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American snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a head injury

eric strt6

eric strt6

Resident Curmudgeon
Sep 8, 2001
24,208
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directly above the center of the earth
had to be one hell of a hit:eek:

PARK CITY, Utah -- American snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a head injury while training on the halfpipe Thursday and was taken to the hospital for surgery.

Pearce, a top-ranked halfpipe rider with a good chance of making the U.S. Olympic team, was knocked unconscious when he hit his head on the halfpipe during a training run.

He was taken to University of Utah hospital, but neither his agent nor officials from U.S. Ski and Snowboarding offered immediate updates on Pearce's condition Thursday evening.

The 22-year-old from Norwich, Vt., was preparing for next week's Olympic qualifying events in Mammoth Mountain, Calif. He was considered, along with Shaun White, to be one of America's top athletes in a sport dominated by the United States.
American snowboarder Kevin Pearce injured in halfpipe accident - ESPN
 
eric strt6

eric strt6

Resident Curmudgeon
Sep 8, 2001
24,208
14,851
directly above the center of the earth
SALT LAKE CITY — A publicist for Kevin Pearce says the American snowboarder remains in critical condition at a Utah hospital after sustaining a head injury while training in Park City.

Danielle Burch said Friday that Pearce's condition hadn't changed since Thursday night.

The New York Times reports that he hit the lip of the pipe just above his eye doing a double cork. According to the Times, he is being treated for “external ventricular drainage to relieve fluid buildup in the brain.
 
eric strt6

eric strt6

Resident Curmudgeon
Sep 8, 2001
24,208
14,851
directly above the center of the earth
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/34669022/ns/sports-olympic_sports/

SALT LAKE CITY - Top-ranked American snowboarder Kevin Pearce was in critical condition Saturday at a Utah hospital after suffering a “severe, traumatic brain injury” in a training accident, one of his doctors said.

Dr. Holly Ledyard said Pearce, who is in the University of Utah Hospital’s intensive care unit, has not yet needed surgery.

“Kevin sustained a severe, traumatic brain injury ... (and) is being kept sedated,” Ledyard said in a statement released by the snowboarder’s publicist. “The focus over the next week will be watching for any swelling in his brain and keeping his brain pressure normal.“Kevin has a long recovery ahead of him,” she said.

Pearce was injured Thursday in Park City as he prepared for next week’s Olympic qualifying events. His spokeswoman Danielle Burch said he was in the process of completing a twisting double back flip when he caught his toe-side edge and landed on his head. He was wearing a helmet.
 
Silver

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
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Pesqueeb said:
Me and my brain injury are going to need to see that.
Click to expand...
I don't want to be the guy who offers unsolicited advice, but **** it...

It might be a good idea to have someone close to you watch it first to make sure nothing in there would throw you for a loop.

And take care of that melon. It's scary.
 
Silver

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
Pesqueeb said:
That bad huh? NeuroPsych did say I'm not allowed to hit my head any more.


Click to expand...
There's bound to be a bunch of stuff in there that you can relate to. You probably lived through most of the same things going through the rehab process. Some of it might not be stuff you want to remember. Or your family, actually. It's not an easy film to watch, but I found it really rewarding, fascinating, and incredibly scary at the same time.

There's a part where Pearce and his mother visit Trevor Rhoda and his mother. Rhoda had two major head injuries inside a year. It's not easy to watch, because it's a reminder that not every story has a happy ending. It's heartbreaking.

Rhoda is alive. Sarah Burke isn't.

If you do watch it sometime, I'd love a review from your point of view.
 
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dan-o

dan-o

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Jun 30, 2004
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Pesqueeb said:
Where did you see it? Looks like either a 3-4 hour drive up to Summit County to see it or wait for DVD. Probably wait for DVD.
Click to expand...
Looks like you can download it for free off the link. Just need an email addy/join a mailing list.
 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
41,446
18,706
Riding the baggage carousel.
dan-o said:
Looks like you can download it for free off the link. Just need an email addy/join a mailing list.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Hadn't noticed that. See how long it takes to download on the sh1tty airport wifi.

*edit: either the work computer isn't buying it (totally possible) or that download is not the whole movie. I only get two short films and a song.

**edit: I'll watch it later on HBO. Apparently I still have a valid login for Go.
 
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Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
41,446
18,706
Riding the baggage carousel.
Just finished watching it. So much that was so familiar. There's a lot of that film I still need to digest. I'd like to watch it with the wife tonight, but at the same time I'm also afraid to, I don't know how well she'd react to some of it.
Safe for work, but spoilers contained within:

There was so much of that movie that felt like watching myself, it was effing creepy. A lot of what really hit home for me were the discussions with the various Neuro docs. Kevin talks about irritability/forgetfulness/not sleeping, feeling like people aren't letting him do things, and all I could do was nod my head. The docs and mom/dad talk about Kevin being more impulsive/irrational. I know I've heard that as well, enough so that I'm left to assume that it must be true. Not that I was ever a very patient person to begin with, but I know that it's even worse now. My attention span is shorter, it's harder to read, not in a comprehension sense, but as in I can't sit still, my mind wanders. I feel like I have ADD. I also have struggled with sleep. For a long time I thought it had to do with the fact that I worked nights for so long, but I just recently read an article about TBI and sleep issues, and now I see it in this movie, and I wonder how much of it is my brain injury.

You see a lot of Kevin's physical rehab, but you see very little of his mental rehab. After my accident, I felt like, even with my additional physical injuries, "multiple major trauma" as it were, that the physical rehab was the easy part. The mental rehab, the memory games, the puzzles, etc, were the parts that made me want to fvcking kill someone. Most likely, Kevin's experience was different from mine, but at no time during my rehab did I feel like the vast majority of the stuff I did with Neuropsych was anything other than fvcking voodoo. It's was insulting, and demeaning.

"Whats 1+1 Shane?"

"2".

"correct!"

"What color is the sky Shane?"

"Blue"

And it wasn't like it got better, these just weren't first day questions where the docs are trying to establish a base line, it was like that everyday for the 3 weeks I was on the rehab floor. I recognize that I hit my head, I recognize that I am experiencing some "deficiency", but jesus christ on a crutch if you ask me who wrote "The Inferno" , and I can tell you "Dante Alighieri", I'm not fvcking brain dead. Can we move on please?

The most visceral reaction I had was to something I'd bet most watchers didn't even see. In the rehab scenes Kevin's got a rehab belt on. Man I hated that thing. It's 2 inch wide visual representation of everything you've lost. It's there so the PT's can hoist you out of bed, off the ****ter, and keep you from falling over. The day I was told I didn't need that thing ranks right up there with first car/getting married/ birth of my child.

Kevin's issues with his eye's I found interesting. I would suppose it has more to do with the location of his damage, vs mine (frontal lobe). For me, my sense of smell became VERY acute, and while it's mellowed a lot, remains what I would call "heightened" to this day. Initially, someone walking down the hall on the rehab floor with a cup of coffee made it seem like someone had shoved my head into a bag full of used coffee grounds. It was, in every sense of the word, utterly overwhelming. I had to kick my wife out of my room one day because she was eating a salad with thousand island dressing. The stench was incredible.

The scene with that poor damn kid from CU was hard to watch, and I felt like the way it was handled was more than a tad crass. Rhoda almost made me physically ill, not in the same sense as the CU kid, almost it stark relief actually, because of just how far gone he is. I'd rather be Burke.

That family might be the healthiest group of people I've ever seen. The way they talk things out and communicate is something I feel like I need to work on, and frankly, strikes me at this moment as the most powerful lesson of the film. It really brings to the table what I felt like my biggest struggle was. How do you balance the need to "live life as you see fit", vs the reality of what life has done to you and the needs of those you love.

10/10 Will watch again.


TL;DR
Wear your fvcking helmet.
 
Pesqueeb

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
41,446
18,706
Riding the baggage carousel.
Kevin Pearce was @ CC last night giving a lecture about TBI and shilling for his foundation, so I went. Kind of a hard evening to judge. I don't think Kevin is a great public speaker, but that's a hard thing to judge, maybe it's just a result of his injury? The presentation seemed disjointed and hard to follow, I'm still not quite sure what the point was actually. The Q&A was really good though. He seemed a lot more relaxed and focused when answering questions one on one. Not sure I learned anything new, but I'm coming from the side of having experience. I suppose for the layman it might have been a much more informative evening. It was interesting that there were, including myself, maybe half a dozen people in the auditorium with prior TBI's. Something I was strangely relived to see and hear because I've noticed myself having to do it, was that every person who spoke who had had a prior TBI noticeably had to slow down, and carefully articulate what they were trying to say, including Kevin. That was pretty eye opening, I had thought maybe it was just me.
 
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