re: Is Gary Busey really crazy, or is it an act?

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The bike slammed into the curb and threw me over the windshield. I came down on the curb headfirst, hitting the back of my head, then the right side of my head and then my back. Wop-wop-wop! Then I was out. Gone.

Gene Thomason, who sold me the bike and was standing in front of Bartels' as I drove off, ran across the street, took my gloves off and pressed them against my skull. Blood was shooting out from a hole the size of a 50-cent piece. He says I squeezed his hand so hard I dislocated one of his fingers. He saved my life.

I was taken three miles to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and operated on that night. It was a critical situation. The right side of the brain, where the damage was, controls verbal and musical skills, emotional expression and the ability to recognize visual patterns. After the operation, I couldn't talk, walk, swallow. I had temporarily lost my fine motor skills and couldn't hold a guitar. I learned later that 50 percent of patients with head injuries like mine die.

I do not remember Cedars-Sinai or the first six weeks after the crash. I had posttraumatic amnesia, common among head-injury victims. People have told me I was angry that I was in the hospital and didn't want the nurses touching me. The doctors wound up isolating me in a psychiatric ward and giving me three types of medication to calm me.

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