A Missing Puzzle Piece

It was so long ago that I am trying to recollect exactly what happened. We were in our hometown of Elmore, Ohio and I was approximately 13 years old. I remember going on a bicycle ride with my best friend. We didn't have a bike for me so we decided I would ride on the handle bars of her bike. Neither of us were wearing helmets.
We were riding on the road coming up to the gulf course. We came to a big hill and started to go down at a pretty fast pace. The next thing I remember was a man picking me up along side the road and putting me into the back of his pick up truck. I wish I new now but I have no idea who that angel was that stopped and picked us up that day. My friend got in the back of the truck with me and he proceeded to take us to my friends house where her parents were. Not having a clue as to what just happened, they rushed out of the house to see what was going on.
While descending the hill my shoe string got caught in the front spokes of the bike tire. Immediately I was thrown face first into the pavement. I was knocked unconscious. My friend had a bruise on her hip. I barely remember the short ride to her parents house. I was very disoriented as I hit the road really hard. The impact had damaged the left side of my face significantly and I lost two of my front teeth.
We arrived at my friends house where her parents were in a state of shock when they saw the man carry me out of the back of his truck. They were very curious as to what happened. My friend explained to them what had occurred as they rushed me into the house and laid me on the couch. I was still quiet disoriented.
My friends parents called my parents and they arrived within ten minutes. By then I was starting to feel the pain of the accident. When my parents arrived I started to cry. I was in so much pain and was relieved to see my parents.
Fortunately, my friend lived only a few doors down from my doctors office so the doctor saw me right away. He dressed the wounds that were on my face and he thought that I may have to have plastic surgery but he said to wait and see how it would heal before we made any decisions. I do not recall going to the hospital for my injuries. I did go to the dentist to have caps put on my teeth.
After some time my face did heal and my permanent crowns were put on my broken teeth. I am 42 years old now and am looking back to this incident because my counselor believes that my verbal communication difficulties may have been related to a traumatic brain injury. My grades were reported as getting bad in the ninth grade and that is not too much past the time of the bicycle accident. She believes that it is possible that when my head hit the road it could have done some permanent damage to my vocal communication processing in which would have an effect on my grades.
Since I had never gone to the emergency room that day a traumatic brain injury may have been overlooked. My counselor suggested to me that I go to a neurologist to have it checked out. I look back and wonder why they never took me to the emergency room. I guess it does not matter at this point but I think I will definitely look into it now. It would just be crazy if a bicycle accident that happened so long ago could have been affecting me my entire life and I did not connect the dots. I hope a neurologist will have some answers because if there was a traumatic brain injury a lot of things in my life will make more sense. Just another missing puzzle piece of my life that may have been found.~Pamela Renee Schneider