causes you to lose consciousness and some of the following symptoms. This is all very frightening, such things as blindness in one eye, numbness on one side of the face, arm numbness, weakness on one side of the body. The thing that was most interesting is something for all of us to remember, and that is if you feel, have, or gone through any of these things it’s time to call the ambulance. I actually was told to not have your daughter drive you here but to call 911.
There is a medication to dissolve the clot. Mine was two centimeters and they told me there’s evidence you’ve had a couple of these puppies in the past. Which if you’ve been reading me explains a lot.
Bottom line with a brain bleed, if you ever have a headache like you’ve never had before, dial 911. Ignoring that pain like I have could prove to be fatal.
I’m writing this, as I said above, for all of us to be aware of what I just went through.
I will be 83 years old — maybe — this coming October. And those of you who have been reading me long enough, remember the final columns of Gene Amole who had become a great friend and drinking buddy, along with the late John Coit, Denver Rocky Mountain News columnist who died of a heart attack. I think about so many of the old people in the media and friends that have been with all of us and we’ve lost them. But you’re not getting rid of me because, I’m a hard man to kill.
Who was a hard man to kill? Rasputin, and Jim Bowie, and me.
—Peter Boyles
