DamienF in hospital

Yeah, you're right.

For those of us who are not citizens of Facebook, have there been any updates about Damien's condition?

Unfortunately not.

Christmas update!:

So if all goes as planned Damien should be able to start communicating by next week, if I know my medical science (and I don't).
Certainly puts a fire under my ass to send off my Yule letter to Damien.

Just came to post that.
Great news... Or at least full of hope.

Cheers for keeping us updated guys.

Guys, I just remembered something from the summer my husband was in an artificial coma, and I hope it's still in a timely fashion: when he finally came to (and fully coming back to conciousness took days) he had recurring nightmares about the time he was sedated, and that "memory-hole" (god I hope I'm making any sort of sense in English) plagued him badly enough that he had to visit a therapist to get rid of the anxiousness and feeling of helplessness. When we were talking about this later with a doctor, he mentioned that on his intensive care unit they made nurses and family sorta keep a diary of the "lost days" ... not the medical stuff, medication and whatnot (that's being recorded anyway), but what the patient did, how he looked, what he was reacting to, the little steps as he was waking up and such. He said it really helped patients cope with that anxiety to read about the days they had no memory of, to have a record if it so it isn't all blank for them.

I sure know that when you're full of worry if your loved one is even going to make it and in what condition, stuff like narcosis trauma is pretty much the least of your worries. Still, his folks might want to start such a diary for him (filling in the days already passed as well as they can remember, sorry I didn't recall this earlier), it can't hurt and hubby said it sure would have helped to have one.

On my birthday, I give a gift to another Damien.

Hope you wake up soon, Falgo, so we can all learn what the fuck happened.

Probably a good chance that he'll vaguely remember being out after kickball, and not much else.

Damien's parents wrote this on his wall, which makes me think they're working on getting him awake:

happy new year.

That's really hard to read - but we should be incredibly glad that they were able to bring him out of the coma and that he's regaining lucidity. Hopefully it gets better from here, which really will make this a happy new year.

Fuck. Poor Damien, but yeah, at least from the sound of it, he's recovering and waking up like that is bound to be scary as hell.

I hate this news in some ways, but at least he's recovering. Those feelings of helplessness are like a nightmare, but hopefully the medications he's on are keeping him from fully realizing what is happening just yet. This will be very frustrating for him, I'm sure. Sounds like he's got good support around him, at least.

I have a friend who had a massive heart attack a couple years ago, who was kept in induced medical coma for a good chunk of time. He reported much the same about the nightmare fear and agitation of when they were phasing him back out of it towards being conscious more often, his brain kicking up superficially lucid but entirely confabulated memories (being nightmare-convinced he had different children who'd died and that his wife was hiding the details, other unpleasant thrashing-brain activity). His memories in general of the time are very fragmented, and his family's journaling of things really helped him in both piecing things together and getting to better peace with things as his recovery proceeded.

Hope better news comes along, and that Damien comes out with a similar recovery that dramatically outdoes cautious medical expectations.

Big update!

Thank you for the update. Happy to hear he is making positive progress!

Linked from Damo's bookface page:

Dallas police records detail brutal December attack on Dallas lawyer
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/201...s-detail-brutal-attack-on-dallas-lawyer.html/

Authorities say a 28-year-old man severely injured a Dallas lawyer during an early December attack outside a Lower Greenville bar in retaliation for an earlier disturbance with one of the suspect’s friends.

David Anderson was booked into the Dallas County jail early Friday on a charge of aggravated assault. The 39-year-old victim, Damien Falgoust, remains in the intensive care unit at a Dallas hospital as he continues to recover from the attack that forced doctors to put him in a medically induced coma.

[...]

According to police records, Damien Falgoust was leaving the Crown and Harp nightclub in the 1900 block of Greenville Avenue at bar closing time on December 7 when Anderson yelled to one of his friends.

“That’s the dude that you went to jail because of,” Anderson yelled, the records state.

The documents state that Anderson’s friend and Falgoust had been involved in a disturbance several months ago which resulted in the friend being arrested for an unspecified offense.

The friend had been cited for public intoxication in August, according to other police records.

Anderson began hitting Falgoust “without any provocation” in the face, causing him to fall to the ground and hit his head on the concrete patio, the records state. He then fled on foot.

A musician who was performing at the club later later told police that Anderson told him that he was going to hit Falgoust. The musician said he saw Falgoust hit the ground and yell that he needed help.

Falgoust, who was bleeding from the head and face, was taken to a local hospital. He suffered a “right orbital fracture, nose fracture, subdural hemorrhaging, brain swelling and traumatic brain injury, the record state.

The musician and Anderson’s friend later gave statements to police and picked him out of a photo lineup, the records state.

Looks like aggraved assault in Texas == 2 to 20 years. Let's hope he gets the higher end.

Edit: Actually, "in retaliation against or on account of the service of another as a witness, prospective witness, informant, or person who has reported the occurrence of a crime" ...could make it a first degree felony, with a penalty 5 to Life, from what I'm seeing? (c.f. http://law.onecle.com/texas/penal/22.02.00.html)

Anderson's friend is going to be a witness? Interesting.

Read the Facebook comments on this post only if you want to get really pissed off.

Uh.

I find it hard to imagine that Damien has been forcefully removed from Arby's several times for attacking people.

One of the first comments in there angered me, that one just kind of left me flabbergasted.

Yeah, there are always going to be trolls/people who think all lawyers are evil.

Yeah, I can't take seriously any grown man who refers to Arby's as "my work."

Also a person who thinks that anyone "deserves" to be beaten into a coma, no matter what you think they are guilty of doing.

Oh good, because anyone who disrupts the peace and serenity of an Arby's establishment deserves to be put into a medical coma.

EDIT: Damn you Ben Sones!

Roast beef is serious business, guys.

I would just like to say that "aggravated assault" doesn't seem to be quite right here. Isn't assault like...just SAYING you're gonna hit someone? Battery's the one where you actually hit them. Would that even make a difference in the charge?

That question out of the way, really glad to hear that he's getting better. Best news that I've heard in a long while.

Dang man, why you even got to do a thing?

Generally speaking, you're right. "Battery" is an offensive touching. "Assault" is short of that, and "Aggravated" is a step up. But in law, "Generally" is completely irrelevant, because laws vary by jurisdiction. Texas effectively combines them into "Assaultive Offenses", with

• Assault
  • causing bodily injury (even to your spouse!), or
  • threatening with imminent bodily injury (even to your spouse!), or
  • physical contact that is offensive
• Sexual Assault (touching or penetrating involving naughty bits)
• Aggravated Assault
  • causing serious bodily injury (even to your spouse!), or
  • using or exhibiting a deadly weapon while assaulting
• Aggravated Sexual Assault: Sexual Assault and
  • causing serious bodily injury, or death of victim or another person, or
  • places the victim (or someone in the victim's presence) in fear that they'll be forced into prostitution (by acts or words), kidnapped, killed or suffer serious bodily injury, or
  • using or exhibiting a deadly weapon while assaulting , or
  • acts in concert with a partner who commits the offense, or
  • using rohypnol, ghb, or ketamine, or
  • the victim is under 15, or elderly, or disabled.

Why? What will that do?

So is it 20 years or life that you think is appropriate? To what end? Based on what facts?

...be a more appropriate punishment for nearly killing someone than two years would be?

And that's based on the what I know about Damien and the overall situation, which yeah, isn't that much. If/when more information comes to light, I will of course revise my opinion on the matter. (I generally assume it isn't necessary to include that sort of clarification, but I guess I was wrong)

...and did you throw in that brettmcd quote at the end to be ironic?

Well, that's what I disagree with. I don't know how "appropriate" is defined for you, but in terms of crime and sentencing it doesn't seem that "serious in proportion to how much it affects me personally" is a good definition.

You don't. I just don't find the available information particularly conducive to much except vengeance performances past the point of letting people know the state of the situation. It's getting perilously close to that point, in my opinion, when you are retrofitting laws designed to protect against witness persecution conspiracies based on a random selections of newspaper quotes. Right now, it's almost up there with the Arby's brawler theory in terms of credibility for what it lets you say about what either party in the case "deserves". And I don't think hypotheticals in either direction are a good idea here.

Were you ironically agreeing with him when he said it? I just don't find hoping for the far end of Texas justice, of all things, to be any less controversial in a P&R way than health care reform, and would not like to see a thread focused on Falgoust's welfare and positive communal support go in that direction. Or I guess it's whatever you want, and maybe jerri can find more facebook comments for people to vent at.

I'm not the one veering off toward wall-of-text land over an offhand statement to the effect of "I hope the guy that fucked up my friend receives a stiff punishment," but whatever.

I really hope he makes a full recovery, but the repeated statements of "not knowing the extent of brain damage" worry me. I am glad that they caught the guy that did it, and while I won't comment on what his punishment should be, having the currently-unnamed friend as a witness is a pretty big deal. I'm glad he made the right choice here by cooperating.

My impression is that this phrase is a kind of medical professional safe zone. It's technically and colloquially accurate without giving any false impressions to family/friends (good or bad) at a very difficult time. Modern doctors have built up decades of institutional memory on how to do their jobs, keep relations as even keeled as possible, and avoid openings for lawsuits.

What I mean is: if someone on the street uses a phrase like this, I'd be concerned about its connotations as you are; but from a medical professional I try (to whatever extent of my own emotional involvement) to keep it as professionally objective as they mean it. Damo's been an internet-friend of mine for years so all I can do to feel better about this whole thing is trust the expertise of the people helping him. And so far they seem to be going in the right direction. :)

If he's still in the process of waking up, they probably literally don't know. Those artificial coma meds can mess with your brain pretty badly, and it takes a while for the effects to fade, too. My husband says he remembers very little of the waking up process, but what he does is filled with hallucinations and spatial distortions, like the one time he felt a gap in his teeth becoming wider and wider and pushing all his teeth to the side. From the bedside perspective, for a while he alternated just laying with his eyes closed to violently trashing (they had to restrain him for a couple of days) to babbling to forming sentence fragments that made no sense whatsoever - and his brain was fine, it was just the aftereffects of the drugs. Got him back, thankfully, with no lasting effects except for a nasty trauma and a long scar (nosy people are told he was lucky to survive the alien chestburster).

So while it's of course possible that there may be some lasting damage, I wouldn't let those statements add to your worry just yet. That he's still not up to speed is probably perfectly normal.

Any serious or even moderate injury takes months to heal, sometimes even more. Pretty hard to tell if there's lasting damage until much time has passed.

Personally, I take it as good news that they don't know -- at this point that's the best you can hope for. If on the other hand there were obvious permanent damage (e.g. parts of the brain were dead) I think the phrasing would be different, as the doctors would be looking to ease the family into it.

The latest word, though it's a few days old at this point, is from Damien's friend Lindsay, which I wasn't sure I should post, but since most of us can't visit in person:

Anders, I reckon that's a good thing to post. A lot of us aren't connected on Facebook or similar. I know I like to hear news and especially when it's as apparently good as this. If it's asked not to pass it on then fair enough but please keep us updated.