The X-Files - An Injury 30 years in the Making?

Alright, want to get a few things out of the way before I get into the main point alluded to in the title of this here post:  

1) Apparently some folks have tried to leave comments on my blog, but have had trouble doing so. I believe I have fixed this problem.  

2)  My voice is still nowhere to be found, but my hands are working great since the surgery, so I am enjoying the hell out of typing stuff since I can't say much of anything.  

3)  I use parentheticals way too much (probably a habit developed from the writing I do as a transactional attorney where oftentimes the regular print giveth and the parenthetical taketh away or vice versa).  

Ok...so now the X-Files story: 

People often ask me how I injured my neck to a point that would require such gruesome surgical intervention to mend, and so they should.   The truth is I'm not totally sure what the hell happened.  There was no ONE traumatic event like a car accident, a fall from a horse, or a punch from Mike Tyson that I know of that did the job.  Knock on wood.  I have always enjoyed extreme sports that involve hard falls and jolts at high speeds like snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing and water skiing.  Also, I was in a hardcore punk rock band in college, and we rocked pretty dang hard.  I played bass, and was quite exuberant with the head banging and such.  More recently I had a pretty nasty collision playing racquetball with a largish dude that seemed to exacerbate symptoms after I had already been diagnosed with disc herniations via MRI.  So all these things certainly could have caused cervical discs to rupture or tear, or at least these things could have contributed to the furtherance of the damage - and to some extent those things probably all did.  Notwithstanding all of those factors however, based on the fact that the scapula pain (pain between the shoulder blades) - a pain I cannot remember ever NOT having even as a young teen - has disappeared since surgery, one theory I have been entertaining in the back of my mind for the past year as to the beginning of my disc injury has been somewhat validated.  

Check this out:  

This is my "graduation" photo from K5 at Faith Baptist Christian School in Raleigh, NC (yeah - I went to private Southern Baptist school until 4th grade - don't hold it against me).  Note the ridiculously awkward posture.  This is the posture of a little boy with severe neck pain.  I guess this would have been taken sometime around May of 1980.  Thirty years ago, this picture was the source of a lot of laughs (would certainly not be offended if it gets laughs today as well).  On the day of our graduation ceremony held in the humongous Midway Baptist Church (I won't bother addressing the silliness of a graduation ceremony for freaking 5 year olds), the "graduation" photo of me and the photos of my K5 colleagues were projected one by one in a slide show onto a big screen for the entire crowd of what seemed like 500.  By "big screen," the image in my mind is that it was like freaking IMax BIG.  When my slide popped up on the screen, there was a thunderous roar of laughter at the sight of the hilariously crooked little boy.  I don't recall necessarily being too embarrassed by all the laughing Baptists, but if I was I think I got over it (maybe not). 

OK...I promise to take it easy on the parentheticals.  

The reason for the crookedness?  Either (a) I fell and landed hard on my head, (b) someone or something hit me square on the top of the head...hard, or (c) I was abducted by extra terrestrials and said extra terrestrials wreaked havoc on my noggin/cervical spine in the process of doing whatever it is that they did to me.  Whichever of those three is the correct answer, it happened prior to the day I woke up with the jacked up neck at the age of 5 years old, which was inconveniently on "graduation" photo day.  I don't know what occurred to cause the injury, and I never did even when I was 5.  Maybe I was knocked out.  To my knowledge no one else knows anything about the actual impact either.  My mother discovered the injury on the top of my head one night when she was putting me to bed (this may or may not have been the same day of the fall/hit/alien abduction).  She says it was pretty nasty.  I believe her with regard to the nastiness, because to this day there is an oddly shaped area measuring about 1.5 square inches on the top of my head that will not grow hair - a pretty generous bald spot for a 35 year old guy that is experiencing some natural thinning anyway.  The bald spot is also a bit of a dent in my skull, so the bald look would never really work for me, even if I did have the properly shaped head for it.  I most certainly do not, by the way.


The story I was told by my parents about this mysterious injury is that I was in the care of my regular babysitter; I wandered off, and "something" happened.  Not a terribly satisfying explanation, is it?  Sorry, but that's all I've got for ya.  

So there it is - an injury 30 years in the making.  I certainly don't believe that this event at 5 years old is the sole cause of my spine problem, but I do have a strong suspicion that whatever happened then broke the seal so to speak.  


Was I attacked by someone?  Was I struck on the head by a falling coconut (not likely in North Carolina) or some thingamajig from a plane flying overhead?  Did I fall?  Was I taken into a space craft or even to another galaxy, probed and possibly injected cerebrally with some other-worldly mess?  


The truth is out there.