Maddie C. Transcript

Hi, I am Maddie Collins. I am a certified athletic trainer, and I work in a collegiate sports setting. As an athletic trainer, my role is with our student-athletes — injury and illness prevention, clinical evaluation, and diagnoses. I provide immediate and emergency care to injury and illness.

I also provide care like treatment or rehab from an injury, or treat small general medicine cases. Then I coordinate care and work in collaboration with other healthcare professionals. I work with our sports med physicians, our orthopedic surgeons and physicians, sports dietitians, sports psychologists — you name it, we have a “sports something” for everything you could need.

So that’s my role. I work specifically right now with water polo athletes, so concussion is a very likely injury in water polo, with balls being thrown at full speed at other heads. I am used to seeing that in clinic. A big goal for me most of the time is recognizing it early and checking in with an athlete if I notice, you know, they got smacked with a ball in the middle of practice — checking in with that athlete afterwards, seeing how they’re feeling.

And a big part of that, too, comes from their education — so that they understand when they’re feeling kind of funny, or like something’s off, or like something’s definitely wrong. The education portion is really important.

So yeah, I pretty much coordinate care with the team physicians if I’m suspecting concussion. I see them through their recovery and, under the direction of a physician, lead them through their return-to-play protocol. I also help facilitate their return to learn — coordinating with academic advisors to assist them back into the classroom.

So lots of hands in all the things. That’s pretty much how I work with concussion, personally.

One of the biggest reasons I became an athletic trainer was that I had a close friend in high school who played football and unfortunately sustained a concussion. This concussion was likely mismanaged, so he returned to football, and he sustained secondary concussion syndrome, which unfortunately resulted in his passing. That was a really, obviously big thing for us to go through as high schoolers — and very interesting, looking back now, to see that happening as an athletic trainer in the very rural high school that I went to, with not a lot of healthcare access.

That was a huge part of what motivated me to become an athletic trainer.

I myself sustained a pretty significant concussion my senior year of high school. I was a field hockey and dance athlete, and I got kicked in the face in a dance practice once. I had a pretty rough recovery back.

I have a migraine history, so I also experienced — my biggest symptom with this concussion was headache. It was really hard to determine, you know, is this a normal headache that I have? Like, is this one of just my normal migraines, or is this a headache that I’m having from my concussion?

Later on, as I progressed, I also started to have some nausea. I went through vestibular therapy. I was working with my primary care. I worked with a sports medicine physician too — which I didn’t have direct access to. It actually took me a long time to get to these resources, which is why I think this Concussion Box organization is so great — because it’s such a great resource for people who don’t have direct access to care, like a student-athlete at a Division I university would have.

So I think this is super cool.

I obviously take concussion and diagnoses very seriously. Recovery I take very seriously. I’m sure my athletes are like, “Ugh, Maddie, why are we going through all this?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m actually keeping you very safe — so thank me later.”

It’s come a long way even since I’ve had a concussion — and oh gosh, that was… we don’t need to know how long ago that was.

It’s so interesting. I think the biggest thing here in working with student-athletes is managing it along with their sport stress, academic stress, social stress — all the things — family stress. Recognizing, like, “Okay, yeah, I’m having an issue with this and this and this specifically.” Okay, great — how am I going to facilitate giving you support in all of those different areas?

There are so many things we could talk about with concussion.

I did my grad school at the University of Virginia, and they have a pretty decent-sized research area. My professor, Dr. Jacob Brush — shout out to him — leads a lot of initiatives not just in athletics but now actually outreaching into the regular student population at UVA and doing baseline testing.

I think that concussion is making really big changes in the field, so it’s exciting.

These initiatives are great because it’s hard to find, first of all, a concussion specialist, and it’s hard for people to advocate for themselves when they aren’t in that athletic setting.

It’s cool to know that it is very common — people sustaining concussions outside of sport. It’s a normal thing.

My piece of advice to patients who are recovering from concussion would be to be honest with yourself first, and then your care providers, with how you’re feeling, how you’re progressing — or if you feel like you are regressing. It’s important to communicate those things and advocate for yourself, solely for your safety and for your future self.

So yeah — advocating for yourself and recognizing how you actually feel.