cause of the 8yr hiatus

afternoon all, well afternoon here anyways.
new to the forum, thought I'd drop in & give you all
a little story.

so I was around 25-26ish when this little incident happened.
a couple of us were out skating this spot behind a local school
here in pennsylvania. there was/is, not sure if its still the same
haven't been back there in years, anyways, so there's two sets of
I think 5-6 steps at an angle to each other with a flat concrete
box in between, its about a foot & a half high on the top side, about
a three & half four foot drop off the other side. the landing area on top
of it was fairly short so you had to set up in mid-air and land with your
feet in position for whatever trick you wanted to try off the other side.

so after a couple of hours sessioning this, I'm up top getting ready for
another run at it, don't remember exactley what I was gonna try anymore,
but after ollied to get up on to the box, when I shifted my feet to land in the spot
I wanted them, my back truck dropped & got caught on the leading edge of
the box. I ended up flying completely over the box & down on to the sidewalk below.

now here's where it got bad, as I was fallling I started get into the tuck & roll postion
but I didn't have time to get completely set up, so my right shoulder hit first causing
my head to whip down & hit the sidewalk with some authority. my head hit, my feet
followed up over me & I ended up sitting on the edge of the sidewalk. at first I kinda
shook my head with that "ow, that one kinda hurt" look but when I went to stand up
I was really dizzy. fortunately one of the guys I was riding with was an EMT in school.
he came over & took a look at me & realized I had a concussion, so we piled into a car
& they took me home. only when I got home & took my hat off did I realize that I was
bleeding, so my pops gets me into the car & takes me to the emergency room at the
hospital, after a few of stitches from the nurse to close up the wound, the doctor comes
in to go over my x-rays with me. the doctor sits down & throws the x-rays up, here I
ended up having a 2.5" crack in my skull & about a dozen or so air bubbles.
I ended up being in intensive care for three days at a different hospital that had a
neuro-surgeon on staff in case I needed to go in for surgery.

so there you go the reason for my eight year hiatus, kinda put a little damper on
my skating for awhile, needles to say I now wear a helmet.

later guys,
sods

Helmets rule OK !!
Glad you're back on board ,
stick around and have fun

Wow, that`s a nasty one, always wear my lid and pads these day, never used to `back in my day`
Only been back a few months myself and have had a few falls that might have resulted in hospital treatment without the protective equipment.
have fun

yeah man, never wore pads "back in the day",
always had that I'm not gonna hurt myself attitude.
that was the only major injury I had in the 17 years I was
riding. I mean I had sprained ankles & all, but never broke
anything other than my head.

nowadays, I don't go out w/o them, rather not
spend anymore time in intensive care.

and yes, its a blast riding again.
always puts a big grin on my face when
I'm out riding.

It's so easily done.

Great to see you are back in the saddle with no side effects from the injury!

Welcome back mate!