Claire E. Transcript
It was November 8, 2016. And that was the second night of high school soccer tryouts my freshman year of high school. And it was also election night.
So I had been playing soccer since I was seven years old. And when I was about 12, I swapped over to competitive, and for the year and a half leading up to soccer up to those soccer tryouts freshman year, I was training like crazy. I was in really good shape, I had moved up in all these teams, and my ultimate goal was to play for my high school team.
So the first night of tryouts went fine, which, which is a little bit of an unusual feeling to have after tryouts. Usually people feel super crappy. But I was like, okay, good enough. And then, in the second night of tryouts, as we were warming up – there’s a certain stretch where like, you touch your toes and you kick one leg back, and it gets your hamstring. So every time I’ve ever done that stretch, I’ve been like haha, wouldn’t it be funny if someone got kicked like that’d be really rough. And of course, I got kicked.
So I stepped off to the side that was right in my temple with the cleat of the girl in front of me. I was like, whoa. And I knelt down. Woah.. Some memories are coming back now. And this girl Emma, who had known me since I was really little, and came up to me was like, “Ellie, are you okay? Are you okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” So I’ve tried took a minute and like the initial pain of just like being kicked kind of underwear got right back onto warmups, and we did our first round of scrimmages. And as I played, I don’t I don’t really know how to describe it, just something felt wrong. And I wasn’t sure if it was just like me being overdramatic since it’s tryouts and, and everything, but I stopped playing and I called my dad and he came to pick me up and I burst into tears. This couldn’t be happening to me, like I had worked up to these tryouts. How could I leave tryouts midway through?
He took me home. And what I went home to was a scene of my family and two other families that are super close family friends all in the TV room in my house, sitting down watching the elections. And you had my dad he does this thing or he rubs his nose when he’s anxious, rubbing his nose and my brother like checking off all the schools that he was applying to that had now gone officials voting for Trump. So that night, I got a concussion and Donald Trump got elected president.
Anyways, I woke up the next morning and went into my parents room, it was like something doesn’t feel right, but I’m gonna go to school maybe it’ll feel better in a couple of hours. And if I miss school, I, I can’t go to tryouts (that’s a rule at my school). So I went to school, and it was in my acting class when we were reading plays. And I realized I couldn’t read. I don’t even know how to describe that feeling. Like, like just the words didn’t. Like we were trying to read out loud and I couldn’t read. And after that class was on my way to my French class, I just like, sat down and in the hallway and lost it. And one of my good friends found me and walked me to the office. My mom picked me up took me to the doctor. And we just went to my pediatrician, and she checked me out and was like, yep, you’ve got a concussion. You should be better in a week. And I was devastated. That meant I would need to skip tryouts. And I was like, okay, a week. We’ll figure this out. The coaches are flexible.
So it didn’t take a week. So, one month later, and I still was not back at school. There were headaches every day and they weren’t like terrible headaches, but they were always there. They were debilitating. And I would kind of just lie down on the couch and listen to audiobooks. That was pretty much the only thing I could do. Because they couldn’t hold focus in a conversation I couldn’t read. Doctors told me I shouldn’t look at a screen. I wasn’t doing school. I had dropped soccer completely. No more piano. The one thing I was holding on to was I was in the school musical, Legally Blonde, at that point. And I knew for myself that if I dropped everything completely, I would just be super depressed, so I held on to the musical.
And I kept on making these schedules of when I thought I would recover because there was this whole protocol with the school that you have to go through. So I was like, okay, if I recover by this date, then I could do the four day recovery protocol that the school will make me do and then tryouts for two days, and then I’ll be good. And I kept on like making a new schedule and rescheduling and rescheduling, and it just kept on going and going.
So a little, yeah, about one month in, it was my birthday and I thought oh my gosh, I was back in school just back in school at that point, and I was like, Well, what a way to spend my birthday can’t have a party because I don’t have brain space for that. So this is gonna be the worst birthday ever. And I got to school in the morning and two of my best friends – they were at school with 15, is was my 15th birthday, they had 15 individual bags, each one with a different pair of fun socks which are my favorite things ever. In this big purple stuffed animal monkey and I have a collection of monkeys in the griddle using hadn’t heard they say they baked me a cake. In that lunch that day. My mom came bringing my food from my favorite restaurant in TED organized the acapella group at school to serenade me with Happy Birthday through the hallways. And so there I was carrying 15 bags of gifts and a giant monkey being serenaded as I walked to meet my friends who had a cake for me. So it turned out to be one of the best birthdays ever. Just because, I don’t know, I think my expectations were so low and the people in my life like my friends and family just like really, really pulled through for me. So that kind of just goes to show that even when you think it’s all it’s all gone there are good days, there will always be good days.
So but the concussion persisted, so my concussion lasted a year, the symptoms, the worst of it was definitely the first few months. So I saw a lot of doctors we saw neurologists we saw sports medicine doctors, a couple sports medicine doctors. There was appointment that sticks out, this was like one of the hardest moments for me, where the doctor who I was seeing in that appointment, grabbed my head rule number one you never get near the head of someone with a concussion there’s a lot of fear and kind of PTSD that goes on with that. But put their hands on my head and said you are anxious with the capital A. And I was just like wow, thanks for that. Like I needed to know that. Yes, I know. I’m anxious. I know this whole thing has made me anxious things for touching my head and making me more anxious. That was just like that was one of the real low points. It felt condescending and triggered symptoms and further anxiety.
But through those doctor’s appointments, I was recommended to go to physical therapy for the brain, which I didn’t know existed before. And that’s when I met my physical therapist Vanessa. And she was amazing. She was patient ,and she taught me how to be patient. For a while, I was seeing her two times a week. For a few months. I was seeing doctors more than I saw my friends. But Vanessa was also a friend and just like helped me through the whole process did like eye exercises, balance exercises, and drempt with me about going back to soccer. And that was especially important because I did still have friends that it’s like, well, I had a concussion. I mean, as is very clear from how they treated me on my birthday, but I didn’t really feel like I could be authentic with them. I mean for one because I couldn’t really focus and have conversations like I like to, but also I felt like I couldn’t be fun. Like I I couldn’t enjoy going out and I couldn’t watch a movie and I guess I just didn’t want to burden them so I didn’t ask them for what I needed which was I guess to just have someone sit with me and snuggle not talk listen to an audio book with me maybe because that’s about what I could do with my friends. But my dog, Belle, kind of filled in that role of seeing me and my authentic struggle, whatever you want to call it. So and another just like a funny tidbit when I would tell people that I had a concussion, like their first reaction was to try to connect to be like, Oh, I know someone over there who had this that that and I was just like, wow, I don’t care. I don’t care because I didn’t want to know those stories. It just didn’t feel authentic. Like the expectation was that I wanted to talk about it. And it was actually a time in my life when I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want it to be the only thing that defined me. I wanted to talk about anything else.
But anyways, there were two people who were my peers who I did want to talk about it with. The first one was Lena so she was two years older, is two years older than I am and she also had a pretty serious concussion. And we just have like one or two conversations, but she just like, served as the little light at the end of the tunnel of like, oh, you can get through it and be a wonderful, lovely, healthy person. I remember there was one time there was a rally at school and those are super loud in the gym. And I was like, oh my goodness, I cannot go in. And I actually just coincidentally ran into Lena outside of the rally and talked with her and she was like, “do you want to skip the rally?” So she and I just sat right outside and played cards during the whole entire valley, and she just got it. I didn’t need to explain it to her.
And then the next person was Charlotte. Charlotte was two years younger than me. And as I was nearing the end of my recovery process, Charlotte had just gotten a concussion. And I was kind of able to fill the role that Lena filled for me for Charlotte. And that was just a really fulfilling feeling.
So my symptoms… Yeah, yeah, it was mostly just like dough kind of pounding headaches. Sometimes I’d feel dizzy. Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to remember stuff. It’s just a feeling of like your brain’s not it’s not working. But I still try to do as many things as I could. I went to summer camp. And I went as like I went back to school and teachers made accommodations for me. My counselors really helped me but I still tried to learn everything that I could. And I performed in the musical. And I’m not saying that the best thing to do is to push through. What I am saying is that concussion can push people to give up everything in their life. And you don’t have to give up everything. Actually, I’d say you have to not give up everything. You got to look for the things that you can hold on to. And then there are things that that came later like, like I would never have met Vanessa. If I hadn’t had the concussion and then that’s a relationship that I’ve maintained years after being cleared. And, and I wouldn’t have had that magical birthday if I didn’t have the concussion and I wouldn’t have had those experiences with Lena and Charlotte. But I’m not trying to say that it all happened for a reason and I’m glad it happened. It actually really frustrates me when people say that. Because it happened and it sucked. It completely sucked but it happened. So I take what I can learn from that and that that doesn’t mean that I’m glad it happened. But it does mean that I learned from it.
Yeah, so what I would say to anyone who’s sitting on the couch right now it’s number one, go to physical therapy. It wasn’t just like Vanessa, but Vanessa was a huge part of it. But it just like gave me some stability and had me feeling like I was going somewhere moving somewhere making some progress. So that’s something that I did do that I would recommend is something that I didn’t do. Reach out to your friends and your family, ask them for what you actually need. Because you shouldn’t need to push through and put yourself in pain around the people you love if what you need is to is to take a nap but you miss your friends too. Then a good friend will come and take a nap with you, and you never know until you ask so so ask for help. And it will it will end. And you’ll be you’ll be just fine.