Caroline T.

Caroline T. Transcript

My name is Caroline Tracy, I am a freshman at Wesleyan University and had a mild concussion in mid-late March of 2024. Before my concussion, I have always struggled with mental illness and a lot of my time, at school was spent just doing a lot of work and trying to get enough sleep. I did not really get enough sleep and then the concussion changed how I think about schoolwork, sleep, rest, and everything.  

It was at the end of spring break when my concussion occurred. I just got out of an Uber, and I was getting everyone’s suitcases out of Uber and I closed the trunk, but I forgot my head was still inside the trunk, and the trunk hit my head. We were outside, a really busy train station, I did not really have time to react. I do not think I cried, but I was in a lot of pain. I walked out of the busy intersection and into the train station and then we had a three-hour train ride. I cannot usually sleep on trains, but I fell asleep for two to three hours. That was my brain’s way of protecting myself after the concussion. I was just knocked out until my friend woke me up. I really think that helped me and I’m really glad that I had that time to sleep. I did not really have any immediate symptoms except for pain. It is hard to remember now, but I remember I would tell one of my good friends about it and how it felt, and I was telling them how it was just hard to remember a lot of the things that happened around the time. I had hit my head earlier in January while I was skiing but this one felt different. 

I was feeling dizzy, and I just did not really feel good. I felt tired and there were a lot of concussion symptoms that I felt so I went to Davidson Health Center, which is the health center on campus at Wesleyan and it was helpful. They almost immediately diagnosed me with a mild concussion, and I remember, being okay, that makes sense. They told me to rest. I remember the day; I was trying to do my work and could barely do it even though I was motivated. However, nothing made sense. It was taking a long time, and I could not understand any part of it. This difficulty was one of the main reasons I decided to go.  

After I was diagnosed, they told me to rest. That was really hard for me because I spend about nine hours a day, doing homework every day on top of classes and stuff. It was hard to rest. I was caught up on all my work and it was right after spring break. Half the days after I was recovering from my concussion was spending a lot of time resting and then I would go to the library for three hours a day and try my hardest to do work. I remember I emailed all my professors about what happened, and the health center gave me an accommodations letter and they also had me come in for appointments. That was really helpful. They gave me a letter that was sent to all my professors and the dean of the college. All my professors gave me extensions, but there was one time that I had to finish an assignment and I spent five hours doing it and I had such a bad headache the entire time and at the end I was going to throw up. I had such a bad headache, and it was really hard for me to stop because I was afraid, I was going to get a lot of points off if I didn’t finish the assignment. Then my professor told me she just forgot to email me which was a little bit annoying. If I could go back and change that, I would definitely. 

You just have to take resting seriously. I tried to take resting as seriously as I could. Especially since I do not really take rest or sleep seriously in my day-to-day life. I usually just prioritize my schoolwork. Recovery was surprisingly quick. I got concussion on Saturday of the week; I got diagnosed on Monday and I was better by the next Friday. I still need to rest a bit more. One of the biggest things that happened was spending a lot of time resting. The next week I had to do 1.75 weeks’ worth of homework in one week and that was insane because I was doing work for 10 to 12 hours a day. Staying up till late in the night and into the morning. All my teachers picked up on their classwork. Due to the concussion, I started the second half of the semester pretty behind and I always had to be playing catch up and it made the semester pretty difficult.  

This part of the semester after my concussion has been really difficult for me in terms of mental health, schoolwork, time management and sleeping. My friends have been pretty worried about my mental health and the concussion set me back at the beginning. Everything just snowballed after the concussion, but my friends and family were very supportive. They would help me write emails. I have a really good friend and they are good at writing, I asked them to do that. They were good advocates, and all my professors were really kind. Whenever I told them about my concussion, they would listen and help.

The biggest roadblock in terms of recovery was my own brain, especially because I have really severe OCD. It was really hard to give myself a break. One thing I did do, that I recommend, if anyone is having trouble, trying to figure out how to rest I just convinced myself that I would permanently damage my brain if I did not rest. I do not know if that was a good idea or not, but that did get me to rest. It was really hard for me to rest and if I could go back, I would rest more. I would talk to my professors more even though that would have probably set me behind more. I’m not sure if I have memory problems because of the concussion but I definitely have been struggling more this semester. Now, in my life I prioritize rest more, even though it is challenging! 

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