Swelling on the brain

Once Rei was fully awake in the beginning of Rome's Evolution, it was time for him to start getting oriented as to time, place and person. The fellow to bring him up to speed is a new character, Russell Montrell. I had to invent him because it occurred to me that you would never send 500 people to a distant star without having some medical personnel. Here is the scene where Russell gives Rei the low-down on his condition:

     “Hello, Rei,” the man to Rei’s right said. “Do you remember me?”
     Rei turned his head slightly to look at the man. “Sure, Russell,” Rei answered. Russell Montrell was the colony’s physician.
     “How’re you doing?” Russell asked him while withdrawing a penlight from his pocket. He moved the tubes connected to Rei’s body aside and waved the penlight back and forth, shining the light into Rei’s pupils, observing their reaction.
     “I hurt everywhere,” Rei answered in a scratchy voice, considering his own words. He scrunched up his face. “Except my legs. They don’t hurt. It’s weird.”
     Russell withdrew the penlight and replaced it in his pocket. He took a deep breath. “You were severely injured. You have a cracked skull. In fact you lost a piece of it. I find it strange to say but you’re actually lucky. You had significant brain swelling and the hole in your head actually allowed the pressure to stay manageable. We only sealed it enough to keep in the cerebrospinal fluid.”
     Rei closed his eyes and focused on the back of his skull. It burned and he could feel the wad of bandages piled up behind his head pressed against the pillow.
     Rei opened his eyes again as Russell continued. “As far as the rest of you, your eardrums were ruptured and you have a broken arm.” Russell tapped on the cast surrounding Rei’s right arm. At least that explained why it felt like there was cotton in his ears. And why his right arm ached more than his left. But there was something in Russell’s tone that made Rei look more intently at the doctor’s face. It wasn’t what Russell was telling him. It was what he wasn’t telling him. Rei looked down at his feet. He tried moving them. Nothing happened.
     “What about my legs?” Rei asked. “What’s wrong with my legs? How come they don’t hurt?”
     Russell’s shoulders sagged. “The lumbar section of your spine was smashed. The L3, L4 and L5 vertebrae were crushed. I’m afraid they’ve pinched off your spinal cord.”

Uh oh. That does not sound good. By the way, the practice of cutting a hole in the skull, called trephining is still in use today although far less than in ancient times. It is used to access portions of the brain or drain off a hematoma. In this case, I used it as a poor man's excuse to prevent Rei's brain from crushing itself. I'm sure modern medicine has better ways of treating the condition but because I am not a doctor, I had no idea. I just write science fiction.