Until now, I had never heard of PTA but on going to Wikipedia, I see that I had it, no question. Funny, there was one sentence, "Patients may also have a tendency to wander off, ...". When I returned to the hospital for my followup, I went to both the ICU and my regular ward. At the ward I was greeted by my nurses who told me of the hospital wide scare I set off when I disappeared. Seems I had wondered out to the staircase. Having lost a lot of coordination, going downstairs was very difficult (I had a bruise on the base of my motor nerves which had put my right side into seizure and erased all right side learned skills - a real challenge when you are very right handed. Going down stairs still takes real attention 40 years later. I used to do two steps at a time almost always before.) Since going down stairs was so difficult, I, being a good bike racer, did the logical. I went up the stairs. To the top floor. (5 floors up?) Eventually a space case was found wandering the top floor and I got returned to quarters. After that, when I disappeared, they would just retrieve me from that floor. (One of my very few hospital memories was looking out that staircase window!)
As spacey as I was, there was an engineering consistency to my decisions. Like how to walk down halls when I couldn't remotely walk a straight line. I'd just follow close to one wall and steer slightly toward it, periodically bouncing off and correcting my course. Problem was my other injury, a broken right collarbone. Glancing the walls wasn't too bad, but hitting the far door frame hurt like h***! Solution? Walk the left side walls. I did notice a steady stream of people constantly coming at me so it wasn't ideal, but much better than the alternative. Now the idea that I might be injured and should stay in bed? Never crossed my mind.
Machka, Rowen is going to be a handful for a while. Do your best to keep a sense of humor. Some of it will be quite funny in hindsight.
Ben