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06-30-01, 05:44 PM
A cyclist battles to reconstruct his life after a brain injury
By HELEN O'NEILL= AP Special Correspondent=
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) - In his nightmare, the truck is always green. It thunders toward him relentlessly, faster and faster. He cannot pedal furiously enough. He cannot cry out. Trapped in his nightmare, he can only watch helplessly as the huge green monster smashes into his body, spewing clouds of dust, hurling him and his bicycle 40 feet into the air.
For a split second, he is flying. He is soaring above a thousand other cyclists. He is floating above the highway, above the desert, above the life he once had until it all came crashing down.
The last image is the most vivid. It is of his brain, dribbled in a stream of blood down the highway.
He wakes sweating, hyperventilating.
The nightmare always ends in the same place. For George Good-deCurnou it is the place where reality begins.
The reality is that George doesn't remember anything of the accident in Santa Fe four years ago. The reality is that he doesn't even know if the truck was green. All he knows is what he has been told, that a drunk driver slammed into him at 70 miles an hour, leaving his body a charred, bloody mess, his brain mashed into the side of the road.
More than anything, George wants to understand this reality, wants to remember everything: the bike tour, the pain, the color of the truck. Because if he can remember, then maybe he can reconstruct himself, become something closer to the man he once was - a man whose body was lithe and strong, whose mind was so quick that people laughed at his jokes.
And so he fights, every moment, every breath, to reconstruct himself.
His fight has won him accolades and a job. But George wants more. He wants to talk with the elegance of a poet. He wants to walk with the grace of an athlete. He wants to savor the sweet taste of spontaneity once again.
---=
On the Net: The Brain Injury Association Inc.,
http://www.biausa.org
AP-WS-06-30-01 1215EDT
http://www.express-news.net/auth/ennews/ap/texas/a0511.html
I had to delete alot of this because it was too long. The reat of this story can be found at the Express News link.
MH
By HELEN O'NEILL= AP Special Correspondent=
GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) - In his nightmare, the truck is always green. It thunders toward him relentlessly, faster and faster. He cannot pedal furiously enough. He cannot cry out. Trapped in his nightmare, he can only watch helplessly as the huge green monster smashes into his body, spewing clouds of dust, hurling him and his bicycle 40 feet into the air.
For a split second, he is flying. He is soaring above a thousand other cyclists. He is floating above the highway, above the desert, above the life he once had until it all came crashing down.
The last image is the most vivid. It is of his brain, dribbled in a stream of blood down the highway.
He wakes sweating, hyperventilating.
The nightmare always ends in the same place. For George Good-deCurnou it is the place where reality begins.
The reality is that George doesn't remember anything of the accident in Santa Fe four years ago. The reality is that he doesn't even know if the truck was green. All he knows is what he has been told, that a drunk driver slammed into him at 70 miles an hour, leaving his body a charred, bloody mess, his brain mashed into the side of the road.
More than anything, George wants to understand this reality, wants to remember everything: the bike tour, the pain, the color of the truck. Because if he can remember, then maybe he can reconstruct himself, become something closer to the man he once was - a man whose body was lithe and strong, whose mind was so quick that people laughed at his jokes.
And so he fights, every moment, every breath, to reconstruct himself.
His fight has won him accolades and a job. But George wants more. He wants to talk with the elegance of a poet. He wants to walk with the grace of an athlete. He wants to savor the sweet taste of spontaneity once again.
---=
On the Net: The Brain Injury Association Inc.,
http://www.biausa.org
AP-WS-06-30-01 1215EDT
http://www.express-news.net/auth/ennews/ap/texas/a0511.html
I had to delete alot of this because it was too long. The reat of this story can be found at the Express News link.
MH