FREAK ACCIDENT
Smith suffers concussion
The deadline for releasing the donors’ lists for Calgary’s municipal election is approaching on Thursday, so I thought I’d try to get a bit of a scoop on how much money Calgary’s mayoral candidate Bill Smith raised and who donated to his campaign.
The alarming news I was greeted with, however, put donors’ lists to the bottom of my to-do list and Smith’s health to the top.
The 54-year-old Calgary lawyer and former firefighter was admitted to hospital on Feb. 19 for a severe concussion and has been there ever since.
His wife of 29 years, Mary, says Bill suffered his concussion on New Year’s Eve day while pumping weights in the basement gym of their home.
“The (weight) bench we have is a really great bench but it’s about 20 years old,” explained Mary. “The pin that holds the bench flat gave way right when Bill was on a full extension with about 150 to 170 pounds. The bench declined on him and so his head went back and smacked the back of the bench.”
Luckily, none of the weights landed on Smith, who was one of 10 Calgary mayoral candidates in the Oct. 16 municipal election, coming second to incumbent Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s 51 per cent of the vote with 43.7 per cent of the vote.
Mary says she wasn’t home, but their son Logan, who is one of their four children, heard the crash and checked on his dad.
“Bill joked, ‘OK, I’m not working out anymore,’ so Logan and Bill played Xbox for a while,” but a severe headache put an end to that activity.
The popular couple has a longstanding New Year’s Eve tradition that includes a party with the same group of friends every year preceded by a dinner with one other couple at Boston Pizza. Mary says she noticed that Bill looked pale.
“I said, ‘Are you OK to go out?’ and he said, ‘I’m fine. I’ll just drink some beer until my headache goes away.’
“He was joking around, same old Bill.”
Part way through dinner, though, Smith announced, somewhat sheepishly, that he thought he might have to skip the party.
“When I texted everyone that we weren’t coming to the party, they were all like, ‘He better have a good excuse, he better have a concussion and he better not be faking it.’ Unfortunately, he does have a concussion.”
What complicates Smith’s current concussion is it’s not his first. The 6-foot-4 former University of Calgary Dinos football player, whose team won the Vanier Cup in 1985, has had his bell rung a few times, back at a time when concussions were not taken seriously and athletes displaying all of the symptoms of a serious concussion were just sent back out on to the field on the next shift.
Smith took it easy for a few days but returned to his boutique law office in early January and on his first day back came home at noon exhausted.
Smith started noticing that he was having trouble recalling peoples’ names — not usually a problem for him — and would jumble simple facts, like relaying that his concussion occurred on Christmas Eve, rather than New Year’s Eve.
“On Family Day, he just came to the point where he said, ‘I think I need some help.’ For Bill to finally say he needs help and he’s going to rest is really a big step for him. Now he’s listening and he’s taking this all to heart,” says Mary, who has remained by her husband’s side every day since his hospitalization.
“Everybody is super supportive — super surprised — but super supportive and they all want to visit but he can’t have any visitors,” says Mary, who is playing interference.
“People ask me, ‘Do you want to go for coffee?’ and I’m like, ‘No, I just want to go back and hang out with Bill.’”
So far, Mary says they are impressed with the care Bill is receiving. “He’s supposed to rest and have less stimulation in a relaxed environment” at the hospital, which Mary is not naming.
“We realize that we should have done things differently right away,” says Mary, adding that rest and less stimulation is the best medicine for a concussion. Certainly not video games and New Year’s Eve dinner out in a noisy environment.
The good news is doctors believe Smith will make a full recovery and will be back to his old self in a few months. How long he’ll remain in hospital is not known at this time.
So for the next few months, anyway, the top thing on Bill Smith’s list is rest, sleep, rest and more sleep.
For Bill to finally say he needs help and he’s going to rest is really a big step for him … he’s taking this all to heart.