Bella P. Transcript

Hi, everyone. This is my story for the Concussion Box. And my name is Bella Page. And I’ve been asked by Eliana to submit a story. And if you know who I am, then you know that I have shared my story a lot with the world when it comes to concussions, but here we go.

So, it started 10 years ago, now, almost over 10 years ago. And what happened was, I had suffered from a lot of concussions, probably too many, if that’s supposed to be a thing. And it’s been over 10. And so, I don’t have a specific incident, where my life changed. I don’t have like a, you know, “I crashed, I was in an accident, where everything’s changed my life,” I just don’t have that. Because it’s not really how my story went.

For me, it was more like a gradual increase. I had one summer where I was dealt with headaches a lot, and other moments where the headaches and stop, but when I turned 15, they started, and they didn’t end for seven years. And what happened was, I was showjumping lots, not really telling anyone what was going on, because, you know, I was living my life. And then, I stopped to take a break, horses get a break, I got a break. But when I took a break, and the adrenaline stopped and the excitement stopped, my body kind of hit a wall. And that wall involved symptoms, such as headaches that didn’t go away, like I mentioned, memory problems, dizziness, fatigue. I couldn’t read. I had so many issues with light and noise, and all these things. So, what happened was I got told to drop out of school, essentially, by more than one doctor and to try again later. And that was really hard–super ambitious person, athlete on gear for the Olympics, being told that you should just stop school and rest.

I didn’t want to, but my body wanted to. So it became a really big challenge. I went through high school and didn’t stop. And I only had two years left, but I didn’t give up. It was very rough. For a while, I got exempt from every exam. I think for over a year. I got exempted from classes, I just had to do a few assignments. They basically made it so I could get through in any way that I could. And this worked in a way that Monday I’d go to one class Tuesday, I go to a different one, Wednesday, I’d go to a different one. And that was the only way I really got through school. When it started.

You know, I spent a lot of time in therapies and trying different things. But, at that time, nothing seemed to really help. I started on that merry go round of meds as I call it, where they give you a med and you come back at three months and tell them how you did. And then you get back on the merry go round with a different medication. I know that was really tough because the symptoms from those medications were really hard. I got something called pharmaceutical anorexia, which is from a medicine that causes anorexia in your body unintentionally, or in a way that I couldn’t eat. Because the medicine would cause so much pain when I ate. So when this happened, that would cause a lot of pain. And so I didn’t eat. So I lost a lot of weight. So then I went to nutritionists and dietitians, learning how to eat again. And that took a long time too.

And so, this just kind of started my journey. It was two years of high school. And after that I decided to go to university. And I kind of told everyone I was okay. I was really good at faking it. I was really good at putting this big smile on my face. And pretending everything was okay when it really wasn’t. And so what I did was I moved away from home again, back to showjumping to university. It’s hilarious that I went to university, because I wasn’t even a full time high school student yet. And I decided to jump right in as a full time university student, and if you’ve ever done that, then you know that there’s a big jump from high school to university, and it’s a very big jump when you’re sick. So, you know, that kind of thing is really tough. And so I moved away.

And then, you know, I was doing okay for a little bit, and then a few months in the headaches became unbearable. I, you know, was living alone at the time. And my vision disappeared one night, and it was terrifying. And I called my mom I think three hours later when it came back, asking if I should call 911, or what I should do and at that point I was behind on every class I had. I was barely going. I was going to ride horses every day because that’s what I loved. But, that’s all I really did. And so I just kind of kept making it work. And so that was kind of who I was, I moved back home because I needed the support. And then I went to university, and I did it properly. The next time, I got accommodations, like extra time on tests, I wasn’t needed to be present in school, as long as I was present with my work. I got extra time on assignments, if needed. There’s lots of different accommodations. I got a quiet room, when I wrote tests. I got a memory sheet, it’s like, just like a page of paper that I would make before the exam, and I would get it that to the professor, and they would sign it off and tell me if it was good to go or not. And it wasn’t like a cheat sheet, it was more like words, just reminders of words. Because my memory– sometimes I’d walk into an exam and couldn’t remember anything. And like, really couldn’t remember anything. So, the word cheat really helped me kind of like encourage my memory to work. And so I did a lot of that.

And so I did graduate university. Before I graduated university, I attempted suicide. And that is because my mental health through all this was really hard, like very, very hard. I had a really hard time, because the headaches didn’t stop. You know, it just was a very long time for me to deal with being ill, my life had completely changed. Every life plan that I had kept getting rerouted. I wanted to be a show jumper that was on the track– had to change that. I wanted to be a lawyer– had to change that, couldn’t read. All these different things kept piling on, and the pain was unbearable. And I still couldn’t read by the end of university, which is really confusing. But that’s kind of how it went, you know, those chapter readings they give you, I didn’t do those. So, that’s kind of how university went for me.

And so after I attempted suicide, I got put into mandatory therapy. And what mandatory therapy did was save my life. And it saved my life in a way that I knew how to use tools to handle the spiraling thoughts, and I call them spiraling thoughts because it’s so easy to start them. It could be from a thought you have while driving down the road, it could be from something you see on social media, it could be from a comment from a friend. And it starts this wave of emotion and pain and thoughts from, “Why am I doing this? This is really severe. Who wants to live this way?” All these types of things, they just get out of control. And so that spiral starts and I didn’t know how to get that spiral to stop. And that’s what, you know, therapy really allowed me to do, work through different methods.

One of my favorites is pick an object that you can see, for example, I could pick, I have a big water cup next to me. And you would start really basic with maybe the color is gray. And then you could go the color is gray, but it has a black top. And you could start with the circles and it has this many faces, and all these types of things– it has writing on it, and you just get more and more detail as you go. And doing that kind of brings you into the moment. It’s a lot of mindfulness work. And it really helped me get through this because I didn’t know how to get those thoughts to stop, but this allowed me to. And it’s something that used to take like days to get the mental health depression wave to stop and now it’s minutes. So it’s definitely something worth getting into. I really recommend the accommodations in school like I talked about, and I really recommend therapy and talk therapy. We’re so busy doing vestibular therapy, eye therapy, acupuncture, massage, you know, all these things for our bodies. But we have to remember that our minds are just as affected by all of this as everything else. So don’t forget that part.

And, you know, I’ve changed a lot. And during all this, I had a great group of friends. I had a very supportive partner. I had great parents, all these people around me, most of them are still around me. And it didn’t really make a big difference, for me. You think it would, but it didn’t. I think it probably made a difference in the long run. But when I was going through all this, I didn’t care. I had a ton of anger and problems like that. And I just lashed out at them all the time. And I was honestly kind of awful. And so I’ve apologized to them a lot since then. And I’m very grateful that they were there. They all do different things. They all have different roles in a way on how they helped me But, you know, all of this has been a long time. This has been 10 years for me, which is a long time, compared to many.

And, now my whole life has changed from this, my career has changed. As you can see, I’m sitting in a podcast studio. I have a cookbook behind me. I just wrote another book on 101 post-concussion life tips. And, you know, I still have fears of getting hurt again, but I had to get to a point where my mental health was more important than that. And as someone who is a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, a little bit of someone who likes to be, you know, out there doing things all day, all the time. This has really, you know, changed the way I have to think when I do things. For example, I ride dirt bikes now, which seems crazy after a concussion, and a lot of them and after how sick I was. But you know I have to do something for me. And I think that’s really important.

You know, I have a lot of different goals when it comes to all this. And that has to do with me sharing my story, sharing other people’s stories, helping survivors get better. I kind of designated my entire life to Post Concussion Inc, which is an entire company designated to helping concussion survivors in any way that I can. And, you know, for all of this, there’s a ton of advice I could give…I could go on for hours. I could go on for hours about my story, if I really went deep into all of it, because it’s actually a lot longer than what I just shared. But, my number one thing is always: take it one day at a time. Because if you don’t, this can be really long, and really hard to get through.

So, if you take it one day at a time, it really can help you get through every moment. Because I always think, like, if you think about tomorrow, and you think it’s gonna be bad, then it’s gonna make that a bad day. And I’m saying it could be a bad day anyways, that’s part of being ill. I have four chronic illnesses now. I know all about this. But, it can make a really big difference if you try to live today. For example, you have a really bad headache today. Okay, today’s really bad. So we’re going to rest today, we’re going to do things that we can, but that doesn’t mean tomorrow has to be. So that can be really helpful. Tracking your symptoms, therapy support groups, there’s so many things out there for concussion survivors if you know how to look.

And of course, I’m sure you can reach out to Eliana if you’ve listened to this and get my contact information to get help. But I just wanted to share this quick mini version of my story for the Concussion Box and you can submit yours on the Concussion Box too on concussion box.org.

And, you know, get through this, you can do it. And I can tell you that– that you can do it– because I’ve done it. And I can only say that because I did get through it and it was very tough. But I believe you can too.