To Helmet or not to helmet (that's an easy question).

[jim-ratliff]

From CNN.

Connie and Donald McCracken were watching CNN one evening last week when they learned of the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from a head injury. Immediately, their minds turned to their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, who was upstairs getting ready for bed.

Two days earlier, Morgan, her father, and brother had been playing baseball in the yard of their Mentor, Ohio, home when her father hit a line drive that landed just above Morgan's left temple. A lump formed, but the McCrackens iced it down and the swelling subsided within an hour.

"For the next two days, she was perfectly fine," Donald McCracken says. "She had no symptoms. She went to school both days and got an A on her spelling test as usual. There were no issues whatsoever."? But after hearing about Richardson's death, the McCrackens wondered if Morgan was really as OK as she seemed. After all, Richardson had been talking and lucid immediately after her fatal injury.? When they went upstairs to kiss Morgan good night, she complained of a headache. "Because of Natasha, we called the pediatrician immediately. And by the time I got off the phone with him, Morgan was sobbing, her head hurt so much," McCracken says.

The McCrackens took Morgan to the emergency room at LakeWest Hospital in neighboring Willoughby, where doctors ordered a CT scan and immediately put Morgan on a helicopter to Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, with her father by her side. "I knew it was bad when she had to get there by helicopter in six minutes, instead of the 30 minutes it would have taken to get to Cleveland in an ambulance," McCracken said.

When the helicopter arrived at Rainbow, the McCrackens were greeted by Dr. Alan Cohen, the hospital's chief of pediatric neurosurgery. He whisked Morgan into the operating room, pausing for a moment to tell McCracken that his daughter had the same injury as Richardson: an epidural hematoma. McCracken remembers standing in the emergency room, feeling like the life had just been sucked out of him. "My heart sank," he says. "It just sank."

Unlike Richardson's, Morgan's story has a happy ending. After surgery and five days in the hospital, she's at home and doing fine. "Dr. Cohen told us that if we hadn't brought her in Thursday night, she never would have woken up," McCracken says.

[Svend]

Great story, Jim - thanks.  Geez, this is making me paranoid.  A speedy demise just from a rap on the old bean.  OK, I'm just going to buy a new lid -- cheap insurance.  'Nuff said....

[jim-ratliff]

Svend:  By the way, thanks for the research.  My helmet is of the type that doesn't show the damage.  I had already decided to replace it (as you said, cheap insurance), but your research just confirmed the wisdom of that idea.

On the other hand, I've been hit in the head with the backswing of a baseball bat (that one staggered me a bit), I've been hit around the eye by a line drive, I took a fall on my bike last summer that actually split my bike helmet all the way through for 6" or so (that is like your fall, I don't remember a thing about it, did go to the emergency room for CT scan), and I haven't had a problem yet.

On the other hand, my daughter-in-law got run down by a biker while out running and training for the Marine Corps marathon last fall.  She broke her collar bone, and did have bleeding on the brain from the impact of the fall.  Pretty touchy overnight.  To my everlasting amazement, she finished the Marine Corps marathon within the time limit even though the doctors wouldn't let her run more than 1 mile at a time.  Run 1, walk 1, run 1, walk 1.  Her father had died of cancer last spring, and she and my son ran the marathon as a cancer fund-raiser and in his memory.