Arianna K. Transcript

I used to be, I was a straight-A student. I was on three different cheer teams at one time. I was definitely at my prime with cheerleading. I was consistently getting new skills and getting better. I was a very creative person. I loved to paint, and I loved to crochet. I loved taking care of plants too. 

So I was at a cheer competition, and while we were competing, the girl on the top, she had fallen onto my head and crushed it into the mat. Me and my coaches joked because I had lipstick smeared on my face. We said it looked like I came out of a scene from Twilight, but I was immediately tired, like I was exhausted. 

Immediately after, I went back to my seat and I stuck my face into my book bag because I was so tired. The lights were bright. The sounds were loud. I am very lucky because two of the mothers on my cheer team, they were nurses.

So they immediately checked me, and they told me that if I was nauseous the next morning, that I needed to go to urgent care. I was, I went to urgent care. They sent me to the emergency room, and it turned out I had a concussion.

So in the beginning, I did not let myself recover at all. Like I went to the emergency room on Sunday. I went to school the next day. No sunglasses, no blue light glasses. I still did all of my work online. I had no idea what I had to do to recover. I wasn’t given any instructions or anything, what I needed to tell my teachers, anything like that.

And so I would go to school and come back exhausted. All I would be able to do is sleep. I would have headaches all the time. I had so much brain fog. I was always exhausted. I went back into cheerleading about two weeks later, even though I was still feeling horrible because I never let myself recover.

So every time I would get back from cheer, I’d be exhausted, and I would be dizzy out of my mind from tumbling. And about a year later, once everything slowed down, I started to feel a little better. I was working, but then everything started back up again when the school year started, and all of a sudden I started getting heart palpitations, and I have had issues with passing out before.

So I knew what I was feeling, and I would go to the school nurse, and they’d check my heart rate and they would say it was fine. Eventually, I had gone to my primary care doctor. They didn’t know what was happening. I went to a cardiologist. They didn’t know what was happening, and one day we went to the emergency room because we thought I was having a heart attack.

And we sat in there for seven hours without being seen until the physician’s assistant finally came up to us and told us that he saw on my record that I had had a concussion before and that it would be worth looking into getting a neurologist and seeing if they could help me from there.

And that’s been my journey ever since. I think imposter syndrome really got me because nothing was physical, and I felt like I was letting everybody down by not being my best self.

I mean, nobody else can see what you’re going through. And I’ve interviewed people who have had concussions too in the past, and they told me that they’ve had, it’s mostly cheerleaders, of course, but they have had girls in the past saying nasty things about them, like that they were faking it.

I interviewed a girl who’s had four concussions before, and I mean, people don’t understand because they can’t see it. And I think I dealt with that so much. Nobody ever said anything to me, but I think in my mind, I wanted to be the absolute best I was.

I just wanted to continue getting better. So I have always been told to push through, persevere, when in reality I needed to rest. Before I was diagnosed with neurocardiogenic syncope, where your brain tells your heart that there is something wrong, so it starts beating really fast, I would get red in the face. My doctor actually tried to diagnose me with POTS, and it was my mother. She was a huge advocate for me in this entire process, but she looked at my doctor and she said, “That is not what it is.” So my doctor ordered a blood test just to be like, so that she could prove it was, when in reality my electrolytes were totally fine. It’s definitely hard because it’s not visible, for sure.

Honestly, myself, I didn’t notice any changes in me. It was like my friends and family around me, they had noticed that I had become way more emotional, that I seemed a little disconnected from things. I would space out a lot more. But I think having, I realized how lucky I was to have an advocate with me, to have somebody who’s able to stand up for me. And I think that’s what inspired me to make my initiative, Impact to Empowerment, is that I know not everybody has that.

Not everybody has someone that’s gonna help push for them, and I feel like through Impact to Empowerment, I can help people get the confidence to be like, “Yes, I have a brain injury. I need help.” Because I was too scared to admit that I needed help in my recovery. So the very first initiative that I started didn’t really have as clear of a mission. I knew something was happening to me, but we didn’t know what it was. So I just focused on the health aspect, like what I can control, what I’m in control of, like what I eat, what I think with my mind.

I started journaling more, things like that, like getting the proper exercise for my body, especially with my heart issues. I went from exercising every morning of every day to barely being able to walk on a treadmill, and I just gave out. I post resources every week. I try to post about four times a week.

But I really cleared my mission when I found out what was wrong with me, and I realized that more people need help like this. So I started interviewing survivors. I’ve made pamphlets to pass out to school boards that they can display in their school for easy access for families who might not even know where to start.

There’s 100 counties in North Carolina, and I want to be able to hit all 100 of them. And I will make that goal, and when I do, I will hopefully be able to get some sort of brain injury protection legislation in the future.

I wish people knew how to be a little bit more patient. I think myself, I’ve learned a lot of patience through my injury with myself and with other people. I wish that people would have the same grace with us, especially because it’s harder to process things.

It takes me longer to write or type things on my computer now. I wish that people just had a little bit more grace for others. Definitely have grace with yourself. That was one of the hardest things that I had to learn. Take rest when you need it. Be verbal about your needs. If you need to take a break, you tell somebody and you take that break. If you need to go get something to eat because you can feel you’re about to crash, go get something to eat. Bring your water with you everywhere. Do what you need for your health and be unapologetic about it.

If I had one thing that anybody could take away from, I mean, I’ve talked to survivors, I’m sure you have too, but it’s that nobody’s brain injury is gonna be the same. Everybody’s recovery isn’t gonna be the same either. I mean, I knew a girl, she had four concussions and she is living it up right now, and I’ve had one and I’m still recovering from it.

Everybody is different. And don’t compare yourself to others. Just because you think somebody else’s is worse does not diminish yours at all. I struggled with that so much.

It was horrible. I thought that I didn’t have it bad enough. That’s part of the reason that I never wanted to rest, is because I thought other people had it worse.