Cassandra Perez Transcript

Hello. I am happy to tell you a little bit about my experience with having a concussion. I was by myself in my car driving back on the freeway from San Mateo into San Francisco area. I was leaving a conference and I was very excited to get home. And I was in – well this freeway at this point was about five lanes wide – and so I was in the middle lane. And there was a sudden sort of flurry of red lights in front of me. So I very, very quickly put on my brakes and luckily I didn’t hit anyone. However, people behind me, the person behind me, hit my car and pushed my car forward into the car in front of me. And so my, my body was held by the the seatbelt but then my head went forward super fast and then went back really fast to hit the back of the seat and that’s when I got the concussion. So, my initial reaction was complete shock. I was terrified. Especially being in that situation where there was just a lot of traffic and you know, there was three cars involved and we had to get over to the other side of the road but I think that was the first time I was ever in a major car accident. And yeah, I am, you know, looking back on it, I was even hesitant to do this because I don’t like looking back on that experience. But, you know, I’ll just tell you that was a pretty big impact and I was shaking, and I was just purely frantic. I don’t even know how I drove home. I think I actually called a friend and asked her to talk to me for the remainder of my drive so that I felt safe getting home and in case anything happened to me, I was on Bluetooth. 

So, symptoms. Well I would have to say that the biggest symptom was sort of just like total, total shock. I mean,I  divided this into three months, so zero to three months and then three to six months, and then six to nine months. That was kind of like how things gradually started to shift. And I’m only in my six to nine month. I think I’m actually in like nine months right now. And then it’ll be a year and at the end of October. 

So, in the beginning, I was a total mess. I had severe cognitive delays, like my speech was slurred. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t look at screens, I could barely move my head. I really pride myself on being kind of a tough cookie. And so I pushed through a lot of things in that initial stage. I had a lot of headaches, severe anxiety, depression, and I was very tired, like, a lot. I was afraid of driving. And yeah, I think I said I couldn’t move my head in certain directions. But normal things were really difficult for me. I normally run at a really fast processing speed. In my job, I’m always thinking ahead, you know, two to 10 steps and I was not able to do that. There was just a lot of tenderness and fear in my body and in my brain and there was a lot of swelling around my, the base of my skull and down my spine. And overall, I just kind of felt frantic, is the word I would use. But I didn’t want people to know that, and so I kind of bottled it up inside and just kept going, which wasn’t the wisest thing by the way.

Three to six months, I mean –  Oh, so I just wanted to before I kind of move into that symptoms and three to six months – I had, I saw a chiropractor who evaluated me who diagnosed the whiplash and the mild traumatic brain injury. And I saw my primary care physician thought that I was doing really pretty well based on like the assessment form of like taking your heart rate. And what else did she do? She took some other basic assessments and looked at my eyes but it was really the chiropractor that diagnosed more of the head and concussion symptoms. She offered to enroll me in a group course for people who had been in a car accident at Kaiser, but I am in the unique position of being a health care professional myself, meaning that I really specialize in working with injuries of all kinds and so I luckily had a lot of information on my side, and I had a team of people outside of the typical medical world that was really helping me. So I had an acupuncturist, and I had a manual therapist, and I also had my own Z health coach. That really helped me with kind of strategizing how to manage the symptoms that was occurring because of the swelling going on in the brain, and that would take some time to dissipate. So at work, I had to really, really modify my movements, I had to go a lot slower, and I had to ask for help. And I also had to let my clients know that I was struggling and that I was going to be struggling for a while. I really shouldn’t have worked as much as I did in the beginning and I would highly recommend, you know, the last question is like what advice would you give someone I think what I would really say to people is rest a lot as much as you can, if possible, and don’t be shy about it. If you can rest, rest. I really think I would have sped up my recovery process a lot faster if I had really taken it easy in those initial weeks. But I work for myself and so I felt the need to kind of press on. And kids might feel that way as well because they’re in school and all this fear around getting behind but I gotta be honest, I really recommend getting well first. 

Let’s see. I’ll go to turning points at around three to six months with consistent care, the headaches started to become less frequent. My cognitive function was improving. So I felt like processing feed was like picking up a little bit. The inflammation, although reoccurring was coming down. And what I didn’t mention actually that I should have mentioned is that I also saw a woman who does EMDR, which is basically working with trauma, and any sort of head injury I consider a trauma. So we were working specifically on the feelings I was having, the anxiety I was having, while driving. And so that was really helpful to me. I finished up working with her probably in the beginning of February. And so that was in that three to six month range. And it was a really important piece like finishing up that work with her was a really important piece because I felt like I could finally drive again without being hyper vigilant and like gripping the steering wheel and afraid that at every turn someone was gonna hit me. I also felt like in around three to six months, I started to be able to care for myself better. I want to recommend things like taking Epsom salt baths to help calm the nervous system. I really recommend wearing like light blocking glasses if you’re really sensitive to computer screens. I also recommend like resting your eyes in the middle of the day if possible. And oddly enough, sometimes wearing earplugs can really help because sound can be really sensitive to the nervous system as well when you have a head injury. Then six to nine months you know I didn’t see my chiropractor as much, I was doing a lot more of my own personal movement work, and I was really trying to get back into exercise regime. Exercise is a big piece of it, but you have to be careful with it. You don’t want to overdo it. So, the turning points I think I talked about that. 

And then just how did it change me? I really feel like this experience made me so much more sensitive to people that I worked with who’ve been who’ve had a concussion, and I think that we can all learn a lot from these experiences about what it means to take care of yourself. And you don’t need to have a head injury to learn the lessons of, like rest when you’re tired. Certain things like aren’t like aren’t that aren’t normal, pay attention to and like don’t just dismiss it. I also feel like it taught me about fragility and also resilience that we are able to recover and we will recover and the way in which we do that is really, really important. And so you really do want to have a good team. And also to be really thoughtful that if anything like this ever happens again, to be really really careful because we are at higher risk now for more injuries in the future. So it’s kind of a big deal. And I can say that, you know, it really just kind of slowed me down, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Yeah, any other advice? If I had to talk to myself back then I would probably say: This is a big deal. Don’t be shy about asking for what you need. And do your best to communicate with people that you’re not going to be yourself for a little while. And make sure to be kind to yourself about that fact. And not hard on yourself. Okay, that’s it. I really appreciate this work. I’m glad you asked these questions, and I hope that this is of service for you.