I was at one of my son’s varsity football games, and before the first half was over, one of our players was on the bench with a trainer.  I saw the dreaded “concussion sheet”, and knew what was happening with this young athlete.  I always hate to see this, but am thankful that someone saw that a concussion evaluation needed to be done.  A short while later, this same athlete was seen walking into the locker room with a trainer, his gear off, clearly done for the game.  My heart went out to him, and I wished for a speedy and complete recovery.

But what happened next took my by surprise.  Near our seats was a couple I hadn’t seen before.  Their son, I learned, is younger than my youngest child, so we probably just never moved in the same circle of friends and acquaintances.  They were really nice and friendly people that others did seem to know, and I heard a some address the husband as  “Coach” when talking to them.  He seemed to have a significant amount of football knowledge, so I assumed he’s somehow been involved in football currently or in the recent past.  I also assumed he’d be familiar with the current concussion protocols.  So I was shocked when I heard him remark to one of his companions, “When I played, you never quit for a concussion.  We didn’t come off the field unless you were puking.”  There was also something said that seemed to question the decision to remove this player from the game, but I can’t remember enough of what was said to be comfortable quoting it.

Well, I’m not at all famous for holding my tongue.  I’d like to be able to say I don’t react without thinking, but that’s something I’m working on with, sometimes, mixed results.  So I piped up, and jumped in with information about how not only was it the right thing to do, but the coaches were REQUIRED to pull any player out that could have a concussion.  The response from him was, “They only have to do it if the coach sees it.”  I was shocked.  I then told him that my daughter has been removed from sports forever because of concussions, so I think it’s important to be careful.  That was the end of the conversation, and I have to admit I felt bad for jumping in like I did.  These were really nice people watching my son and his teammates play a game.  Maybe I should have not said anything.   But if I don’t say something when these circumstances materialize, and if others don’t say it, will the information that is out there ever reach those who need to hear it?  I did apologize later to the wife, as I felt I could have handled it better.  She assured me no one was offended, and that it was ok.  Maybe they talked about it later.  I hope so.  Especially if he’s involved in working with youth athletes.

Concussions are SERIOUS!  When in Doubt, Sit Them Out!  I now know of so many young adults who are still suffering from headaches, sleep problems and cognitive issues from concussions they received 5 or more years ago, when you still played after getting your “bell rung”.  When that player is removed from the field as a precaution, please understand it’s for their long-term health.  Missing a game or two is so much better than suffering with the long term effects of an untreated concussion.  And sometimes a kid can die, and has, because he continued to play.  Please remember this, and support the player and the team’s decision.

Seattle Sports Concussion Program at Harborview Medical Center

This led me to this book on Amazon.  “The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic”

I’ve had a suprising number of people approach me since I posted our story here in this blog.  They are telling me:

• “My daughter/son had a concussion (or concussions) years ago and is still having problems as an adult.”
• “I had concussions when I was younger, and no one knew then how bad it was still going to be now.”
• “There’s an athlete on my kid’s team that has headaches every day, and they are still playing.  I know s/he has had concussions in the past.  Is this safe?”  My answer to this one is, “I’m not a doctor, but YES, STOP PLAYING!! Or at least consider it until they go to a doctor and figure out what is going on with their head!”
• “We are going through the same thing, and it’s so hard when we don’t know what the future is going to look like for our child.”

There needs to be a way for families and professionals to connect and share what we are learning so that others don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  I’ve spoken to moms that didn’t know about the Seattle Sports Concussion Clinic, just 6 hours away from here.  What an amazing resource to our community!  And they didn’t know about it.  I was just told of a vision specialist in Spokane that works with concussion patients.  If I hadn’t had a casual conversation with a friend, I would never have known of this resource.  I found this book via a friend thinking of Laura when she heard an interview I missed.  What other books are out there that would be useful?  Since “The Concussion Crisis” isn’t being released until the 13th of this month, I don’t even know yet if this one is worth sharing.  But I’ll let you know as soon as I finish it.  What other forums are available of which we aren’t aware?  I want to get this ball rolling, but I need to know what would be the most helpful to the family that is dealing with their first concussion as well as those that have had multiple concussions.  What are the tough decisions you’ve made or are making, and how have things turned out for your child?  Please let me know.  Pass this on to anyone that might be interested.  There’s a lot happening in this field RIGHT NOW.  Let’s make sure everyone who needs the information knows where to go to get it.

So when I got up this morning and Laura had it on the TV in the living room, I only half paid attention to it. I got my coffee and joined Laura on the couch with the intent to just hang out with her for a few minutes before I went on to do something else. But then I started to actually watch the movie.

Here’s a girl who had a passion for an activity like Laura has for sports. And a traumatic event threatened to take that away from her. Of course the usual cliches come to mind, and the obvious attempts to draw parallels between our lives. Although, I did pause for a moment to consider that Bethany’s shark bite was a whole lot worse than Laura’s concussions, and her accomplishments afterward are nothing short of spectacular.  But what really made me stop was something the movie dad said. “The judges don’t care how you get out to the water. You only get points on how well you ride the wave.” It made me ask of myself, “How well am I riding the wave?”.

I’m thinking my score isn’t very high right now, because I’m stuck in what surfers call the “impact zone”.  This is where the falling waves hit the water, and a surfer that gets stuck there can take a pretty big beating.  And in competition the judges don’t care that you are in that zone, just whether or not and how you’ll recover.  You definitely don’t get sympathy points for being there.

Friends and family have been so supportive, and I feel so blessed to have them in my life.  And especially blessed that, in addition to people that ask “What do you need now?”, there are those that are pushing us forward to what’s next.  Sports consumed a lot of our time and energies, and now that time will be available to us for something new.  It’s still not easy to accept  the loss of what seemed so important for so long, and the sadness won’t go away tomorrow.  But there are more waves coming, and we get to choose how we are going to ride them.

Laura did get cleared to play in time for club volleyball, which started in January.  She had a rocky start with another hip injury, but she eventually seemed to find her equilibrium and was really enjoying playing.  By the end of the season, we felt the old Laura was back.  She was smiling on the court again, and I was so thrilled at how much fun she was having, and how well she was playing.  There were a couple of headaches during tournaments, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern.  Migraines do run in our family, so that had to be it.  Right?  Not the concussion.  That’s over.  Isn’t it?

School ended, and the summer conditioning program was set to begin for school volleyball.  Laura was excited that she could participate this year.  Then she was hit with a mono-type virus, and was down for a full month followed by weeks of fatigue.  She attended conditioning when she could, but at a reduced capacity until her strength and endurance returned.  So the first time she really performed at 100% exertion was when volleyball practice and tryouts were in full swing in mid-August.  And along with full activity came the headaches.  A minor migraine-type headache at first.  But they got worse as the week progressed, until the day she was sent home by one of the coaches because she was clearly in pain.  Laura wanted to power through the pain, but she was wisely persuaded to do otherwise.  She was so frustrated, because she was playing great when she felt good.  I’d pick her up from practice and she excitedly tell me how good her hits and digs were.  She talked about giving the coach “a facial” with one of her hits.  But this excitement was tempered with worries about missing practices and having to sit out of sprints because of headaches.  Will the players and coaches always be wondering, “Which Laura do we have today?  A healthy Laura, or a hurt Laura?”.

I texted her coach, requesting a meeting to discuss the headaches, and I learned that he was getting ready to call me about the same thing.  Clearly we can’t ignore the situation any longer.  She’s just 15 years old.  If we continue to let her play, what will her life look like when she’s 20, 25, 30?  Volleyball is a huge part her life, sports are part of who she is.  How hard will it be for her to watch other girls playing what was her sport, her position, her opportunity, her passion?  People will say they are sorry, and though the sentiment will be genuine, they won’t really understand how inadequate it is.  And eventually they will forget that there was once a really talented athlete that used to play volleyball before she got hurt.   But where do we stand on the balance beam of risk/reward?  No decision is going to be made today, but I’m pretty sure the writing is on the wall.  There will be visits with the team trainer, her regular doctor, and probably the concussion specialist in Seattle.   And then Laura will likely have to start on a new journey of redefining herself.

I can’t end this without mentioning that concussion awareness and changes in recognizing and treating concussions have changed a lot the past couple of years.  The fact that we even know as much about the risks to Laura’s long-term health are due to the medical and sports industries recognizing that youth concussions are serious.  And that recognition comes on the heels of tremendous tragedies experienced by families and young athletes that didn’t have the benefit of what we now know.  The work to educate coaches, schools and parents is valuable and necessary, and we have to keep learning how these injuries in youth affect their lives as adults.  Yes, the decision to remove my daughter from sports will be a difficult and painful one.  But a couple of years ago, we likely would have kept putting her in harms way, not knowing that we were doing so.  She’d have been encouraged to “play through the pain”, with a potentially devastating outcome.  Her life may be different now.  But it’s a far better one than what could have been the alternative.  And hopefully when we look back on this, we’ll be thankful that she’ll be healthy enough so that we CAN look back on it.

To understand why we are standing at a crossroads today, there are some things about Laura that would be helpful for people to know.  Laura is athletic.  Truly athletic, and really good at sports.  When she was little, she kept up with the boys in peewee  sports.  She didn’t just win races in youth track, she ran like Secretariat in the Belmont.  The first time she played Parks and Rec volleyball, the coaches asked her to hit the ball for them repeatedly because they were amazed at how hard that 3rd grader slammed the ball over the net.  She played basketball for just one year, then switched to figure skating.  But when she tried out for fun in 8th grade, she made the varsity team, having not played basketball in any organized fashion since that 1st grade season.  And she is a team player.  The biggest reason she stopped figure skating is she much preferred the camaraderie of team sports.  Then volleyball became her focus.  Of course we were proud of her, but that’s not why I list her accomplishments here.  Laura and sports are synonymous.  People didn’t hope she played well.  They knew she would.  And with grace and sportsmanship.  It was part of what defined her as a person, and was a very positive part of her life.

In 6th and 7th grade, she had a string of freak injuries: whiplash playing at the net in volleyball, sprained hand then her wrist, a broken nose when she got kicked in the face on the high jump mat, a torn hip flexor in P.E.  She just couldn’t seem to get through a season in middle school.  It was frustrating, but she powered through them, worked hard, practiced at whatever level her injury allowed.  And found ways to participate with her team mates.  She was finally healthy, and looking to have a great 8th grade basketball and volleyball season.  Laura was excited to be back on the court.

On January 28th, 2010 I picked her up from volleyball practice, and as soon as she saw my car when it pulled up to the school, she burst into tears.  Big hard tears that told me something was terribly wrong.  Near the end of practice she had taken a ball hard in the face.  It was near the end of practice so she took herself out of the scrimmage, sat out the rest of the session and waited to go home.  She was in a lot of pain by the time I picked her up, so I knew we were probably dealing with a concussion, and put her straight to bed when we got home.  The schools had new concussion procedures by this time, so I notified the athletic director at the middle school the next day.  I told him I was sure she’d be ready for an IMPACT test within the week, required before she could return to activities after a concussion.  Her club team had its first tournament in 10 days.  Surely she’d be ready by then.  Wow, was I wrong.

A week turned to a month.  A month turned to 2 months, 2 months to 3.  And she wasn’t getting better.  She missed 2 weeks of school, and went back with significant restrictions imposed by her doctor.  Her doctor called the school and they discussed accommodations for Laura so she could attend and not write off her second semester of 8th grade.  No math, nothing cognitively challenging.  If it gave her a headache, she wasn’t supposed to do it.  And it seemed at that point that everything gave her a headache.  And she was always sleeping.  I know teenagers sleep a lot.  But this was the sleep of an injured brain, not a growing teen.   3 months after the initial injury, we took a trip to the Sports Concussion Clinic at Harborview Medical Hospital in Seattle.  That was the eye-opener.  It was apparent that Laura wasn’t going to be cleared anytime soon for any activity.  Her volleyball, basketball and track seasons were over.  Heck, she wasn’t supposed to take a walk around the block!  And we faced the possibility that sports were also going to be over for her.  Tears…lots of tears.

But we took it seriously.  At least we knew and could tell her coaches she was done for the season.  Maybe she’ll be able to do something in the summer.  Maybe.  That helped the club team.  They knew she wasn’t coming back, so the changes they made during her absence became permanent.  They moved on without her, as they should have.  And we sat at the sidelines and watched.  People said they were sorry about what happened.  They were genuinely concerned.  But Laura was now odd man out in a group that used to be part of her identity.  And her teammates played and practiced and got better.  And we watched.

Before the start of 9th grade, we took another trip to the Sports Concussion Clinic, and determined that yes, Laura COULD be cleared for sports, but SHOULD she be cleared.  It was too risky as she was barely meeting the criteria, so we collectively made the decision of no sports for the fall.  Give her some more time to truly heal.  School volleyball is in the fall.  No freshman season for Laura.  More tears.  We talked to the high school volleyball coach, and he encouraged her to turn out as a team manager, but still get to participate within the limits of her recovery.  She’d get to do some drills, travel with the team, do something that would help the team.  She agreed, and gave everything she had to whatever she was allowed to do.  She seemed content to be involved.  Until the team went to the State Tournament, and won.  And her club teammates got to suit up with the state team, while she had to sit in the stands.  Would she have been one of those girls if she’d been healthy?  Probably, though there’s no way to know for sure.  But the concussion meant she couldn’t have been.  There’s a song that goes, “Try not to think about what might have been.  But that was then.  And we have taken different roads.  We can’t go back again.  There’s no use giving in.  There’s no way to know…..what might have been”.

This has ended up longer than I intended.  If you’ve read this far; Thank you.  It can be boring to read about someone else’s kid.  But there really is a point.  And I promise to get to it in Part 2.