A man has spoken openly about his experience of losing part of his skull following a near-fatal skateboarding accident:
Brandon Alexander was injured back in October 2019 and was put in a medically induced coma. He had to have surgery on his brain which included having part of it removed. Oh... and he kept it.
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Now he's been documenting losing part of his skull and has kept a video diary. In one of the clips posted on his YouTube channel, he said: "I was riding my board and I was on the left side of the road on the way to Taco Bell.
"A car came from behind me, hit the tail of my Boosted Board. My board then flipped and I was thrown off my board into a sidewalk kerb and I spun in the air and my head hit the kerb dead on. No helmet.
"I was immediately unconscious and three pedestrians said they saw it happen. There was an ambulance down the block that they saw and hailed. The ambulance came down and took me to the hospital."
He went on to explain how he was being transferred to a different hospital for surgery: "In about ten minutes, I had what's called a midline shift and a midline shift means my brain expanded in over 5mm in that 10 minutes that they were prepping me to leave the hospital.
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"So the doctor comes out and he tells my mum 'ok, never mind, if we send him in the ambulance he won't survive. He's got about ten minutes left before he goes brain dead."
He went on: "It was a three hour surgery and they ended up having to take out the whole left side of my skull... after my surgery I had 79 staples put in my head."
Brandon was then transferred to the hospital he was supposed to go to for surgery.
Brandon spent 23 days in the hospital before he went to rehab where he was taught how to walk and talk again. After two weeks in rehab, he left to go home.
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He concluded: "I'm super grateful to be alive. I'm super blessed to be alive and lucky. Very, very, very, very, very lucky just to be here and be the person I am. Be back to the person I am.
"I'm the same person I was except now I have a lot different perspective on life. I have this whole new understanding of how precious life is, we're not all guaranteed the same thing and at any moment it can be taken from us.
"My way of coping is humour and positivity. Staying positive no matter what the situation is because you never know what's cut out for you."
You can follow Brandon's journey here.
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@goforbrandonTopics: Brain, injury, Community, Weird