Samantha W. Transcript

Hi, my name’s Samantha Warskid, and I’m a registered acupuncturist at the Movement Company in Ottawa, Canada.

I wanted to tell you first of all my concussion story, and then why I’m passionate about treating it so. I was an elite cyclist, and of course, in cycling there’s lots of crashes, and I hit my head pretty hard twice, and actually my recovery seemed to be pretty good from both of them. And at that time this was in the eighties and nineties.

The protocol was basically get somebody to wake you up every half hour at night. And that was basically it and go on your way. But we also didn’t have lots of devices. And TV, even TV, wasn’t a big thing. So, I don’t know why that was better recovery than I’m seeing in people now. 

People, I find, are really struggling, struggling with concussion. But after, I had to retire from cycling because I developed an autoimmune disease Lupus and I had to struggle through recovering through that myself.

And I kind of equate the two in that Lupus is autoimmune disease, and I would say there’s autoimmune elements in Post Concussion Syndrome, and I think that experience of going through very serious illness gave me the empathy for people who are struggling with something that’s unseen and also difficult.

So that’s how, through a long, winding way, I became first an applied movement, neurology, practitioner, and then acupuncturist. And I really love treating people with post confession, sis syndrome, because I don’t think they’re well served in my town.

And they don’t seem to have a lot of options. So I tend to treat mostly women. I find actually, it’s a lot of women who suffer from post concussion and they struggle with it in a different way. And maybe I’m just like a girls’ girl also. So I really like working with women better. So, I always feel like patients should go to people they connect with first–it doesn’t matter what their qualifications are. If you can’t communicate well with your practitioner, then it’s not worth it, even though they may be the best practitioner in the world. It’s not worth it. 

So I tend to click with women and I empathize with their struggle with concussion. Because I know what it’s like to have kids and a partner and a job, and trying to struggle with your health. And I find a lot of these women, they’re not getting great advice sometimes they’re sort of told that, after 3 years, they’re done. That’s where they’re at. And I truly don’t believe that. I think we can all continue healing through at different paces through our whole injuries or illnesses, they can be healed. It just needs the right direction and a lot of effort like it’s hard. It’s not an easy thing. But I think one woman I’m thinking about, she had a job where she was on the computer a lot. And she just had this really random accident where she hit her head, and she had a lot of concussion symptoms. And she did Physio a lot got better, and then she thought she could go back to 8 hours on the computer again right away. And what I found I was like my treatments were very helpful, but I think one of the most helpful things I gave her was control over her, her recovery. And one thing that I did that gave her that control was saying, “Look, if you had been a weight lifter and weight lifted 200 pounds. You broke your leg. You had to go to rehab. You don’t start back at 200 pounds. You start at 45 again, and you work your way up.” And that’s what a lot of people with brain injuries don’t realize is that it’s exactly like any other injury. You can’t go from 0 to 100% right away.

But if you have a really strong plan of recovery, and you kind of understand there’s gonna be ups and downs and backwards and forwards. But you have your eye on what the recovery is going to be like, and what you’re going to be like. You can make your steps there. And one thing I have found with a lot of women I treat is the family doesn’t understand this as well. They’re used to having their mom do tons of things for them or their partners used to their wife or partner being like fully present all the time, and they have to start chipping in again. And I think patients kinda have to get their practitioner to help them with that sometimes.

And again, it’s like if you broke your leg, you’re not gonna be grocery shopping and driving a car and picking up the kids, and it’s just the same thing you can do. Ha! You have to plan out what you can do and give over the things you can’t do to somebody else for the moment. It’s not forever. And I like to tell people that it’s just in this period of recovery that you’re gonna have to give over certain duties, and then you can slowly add them back in. and I guess I find it a little surprising that people don’t understand that a brain injury is recorded as something very different from just a physical injury. And they’re kind of the same. I mean there’s probably different kinds of ups and downs, but it takes time, and it takes effort.

And somebody who’s gonna give you control over what you can and can’t do and control over your healing. So, I guess that’s what I want a lot of people to realize is that you definitely can heal from this and that. You need the understanding of how you can heal yourself.

And that’s it.