Sexual Assault

 I made the trip back to Winnipeg and a bed was not ready for me. It was the emergency ward that took me in and it was as if the accident had happened yesterday. Two days later, the dementia ward on the fifth floor gave me a bed in a room with one other dementia ridden patient. The bed was as uncomfortable and the food as terrible as Calgary. The only plus point was that I had daily visits from Cheryl.

It was on the third night that I became aware of two people in my room. They were both dressed in the beige hospital uniform, worn by the people who did food distribution and the cleaning of both patients and wards. One soon left, but the other sat on the floor in a hiding position between the windows. After a while , my visitor crept over to the bed and his both hands dived under the covers at my waist-line. I  reacted with a swipe of my left arm and a mouth full of expletives. This had my attacker withdraw from the room only to return moments later, re-arrange the covers at the foot of the bed and utter some excuse about making a check. I told him again to "Fuck Off" which he did..

Sleep became my big problem after the attack, laying awake became a way of life. I stashed a bottle of pop in the bed as a alternative to wrist damage. My two visitors spoke a foreign but I could not identify either although the bedside visitor had a short and stocky stature. Both never seemed to have been on my ward before but obviously thought dementia sufferers with their memory problems were an easy number for queer boy attacks. I wonder how many have taken place without re-percussions when 1 in 3 of hospital ward male employees are known to be gay.

My next objective was to leave hospital in Winnipeg and return home to recover. Nine weeks would have been 13 if rehabilitation had taken place in hospital  but Cheryl organized a release. There have been blood tests and clinic visits along with physiotherapy sessions. No pain, no claim, and body recovery has taken place. The wrists are getting stronger, the walking is getting quicker and the brain is getting sharper. The only negative thing is that the Province Of Manitoba has cancelled my driving licence for two years because of the serious blow to the head.

Alzheimers.

 Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia and the kind that most people thought I had. The symptoms are the same but there is no recovery just a slow decline over the years. Lack of memory, slurred speech, poor physicality and bad mental decision making are the main dementia signs. My bang on the head brought all these on but my brain started to heal itself by a system known as rewiring, where new connections are made to replace broken bits that were damaged by the blow to the head.

My memory was gone for about five weeks and has still not returned from the accident. I came round eventually, to find myself tied in bed at Calgary Hospital. I could not walk or talk and had lost about 50 pounds in body weight. I had no clothes or money and no one spoke to me. Cheryl  made the trip from Winnipeg to Calgary and proved what a savior she had been and luckily not the passenger on the motorcycle.

Cheryl had set in motion a claim for the motorcycle, found all missing paperwork and organized my trip back to Winnipeg by medical airplane transfer. My partner had made a Calgary trip in July but I knew nothing about it and had slept most of the time I hadn't been acting weird. The hospital bed was  uncomfortable, the food was terrible and being in a dementia ward was disheartening. Winnipeg looked like a good option but after couple of weeks looking for a bed in Manitoba it looked unlikely. But Calgary had booked the plane and was going to send me anyway.

Recovering from Dementia.

 Any body with any knowledge of dementia knows the disease is not recoverable, so what did I have that was so confusing. Short answer: A bad bow to the head coupled to my old age and dementia-like symptom of amnesia, the result of a motorcycle crash and 9 weeks in hospital.

It all started, so I have been told, on the 11th of July 2023 when I ended up in a Saskatchewan ditch, lying next to a written-off KTM 790. An old gentleman eventually found me and phoned the ambulance, how long I laid there, beside a deserted road, I do not know. The hospital at Medicine Hat flew me to Calgary because of the state of the injuries. My closeness to the province border was the reason for my journey to Alberta.

The Emergency Room at Calgary did a good job of cutting-off all my riding gear before the x-rays and CAT scans showed the two bleeds in the brain and the two broken wrists. A bed was found and although I remember nothing of this, my amnesia was identified and the broken wrists were plastered. I have lost a pair of Kevlar lined motorcycle trousers and a jacket complete with armoured elbows, shoulders and back protector which must have saved me from more serious injury. Infact all my clothing and equipment disappeared  and I was left wearing just a hospital bed-gown that secured only at the back.

To be continued.