‘Did he suffer?’ ‘Not physically, I can say that with a high level of certainty. We know from high-fall victims who survive that their brain protects them immediately prior to impact. They pass out or go into a sort of impending trauma fugue. Very few have any memory of impact at all. In this man’s case, I can tell you death was so instantaneous that he wouldn’t have had time to have registered the pain.
Our brains are good like that, even when working at 1/2 speed. When I had my cerebral haematoma the last thing I remember is calling my Mum and asking her to come and get me, that something was wrong, and thank god I did that rather than go to bed hoping I’d feel better in the morning, as I had so much blood in my head it had pushed my brain entirely to one side of my head, I kid not.
The point though, there was no pain, at all, that I can remember, but there’s point two, I remember nothing between the phone call & waking up in neurosurgical ward afterwards. And a lot had gone on, I’d gotten in a car with mum and went to the hospital, no memory, apparently I was acting really weird in the waiting room, freaking people out as I was shaking and jerking, totally out of it, I got examined, there was an emergency ambulance ride to another hospital who could do the surgery, everything is a total blank, not one iota of pain nor of memory of it all.
Clever little brains we have indeed.
