Vanessa C. Transcript

Hi, my name is Vanessa. I am 35 years old. I am a physical therapist, and I specialize in sports medicine, treating concussions. I have been treating concussions for the last almost four years now.

I myself I’ve had two concussions. My first one was when I was 19 years old. I was on my way home from a friend’s house. It was not too late at night, it was like nine/9:30. And I was at a red light. And when the light turned green, I started to go and I just had a feeling that somebody was going to hit me. It just flashed before happened really.

There was a guy who was driving an SUV, and he was going about 50, and ran the red light because he was looking at the gas prices is was what he said.

So my car was totaled, and my head, in the accident, hit the side window. Driver side, so the left side of my head since I was T boned and hid from the right. And I remember the fire crew. The ambulance came. The paramedics were picking shards of glass out of my hair, off my scalp, and even like into my clothes.

It was a really scary experience. I didn’t go to the doctor because this was my first experience in a major car accident. I was 19. And I was so scared to go to the hospital to get everything checked because I was scared of having like this huge hospital bill. And anyway, I probably looking back had a concussion.

I started to not do well in school; things just seemed a little bit more challenging in class.

I was doing a lot of dance. I was in a dance company through my junior college and I was just having a really hard time picking up the routines and trying to learn the choreography.

I also just felt really angry, almost hormonal, like I was having PMS or something, but I wasn’t.

After probably a month or two things started just turning around for me. I started to get better. But I don’t think I really recognized what was going on after the accident. I think I just thought oh, I’m shaken up and whatever, I’ll get over it. So thankfully I did get over it. I think had I gone to physical therapy, or had I received some help, I think I would have been able to move on a little bit sooner from all of that.

My second accident was more recent. I was in another motor vehicle accident. I was at work and I went out to move my car. And when I went to move my car my battery died. And so my husband and father in law came and jumped my car, but to keep it running they took my car and then my husband left me our truck. We’ve got a really big diesel truck.

And so when I left work that day, I was driving the truck home, and this is from Walnut Creek to Vacaville. And this was during the rainy season. And there was a wind advisory on the Martinez bridge that day. It was a Saturday and it was definitely around like 435 ish.

And so as I’m going through the toll plaza through fast track – where fast track is on like the left side, and I was trying to get over to the right side because I’m trying to get on to the 680 to get to the 80.

So I was in lane two, counting from the left. And there was a guy in a truck that was pulling like an airstream trailer thing and he was in lane four. And we both were trying to get over to lane three and as we both signaled and we both looked in our blind spots and started moving over but then saw each other in our blind spots and swerved to avoid a collision. I swerved hard enough where I hit some water and hydroplaned our really big tall truck. It’s a four wheel drive, so those are taller and the wind just caught my truck and I spun out and I remember looking at oncoming traffic as I completely lost control of the truck, and the tailgate, the backside of the truck hit the divide. I’m looking back at the accident, had I rolled, which a lot of these four wheel drive trucks, a lot of the top heavy vehicles can roll, I would have definitely rolled off the bridge and died that night.

Of course I was very shaken up. I was able to get home and rest and I knew probably the day after that I sustained another concussion and whiplash. This time around I have a one year old and I will tell you that trying to recover from a concussion and having a one year old is a little challenging since they will go from angel to screaming devil child within like five seconds.

So I got a lot of help after this accident and my family came to help me with the toddler. My husband was endless help emotionally and logistically for me. And I started my own concussion protocol, if you will, on my self.

So I avoided electronic devices after eight o’clock at night. I would not go on my phone. I would not go on the computer, not watch TV. I avoided doing too much reading stuff when it would bother my eyes. So like if I went grocery shopping, I’d be careful of reading too much of the signs. And definitely driving – I was very careful of just doing too much.

I was walking every day. I made it a religious routine for myself to walk every day, which I’m really glad I did. Sometimes I really didn’t want to do it but I did it.

I also really – this really helped me: meditation.I would listen to a guided meditation. It’s like a downloadable app. And I would just sit and concentrate on my breathing and think about like, each part of my body relaxing so it helped me kind of focus in on you know, thinking of my toes relaxing and my feet relaxing and relaxing. And the other thing that I practiced was some squared breathing that I learned as a technique to teach my concussion patients. So what that was, was for me to inhale for five seconds. And then hold my breath for five seconds, and exhale for five seconds and then hold your breath for five seconds. And this can vary, sometimes I did it for about four seconds. But this is something I would teach my patients and it just really helped my whole system calm down.

The biggest thing that I noticed in general, after this second concussion was that I really felt out of my body. I didn’t feel like I was one thing, one entity. I really felt not a part of me and not a part of this world. It’s really funky and I sound ridiculous saying that, but it was very odd being in like Twilight Zone feeling, or I was not a part of this world, if you will. Very dissociated. And that was really emotionally hard with my relationships with like my husband and my child and my family.

I knew it would be getting better and I just kept telling myself that I had to give myself this time to heal. My brain just sustained a trauma physically and emotionally and I need to give myself that time to heal. And what I tend to see with people, and my patients who tend to be younger, between the ages of 13 and 18, is that they do too much and they go back too soon. Like I can’t imagine, even though I have a toddler and that was challenging, I can’t imagine what it is like for these teenagers with the pressures of trying to get into college and taking their ACT and finishing their AP courses and taking these tests. I can’t imagine that pressure on me with going through the healing process of a concussion. There definitely needs to be time you give yourself and you have to make sure you advocate for yourself that you need this time to heal. That’s really important.

So those are my stories and I hope that was an interesting little bit for me to share with you guys.