The Man Who Lost His Face

I work with patients at a local hospital. These people have had some sort of trauma, such as a heart attack or accident that caused them to be taken to hospital.

Recently I was helping a man, about 55 years old, who had some strange problems. He said he had been in hospital for a couple of weeks, but wasn't sure why. His telephone rang. He walked over to the bed. The telephone was next to his pillow on the bed. He picked up his pillow with his left hand, held it to his ear, and said, "Hello?"

I thought he was joking. He wasn't. The telephone rang again. "Hello? HELLO?" His voice was rising, and that was when I realised he wasn't joking. I walked over, picked up the telephone handset, took away his pillow, and put the handset in his hand. He then talked normally to the person who had called, which turned out to be his sister.

Later in the day, he was sitting in his chair, feeling his face. He hadn't shaved for several days and had a scruffy appearance. He said, "I need a shave."

"Do you normally use an electric razor or straight razor with shaving foam?" I asked.

"Electric," he said.

"Do you have your razor here?"

"No."

"OK, well, I will ask the nurse if she can get you a disposable razor and some shaving foam so you can shave."

"You'll have to show me how to do that, I don't know how."

I looked into the hall, and there was a young nursing assistant walking by. I asked her if she could find a razor and some shaving foam for the patient. She said she could, so I went back into the room to get my patient ready.

I told him to take off his T-shirt and put a towel around his shoulders so that he wouldn't splash water and foam on his shirt. Then I positioned him in front of the sink and mirror and told him to splash some warm water on his face to soften up his beard. He did that fine, but after five minutes of patting his face with water, the nursing assistant still had not appeared.

By this time, he was getting impatient (joke: he was an impatient patient).

Finally she appeared with two little paper tubs, the kind some restaurants use for ketchup, filled to overflowing with shaving foam.

He quickly covered his wet beard with the foam, then picked up the disposable razor she had left.

As he brought it close to his face, he twisted it in his fingers so the metal part was away from his face and the plastic part was against his skin. I stopped him, told him the razor was reversed, and fixed it for him. He brought it up to his face again, and once again, he flipped it. He did this five times. Finally, I held his hand tightly as he brought the razor to his face and then guided him with the first few strokes.

He then proceeded to shave the right side of his face and under his chin, using correct strokes with and against the grain. Clearly, he knew how to shave, and his previous remark that he did not know how was untrue.

Then he yelled: "I CAN'T FIND IT!"

"Find what?" I asked.

"MY FACE! I CAN"T FIND MY FACE!"

Hmmm. It seems that he could see the right side and centre of his face, but he could not see the left side, even though he was facing the mirror. I took the razor from his hand, turned him, then shaved the left side myself.

Later in the day, we went for a walk down the hallway, and when we got back to the room, he decided he wanted to call his sister. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and tried to open it, but he could not find the open edge. I asked him what it was, and he told me it was his sister's phone numbers. I said, "Give it to me, and I will open it and get the numbers."

By this time we were right outside his room, standing next to the door. He put his hand on the wooden railing halfway up the wall. This is a wooden strip to protect the wall from wheelchairs and other equipment. He ran both hands along the railing, and then said "I CAN'T FIND THE TELEPHONE!" Clearly, he thought the railing was the phone line.

I took his elbow, and said, "Let's go into your room, I think the telephone is near the bed."

We walked into his room, approached the bed, and I saw the telephone on the side table next to the bed. I picked up the phone, dialed his sister's number, and when she answered, asked her to call me later on my mobile phone, but right now her brother wanted to talk to her.

He chatted for a while, and hung up.

Later, his sister called and gave me some background. It seems that he had been found unconscious on a city street four months ago. He was alive but not in good shape. The paramedics took him to a nearby hospital, where they stabilized him, then did a CT scan. They found that a large part of his brain showed up as a grey cloud, it was not looking the way a brain normally looks. It appears that he had destroyed part of his brain with drugs, probably cocaine, crystal meth, whatever.

He could function in some cases perfectly normally... he could walk and talk, dress himself, feed himself, and go to the bathroom without help. However, both his memory and his spatial ability were damaged, and he could not handle some tasks like opening the folded paper. This is a form of dementia. It is not curable. Once the brain is damaged, it is basically a vegetable, there is no way to fix it.

When I opened the drawer of his side table, I discovered a can of shaving foam and a straight razor, so clearly he had lied, probably unknowingly, about shaving with an electric razor.

So the moral of this story is: don't do drugs. Once your brain is fried, it's game over for those functions that are damaged. This man will spend the rest of his life in hospital.

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