Nick L. Transcript

So I’ll keep my stories of my concussions fairly brief as there are multiple. I’ll just explain the two major ones I got diagnosed for. So both of them occurred at the field where my club soccer team and high school team played at, and all of them came from soccer. The first major one was: A ball was hit up into the air and I was jumping for and I was jumping over the player in front of me and he jumped back and so the back of his head hit the front of my skull. And then that’s about what I remember from there, and then just kind of black, and then kind of slowly coming to in a lot of pain maybe like 10, 5, 10 seconds later. And then the next one, the last one, fortunately: That was we had just scored a goal and we were either down by one or two – I honestly can’t remember – but there wasn’t that much time left in the game and then I went to go grab the ball from the goal. And then one of the opposing players, he got to the ball before me and he kind of turned his back on me and I was already kind of reaching down to pick up the ball and my head hit right into his elbow. And then I just, yeah, this immense amount of pain, is what I was like the immediate reactions. In both of them I kind of felt like this surreal almost out of body experience. Like I wasn’t in control of my own body or whatever what was happening. Like I was just kind of in a daze. I remember both scenarios. First one being carried off the other one being helped off the field. It felt like I don’t know it just felt like nothing really happened to me. Like I didn’t know what happened to me at that moment. Like something happened but I couldn’t, it’s almost like I didn’t know what had just happened to me. And I just remember like my head felt like everything was spinning. There was these little white spots kind of in my in my vision, which also occurred with some of the other head injuries that I’ve had. 

The length of recovery was honestly, I couldn’t say specifically, but the first couple it was maybe a week off of school around that kind of time period. Got checked out by the train trainers or one was sent to the emergency room. And then the second one was just checked out by the school trainer. I think for both maybe like a at least half a week. Maybe a full week off of school, which honestly probably wasn’t enough time but I guess I’ll touch more on that later. 

Typical days in terms of like the stages of recovery. Definitely that first day, because I don’t know if this has changed at all, I don’t I don’t think it has but in terms of the recovery just like the first stage was you know, just lying in bed, pretty much sleeping and then when you couldn’t sleep anymore just lying in bed, you know? No, no reading, no looking at your phone, which I definitely broke that rule. Yeah. And then that kind of moved into like doing a half day at school and making sure all the teachers knew about what was happening with me. Giving like couple half days of school and then slowly working my way up to a full day of school. That’s about what I remember in terms of the different stages of recovery. It’s not much, but it’s what I got it. 

My friends were really great in terms of supporting me through both of my concussions. I remember one of my friends – he would call the house phone at the same time every day after school. And my dad would give me the phone because he was wanting to talk to me to see how I was doing. Every day we talked for like 20-25 minutes just so it felt like, even though I couldn’t do anything and I was just sitting in bed, I still felt connected with friends. That was an immense help to me – just having a friend that would check in on me, call me. Another friend would show up at my door just kind of hang out my room for like five minutes and then leave. So just having people to come in check on me was was great.

In terms of my experience and medical professionals, they were all great. They were all very very cautious with with me, which makes sense because this is a very serious injury. So they all were very, very cautious and didn’t want me to do anything to overextend myself. At the emergency room, they were very good. They took me – I mean they have to legally – but they took me right away and made sure I got back to us as quick as they could, given the severity of, or the what could have been the severity of, my head injury. So my experience with the medical professionals was certainly very good. I think the hospital was the children’s hospital that was close by.

And accommodations for school and workplace – they were good. I mean, they allowed me to make up all the work I had missed. I got all the school work that I had missed. They gave me the chance to make it up, but that still hurt later on though. All that work that I missed, of course I still had to make up and I had missed those sessions. I was very adamant that I wanted to do this by myself, but I suppose I’ll talk more about that for the final question. 

The big thing was for me that I remember was just having someone to talk to and having my friends come in and check up on me. That was immensely helpful. I don’t think I don’t think I would have come through it as good if I didn’t have friends that came in and checked up on me and everything. 

Certainly, the concussion made me value my personal health a lot more. After the first major one, although there are multiple before and after the first major one, I certainly changed a lot because I still played, but I wore a piece of a headgear, like a soccer headgear. I made changes to how I played a little bit. I was a lot more cautious, especially when the ball was in the air. So I kind of changed my game to fit my new personal health, just to kind of keep my safety as a priority. Even though I still end up getting another one, I definitely changed the way I played soccer. But after the last one was when when I decided it was probably the best that I stopped playing. It forced me to get rid of the one hobby that I easily had for the longest stretch of my life since I would because I’ve been playing competitively since I was seven. I was 16 or 17 when I stopped. It took me those first few months I quit soccer – it was very hard because that was pretty much my whole life for over 10 years or almost. So it was hard to to initially try and find a new hobby, but I found it. That was a huge turning point for me: Once I found new hobbies I could kind of throw myself into them the way I threw myself into soccer. That was, again, such a huge turning point and allowed me to to move forward. Because I certainly had a much darker outlook on life when I didn’t have soccer. I would just come home and I would never have any practice to go to I would just be just kind of sitting in my room and then once I got done with homework I would just have nothing to do and I just I felt like like there was nothing for me to do anymore. But thankfully, I started doing my high school acting, and also riding, doing road cycling. So much safer stuff that I have more control over what I when I do, so that was certainly again, as I said, the huge turning point. 

And coming to the final question in terms of if I could talk to my past self, definitely something that I would say is – the hard thing for me was I really wanted to get back in after my concussions, I really wanted to get back into the swing of things. For both of them, they were both around the high school soccer season and then I wanted to get back fit for the high school soccer season so I could still keep playing and we were making a playoff run for our regional section for our high school. So we’re making a playoff run as well and I wanted to be back fit for that. And especially after the very last one, I had the  ACT’s in a couple months after my concussion. So I really wanted to get back on the horse because I mean, I had signed up to the ACT’s and I really wanted to do it on that day. I didn’t want to reschedule so I just wanted for both of them, that was for my junior year concussion my sophomore year concussion, I just wanted to get back. I thought maybe going back to school sooner would kind of add more of a sense of normality to the situation. And I think that was a huge mistake and both just jumping back into it so quickly. Yeah, I certainly think if I would go back to something to my past self I would tell myself that people are starting to become a lot more understanding with concussion injuries. The the the teachers were willing to – they were understanding for you – and they gave me time but of course you might still need to make up that work. And I I’m sure if I would have asked for more. I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone else I want if I could have maybe I could have asked for more extensions, but I wanted to get everything done in its time. I didn’t want to feel like I was getting any special treatment. I just thought that it would just bring me back to normal quicker, which was a huge mistake because my work really sophomore year, the first major one, my work really suffered. I think that was probably my worst year in terms of like GPA and grades and everything during my entirety of high school. That fall semester when I got my first major concussion. I coped with it a little better the next year, in my junior year, I think big mostly because I I knew I knew a little bit more about how to deal with myself in that situation. But still, it was hard because I had just given up my my number one hobby, but um, that’s definitely what I would what I would say to myself, just don’t rush through recovery. Take as much time as you need. People are becoming more understanding about this. So take as much time as you need and also a huge thing for me is like, since people are becoming more understanding, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You’re not going to be a burden to anyone if you ask for help. And that way I know is a huge problem for me i Since I didn’t want to be a burden for anyone else I would just try and do all the work by myself, even though I had missed all of these sessions and lecture notes. And and that was another reason why my grades suffered: because I wanted to do all of it myself when in actuality I had missed these things. That’s why my test grades suffered, because I missed these sessions and I didn’t bother to ask for help or I didn’t go to my teachers and ask for help because I didn’t want to seem like more of a burden to them than I already was. I hope my experiences can help the experiences of others moving forward.