When Libby Lost Her Smile Naomi Parker, Strategic Book Group Page 1 of 4

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Chapter 1 – It’s just a concussion

I never thought I’d get tired of hearing this one innocent little phrase, “It’s just a concussion.” Maybe it was the “just a” part that bothered me, or possibly it’s because the word “concussion” itself is such a broad term. It can cover anything from getting a slight bump on the head that leaves a person with a headache for a couple days, to almost total memory loss, confusion, mind boggling pressure headaches and cognitive impairments that can last for years. It was something I never really thought that much about except on the odd occasion when someone I knew was in an accident and I was told “It’s just a concussion” almost making light of the fact they’d been in an accident.

My husband Dave and I raised two very active boys who played football and rode bikes without helmets. Back then, like seatbelts, it wasn’t something most people thought about. I didn’t mind the seat belt laws or the bike helmet laws. Once they were in effect I followed them, and to me the laws made sense, but gosh, when I was a kid, or our boys were kids, we just hopped in the car or on a bike without any thought of protection.

A couple months before Dave and I were married, he took a fall at work, landing on his head, on a concrete pad, eight feet below. Dave broke his knee in the fall, and sustained a concussion. We joked about his hard head and in all honesty, didn’t think much about it because he didn’t seem to have any adverse effects, other than a mild headache. He wore a cast from toe to hip for six weeks and walked with a cane for another month after that, and that was that.

It actually became a reality again when our oldest boy Peyton got a concussion during a high school football game. Two players from the opposing side double teamed him, hitting him so hard his helmet flew off. As a sport’s mom, it was my worst nightmare watching my son go limp, holding my breath waiting to see movement, forcing myself to stay rooted to my seat and not run foolishly out on the field. I wait as the coaches run out and kneel over my still motionless baby boy and then yes, there it is, movement, as slight as it is, it allows me to let out the breath I’d been holding. I relax a little as he walks unassisted beside the coaches to the sidelines.

“Wait, what’s Peyton doing rolling around on the ground? That’s not right,” I think to myself. The coaches call me down from my seat on the bleachers to see what I think because they too see the change. My always cool, popular, wouldn’t be caught dead doing something that would draw anything but admiration in his direction, son, was crawling around on the ground, spitting streams of water into the air on the sidelines.

My fears were again confirmed, when the son I’d never heard a curse word out of, looked me directly in the eye and said scathingly “What the Hell are you doing here? Mom, you’re embarrassing me, you’re not supposed to be down here!”

“The coach asked me to come down to make sure you’re OK.” I defended myself as Peyton glared at me. One of his biggest fears at sixteen wasn’t being injured, but being embarrassed by Dad or Mom.

When the coaches asked him questions like “Who’s the president of the United States?” to see if he could answer them knowledgeably, Peyton rolled his eyes and spat out, “Duh, George Washington!”

He went back out on the field because he insisted he was fine, only to have the quarterback call a time out from the huddle, take my son by the arm and walk him back to the sidelines. Our boy, who lived and breathed football, couldn’t remember how to execute his favorite play.

We did what we thought was the right thing and got him checked out at the local ER and then took him home and watched over him for a couple days until he seemed to act “normal” again. We let him go back out on the field like so many other parents do with their athletic children, as soon as we felt he was OK. We didn’t connect, at the time that he began having migraines, or that maybe, just maybe, there should have been something in place that stops athletes from going back out on the field too soon and risking a second and possible permanent injury. I mean, for goodness sake, “It’s just a concussion.”

We were lucky. Peyton continued to play football, broke school records for rushing yards and got to live out his dream, at sixteen, to be the best running back on his team. Other than the occasional migraine, he didn’t seem to suffer any long term effects. He did eventually tell me that he answered the president question on the field that way because he really couldn’t remember who was president and didn’t want the coaches to know.

A year later, I got to experience first hand what a concussion felt like too when my car was rear-ended by a truck, while I was stopped for a school bus letting out children. I didn’t go to the hospital. I just remember waking up from a strange blackness with my head on the steering wheel and thinking; “Oh, my head hurts.” I don’t even think I consciously thought about being knocked out because as soon as I regained consciousness, my only thought was “What damage was done to my car?”

While giving the reports to the trooper a little later, I vaguely remember telling him what happened. I think I answered all his questions intelligently, but in all honesty, I don’t remember and I don’t even think I mentioned that my head hurt. I remember waking up the next day feeling really fuzzy headed, like a heavy curtain of fog was dropped around my head and I had to try to hear, see and think through the thickness. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because I had a whopping headache. My head felt like it weighed fifty pounds making it almost impossible for my neck to hold it upright.

I went to the chiropractor a couple days later because Dave kept insisting I see a doctor and finally wore me down. I was treated for whip lash and remember discussing how my head felt. It was then that the word “concussion” was again used and my first thought after that was; “Ahh, so this is what Peyton felt like.”

From When Libby Lost Her Smile by Naomi Parker, Strategic Book Group. Copyright © 2010 by Naomi Parker. Reprinted with permission. http://parker.aegauthorblogs.com.
 

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