Maddison K. Transcript

I am Maddison Knafel, a concussion and TBI survivor. Excited to share my story today.

I honestly can’t even tell you how old I was when I got my first concussion. It was kind of a repeat incident for me, being a very aggressive and maybe a bit of a klutz as a child. But by the end I have had 11 concussions. That’s a big number, a number that most people don’t hear when it comes to concussions because thankfully our society doesn’t allow us to get to that point now.

But ultimately, the concussion that changed my life, that truly was diagnosed as a traumatic brain injury, was in, I believe, September of 2016. I was playing soccer. I was a three-sport athlete: soccer, basketball, and softball. And on this day I was playing soccer and I scrimmaged against my own team. And one of my teammates—I had the ball and she wanted the ball and took me out.

I dove headfirst into the ground, left an actual hole with my head. And I, of course, being as aggressive and driven as I was, said, oh, I’m fine, I’m perfectly fine, it’s okay. Our trainer made me go get checked out and they’re like, oh, it’s a mild concussion, just take a day off and go back to practice after.

And thankfully, the school that I went to did do concussion testing with the digital test, and we had to do it prior to season. And if you got any reported head injuries, you had to retake it before they would release you, even with medical release. And so thankfully this test, when I retook it, did not come back accurate.

So they would not let me go back to sports, and I quickly realized that I wasn’t at my full capacity, that something was wrong. I was having increased headaches, my retention of information had gone down. And so we went and saw my family provider. Again, concussions—nobody wants to talk about them and treat them and diagnose them—and he was like, oh, you’re fine, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I continued to have issues, and so we eventually ended up going to Cincinnati Children’s and got an actual diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. I ended up being off of school, so this was about a two-week period of time between concussion happening and actually getting a true diagnosis and realizing something’s not right.

At that point I went off of school and I was on no school for almost two months, and then half days of school for almost six months. I was going to Cincinnati Children’s once a week for therapy, neurology appointments, all sorts of different treatments. And I also was shutting myself off from the entire world.

I lost who I was. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I had multiple personalities. I was terrified of everything. I went from being someone that was not scared of a single thing, completely fearless, to being truly afraid of my own shadow. I would not go anywhere at night.

My parents were divorced and my dad was my best friend. I always wanted to go to his house, and I remember I was supposed to go one day to go work cattle, and I had a literal tantrum meltdown like a 3-year-old that I absolutely did not want to go to my dad’s. And normally, prior to concussion Maddie, that was my favorite thing to do, and that’s when my mom was like, something is really not right.

And so we continued to do the therapy and all of the work, but through that, there’s nothing that makes you feel more alone than that kind of invisible injury. Those little things, like obviously my mom noticed like, okay, this isn’t Maddie, something is wrong, but all the people in your sports teams, in your classes know.

Everyone’s like, oh, you’re just faking it, you don’t want to practice, you just went off school because there’s nothing that they can physically see. In a broken leg, somebody can see the cast and know that something’s wrong. A concussion, it’s a mental battle for yourself, and then you’re getting bullied or made fun of or mocked at the same time.

When you can’t even figure out what’s wrong yourself and you’re trying to downplay it, and that’s how I ended up with 11, is because I had multiple from sports, but I downplayed them and I maybe didn’t tell the school when they happened, or I didn’t tell the doctor when, vice versa. I was able to play the system because sports was so important to me, and I thought just like everyone else, oh, it’s just a bump to the head.

Everyone, if I get a bruise on my leg or on my brain, until this. Then I learned this really does impact your entire life. And it took me truly six months to even feel somewhat normal, but I would say I was two years post that concussion before I truly felt any bit of my normal self.

So from that concussion I was able to return for basketball season. Just at the end in January, I played two games, and actually in the second game I was fighting for a ball, standing jump ball they called it. And when they called it, I released and jerked my head, essentially like a whiplash motion, and that gave me a concussion.

I didn’t even have any impact. I got a concussion just from that movement, and that was the final straw. That was it. They had told me prior, like, if you get any more concussions, you’re done, you’ll not be able to play. And so that was just enough to trigger it again.

And at that point I made the decision that I’m graduating high school early then, that there was no point in me continuing being in high school if I couldn’t play sports. That was the only reason I was there anyway. I had already noticed a decline in my grades.

I went from a 4.3 GPA and being eighth in my class to a 3.7 GPA, and I ended up graduating at 18th in my class, but still a very big jump for somebody that was a top performer and had never experienced anything but an A and an A plus in their life to somebody that really had to work to just maintain what I had already had.

And so for me, that really made me nervous because I had always thought I was going to be a veterinarian, and that was not going to cut it for vet school. And so through all this I realized, obviously education-wise I wasn’t as capable as I once was, but also my life looked different and what I thought I wanted looked different.

And so I actually had decided to pursue radiology because through my concussion and injury I was touched by so many of the radiology techs that were a part of my journey, and the amount of CT scans and different things that they helped me with, and so many of them were just so kind and really impacting my journey so positively that I decided to pursue that.

So I ended up graduating high school a semester early, which shows that even though my education was different, I still was able to persevere and get through it, even though it was harder and it looked different. Sometimes living with a TBI just means modifying your life. It doesn’t mean that it has to change completely, but sometimes there’s compromises that have to be made.

And I also went to a tech school, and so everything was on—I never had a textbook, everything was on computer. And so that was hard because at that time it was still very much like no tech, dark rooms only. And so my education just had to look different.

So I graduated a semester early and started college immediately at IUSB and was pursuing radiology. And this is when it starts, you start seeing the wins and the upside, which is really cool. I did 22 credit hours my first semester at college. That is a lot.

I did three anatomy classes in one semester. It was really hard. But the one thing, and I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but the one thing that came out of the concussion was I got really good at memorizing because the memory is not there, right? We all know your memory is not the same, but you can memorize long enough to take an exam.

And that’s what I learned, is I can get through anything if I can do it in a week. And unfortunately I still have that to an extent today. After lots of repetition I can remember something long term, but nothing is like I hear it once and it’s there forever anymore.

So I did those 22 credit hours and I got into the radiology program actually my first official semester of college. So my freshman year I was in the radiology program. Most people get it in junior year. So that was when my success story really started coming back and I finally started to feel like myself.

I was able to fulfill that drive that I always had. I’m an extremely competitive person, hence the 11 concussions. I always wanted to be the best. I always wanted to show everyone that I could do whatever they tell me I can’t. And so that really helped me feel like myself again, to be able to say, okay, I did it, I’m here, I did everything that you guys thought I couldn’t, and I defied the odds.

And so I finished my radiology program and I actually worked in radiology for six years. It was very fulfilling. I really enjoyed it, but life took me a different path and something that I’ve learned that I would be able to impact more people from.

And so now I actually run a financial planning practice and impact people daily. And it’s really cool because this is something I never thought that if you would have asked Maddie that was in the middle of all of that, in the education struggles that I was going through, and just when the light was really dark, I never would have thought that I would be in the position owning a business and managing people’s money and having the trust and confidence in myself and in others that I have now, waking up every day excited knowing that there is more ahead.

It’s a hard journey, and truly there’s—I’ve been through a lot. My parents went through a divorce. I’ve been through a lot in life, but there was nothing that felt as heavy and alone as navigating a traumatic brain injury because truly, unless somebody has experienced it, there’s nothing that anyone can say or do that compares to the loneliness that you feel in it, because it truly is that invisible injury.

And so I just hope my story can give you hope that after the dark days, the sun does come back and that you can still be successful, even if you have to compromise and modify what you thought your future was going to look like or the way that you get there. Sometimes you can still get there.

You just have to change the path that takes you there. And for me, it definitely looked a lot different than I thought it was going to look, but I would not change a single part of my journey. I’m so grateful for the experiences and even the injuries that came with it because I truly would not be the same person.

And I think my drive looks even—I’m even more driven now to prove that my TBI doesn’t identify who I am. It’s not a title.