BRAINDAMAGED BLUES An odyssey of recovery By Billy Golfus Art by Stuart Mead Design by Jezac You want to know how Richie woke me up from the coma? I'm laying there for over a month. Out cold. Richie's a fourth degree black belt in Aikido. So the schmeckel grabs my hand in a Nikkyo and twists my wrist. "If this hurts," he says. "Say uncle." What would you do? I said uncle. You know, the doctors had been sticking pins in me and shaking their rattles and doing whatever docs do. They said that saying uncle didn't count. "It would have happened anyway." When I woke up, my body and spirit were broken. I was so braindamaged tha t I cou ldn ’ t count change and had lost the use of my left arm and leg. Doctors suggested to my family that I spend my life in a nursing home. The best job that I could think of was selling pencils at the bus station. Things did not look good for the home team. They said I'd never sing again I learned a lot about my friends When you're shot down and out You don't get many calls —Hank Williams, Jr. "All In Alabama" They not only said I’d never sing again, they said I’d never walk again. When I first started standing up from the wheelchair I had a platform cane with four tips which I called “ four on the floor.” Me and my brother Richie had to run a heavy con to get a copy of it from the physical therapy people so I could practice walking. I suppose that they were afraid that I’d fall... and sue. “You can use it for a half an hour a day— under supervision.” Somehow Richie and I got one for my room. Unheard of. Boy, I wouldn’t want me in my hospital. Let me tell you, being in the hospital for over a quarter of a year is a trip and a half. It probably comes as no surprise that the whole world looks different from in there. One of the big deals in the life of a longtime hospital patient is what’s for dinner. Or maybe it ’s the evening “ snack.” Dig it, if you’ve ever eaten hospital food, you know I was in trouble, Jack. And, of course, another thing hospital life revolves around —until it ’s visiting time— is television. On top of everything else, being in there is borRing. The hospital had what they call escorts to schlep you around in your wheelchair. Their job was to take you to physical therapy at two o’clock, or whenever. It was through the escorts that I was first able to see some of the schools of recovery. There’s the sack of potatoes school of recovery where they grab your wheelchair from behind—there’s nothing you can do, remember—and start to drag you to whatever it says on their clipboard. “Says here, X-ray at one o’clock.” There’s the “ For Me” school of recovery. “ Eat all your carrots, forme" And the “We” school of recovery. “ Do we want to go into the bathroom and have a nice bowel movement?” You know, and sometimes we didn’t want to. I n this whole picaresque routine I met some of the good guys and some of the bad guys. Dr. Tod Holmes was one of the good guys. He knew my brother and I knew his. And his brother Tim and I had been on the same rock & roll cruise for a few years. Dr. Holmes didn’t slip me free pills or anything like that, he just — what would you call it?—took an interest in me as a person. He did something unorthodox and unprecedented that saved my ass. He wrote me a rock & roll pass. Any time I felt like it I could leave the hospital and go out to hear music. All of a sudden I was looking forward to the upcoming concert instead of to dessert. I ran into people that I knew on those outings. Bottom line is, I began to take an interest in life again. Now, you can’t get too far in a wheelchair by yourself. I needed somebody to drive and get me in and out of a car. Sometimes I’d get brought back late. Even now Richie makes fun of me about the night nurses. He makes his voice real low and raspy like I sounded when I first started talking again and says, “ The night nurses! The night nurses!" I suppose that was because the eleven to seven shift was my least favorite. During the day whenever I wanted to urinate I’d approach the toilet with my gang. It took a couple of nurses to hold me up. It was difficult to get the night nurses to help because they didn’t want you to disturb their knitting. But they were kind and considerate enough to give me a urinal and a bedpan. Toward the end of my hospital stay I fina lly got it together enough so I could go to the bathroom by myself. For the first week or so I used to sneak from my bed into my wheelchair and from my wheelchair into the bathroom. Solo flight. Finally, months and months after the accident, I got to the point where I could go to the bathroom without turning on the nurse’s light first. Kim was there back then. She had either picked me up in a bar or I had picked her up in a bar. I know somebody picked somebody up. She was there when I woke up from the coma after the accident. Kim and I were starting to have problems. Big surprise. So, I figured we needed help, not to mention all the junk that goes with almost dying, being crippled, brain-damaged, no income, left by most of my “ friends,” turning 40 in a coma, and some other things. Shrinks are the witch doctors of the American tribe. Medical doctors we think of as sort of biological mechanics. But, shrinks are the seers. So much so that anything that suggests the name counselor, therapist, or any psychological advisor is invested with power. Somewhere in there is the feeling that shrinks can see and therefore know what’s really going on. That’s why we really give the power of the Wizard of Oz to shrinks. (“ Ignore that man behind the curtain.”) So anyway, Kim and I went to see a shrink. Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 27
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