My recent Alaska post about vomiting generated far more interest than I expected. Apparently, announcing to the world that you have once again thrown up in a beautiful location resonates with people. Several friends asked the obvious question:
“Why do you get sick so easily?”
The honest answer is that I don’t know.
I am not a doctor. I have never been diagnosed with anything that conclusively explains it. But when I look back over my life, I sometimes wonder whether my body’s relationship with motion, balance, emotion, and occasionally common sense may all share a common thread.
My father had a phrase for me when I was growing up.
“David is an accident waiting to happen.”
Unfortunately, the evidence was substantial. One of my earliest memories involves a fall in the shower when I was about five or six years old. I slipped, struck the back of my head, and opened a wound that required several stitches.
What I remember most is not the pain.
I remember the blood.
Head wounds bleed spectacularly. The shower quickly looked like a crime scene, and my poor mother was understandably terrified.
A few years later I was riding in the front seat of my parents’ Chrysler sedan. It had those green faux-leather bench seats that seemed to come standard in every American car of the era.
This was before seat belt laws.
A car suddenly pulled in front of us. My father swerved into the median. I became a projectile. My chin introduced itself to the dashboard, and several stitches later I carried home another souvenir.
In another incident, not long afterward, I discovered that gravity remained undefeated.
My father had a fascinating twelve-sided plastic calendar sitting atop a filing cabinet in his office. Each side represented a month of the year. Small weighted beads inside made a satisfying rattling sound when shaken.
Naturally, I had to have it. The problem was that I could not reach it. The solution, in the mind of a young boy, was obvious. I rolled my father’s swivel chair across the office, climbed aboard, and attempted a daring recovery operation. What I did not appreciate was that swivel chairs are remarkably unstable platforms for mountain climbing.
The rescue mission failed.
I fell.
My chin lost.
Again.
Fortunately, that episode required only butterfly bandages.
My head injuries continued to mount as middle school brought soccer. One particularly well-struck ball arrived at high speed and introduced itself directly to my face. To this day, I suspect that collision is the most likely explanation for my deviated septum.
The injury left behind an odd deformity that has required occasional explanation to doctors throughout my life. Several years ago, I visited an ear, nose, and throat specialist for vocal cord surgery. After examining me, she began discussing options for correcting my septum.
I had to explain that while my nose certainly had issues, it wasn’t the reason I was there.
Apparently, even decades later, that soccer ball continues to influence medical conversations.
College brought flag football.
One game ended with stitches inside my mouth after a collision that split my lip.
Then came what was probably my most significant head injury.
In the mid-1990s, while working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, I played flag football with a group of enlisted sailors. If you have never played sports with young enlisted military personnel, let me assure you that “flag” can sometimes be interpreted more as a suggestion than a rule.
While playing defensive end, I collided headfirst with another player.
This time, I was knocked unconscious.
I have only fragmented memories of what happened afterward. I was transported roughly thirty miles to a regional hospital. A CAT scan was performed. Eventually, someone declared me sufficiently intact to return home. Today, such an injury would likely trigger extensive concussion protocols and follow-up evaluations.
In 1995, the medical conclusion was essentially:
“Looks okay.”
And life moved on.
As far as I know, none of these injuries caused lasting damage. Most occurred during an era when concussions simply were not discussed the way they are today.
But I sometimes wonder.
Because, alongside my tendency to get motion sick, there is another odd characteristic that has followed me throughout adulthood.
I cry easily.
Not sadness.
Not depression.
Just tears.
Sometimes, while giving presentations, at work of all places. Who cries at work? Engineers are supposed to get emotional about equations, not while presenting them.
Sometimes during emotional stories.
Once, I even found myself fighting back tears during a television interview while serving as a citizen member of Knox County’s Charter Review Committee. Fortunately, I had already become fairly skilled at disguising these episodes. Most viewers probably never noticed.
Lisa noticed.
After twenty-plus years of marriage, she can spot the early warning signs long before I can. The emotion and the physical response do not always seem proportionate to one another.
I have also experienced the opposite side of the coin. There are times when I laugh so hard that I struggle to catch my breath.
Years ago, I discussed these episodes with my physician. At first, he wondered whether depression might be involved.
So we watched.
And waited.
Years passed.
The symptoms remained.
What did not remain was any convincing evidence of depression.
At one point, my doctor jokingly informed me that I was “too funny to be depressed.”
He and I have spent enough time laughing together during office visits that he eventually concluded I simply did not fit the profile. Most depressed patients, he observed, tend to be depressing to be around. I apparently failed that diagnostic test.
Over time, my doctor and I discussed a condition called Pseudobulbar Affect, or PBA, which can cause episodes of laughing or crying that do not fully match a person’s emotional state. Whether that explanation is correct, I honestly do not know. As far as I am aware, I have never received a formal diagnosis. It was simply one of several possibilities that surfaced after years of conversations about why I occasionally laugh too hard, cry too easily, and generally behave in ways that seem inconsistent with how I actually feel. In other words, even my medical mysteries remain somewhat mysterious.
Whether it has anything to do with my collection of head injuries, I also do not know. But when I stand back and look at the entire picture—the motion sickness, the emotional episodes, the long history of impacts to the head—I cannot help but wonder if some connection exists.
Or perhaps I am simply an accident waiting to happen who grew older without becoming significantly wiser.
That remains a distinct possibility.
Either way, Alaska added one more entry to a very long list of stories.
At least this time, no stitches were required.
AI Disclosure: This article was edited with assistance from ChatGPT. The writing may have been improved by artificial intelligence. The head injuries were not.
