I have suffered many concussions. Life altering as they may have been, I am lucky. I suffer migraines, I take medication daily to survive day to day life without extreme headaches and nausea, but I am lucky. Many people are not as lucky as I was.
I get to keep participating in sports, go to school, have a job. I get to live my life with relative normalcy and little hindrance. Sure, I’ve had some setbacks and failures due to banging my head — but nothing that will permanently hold me back. So far.
Obviously I am now at a higher risk. Concussions are cumulative. My brain will never heal completely. There is visible damage to my brain which was picked up in an MRI. I need to play smart and think twice when I make decisions that could literally impact my life.
I received my first concussion from falling off a horse, it was not a hard fall nor a hard head impact and I was wearing a helmet, despite this I still scrambled my brain pretty hard.
What bothers me about concussions and TBI is how selfish people can be in making the choice to not wear a helmet when riding. It is not that taxing to wear a helmet. I do not care if its hot, if its cold, if you don’t like how they feel or look. None of those reasons are valid because your brain is much more important than an hour of a sweaty head or feeling awkward in a helmet. A helmet is uncomfortable? Try sitting in triage not being able to tell the nurse what you study. THAT is uncomfortable, and scary.
I believe it is selfish to knowingly put yourself in harm’s way with such a high risk sport. I did everything I could to protect myself and still ended up in the hospital. I spent two years waiting to see a specialist. I suffered migraines and headaches for two years before finding a doctor who put me on a legitimate treatment plan and sent me for an MRI the second I told her I wanted one — something I’d been denied previously. I wore a helmet and still got screwed yet statistics are telling me that an eighth of equestrians in the US are choosing not to ride with a helmet. Honestly, I’m upset.
It is selfish to willingly take a chance on experiencing something similar to me or worse because you do not just affect yourself. You affect everything. My parents were panicked and along for my crazy ride every time I bumped my head and ended up in the emergency room again. My friends were taxed with caring for me, waiting in the ER with me and dealing with my concerns and shame when I hit my head again and didn’t know if I should see a doctor or not. The walk-in clinic and emergency rooms were burdened by my concussion because I needed constant reassurance that my brain wasn’t going to swell due to another impact. My sanity was compromised. My anxiety heightened. Everything was forever changed and I spent A LOT of time dealing with concussions between routine doctors’ appointments, emergency room trips and time off.
Unless you’ve been in the situation I suppose its hard to understand the guilt and shame that comes along with repeated head injury. Imagine being a child and consistently getting in trouble for making mistakes, but continuing to make those mistakes and wanting to be honest about it but fearing the response when you speak up. That was how I felt every time I went to the doctor because I’d accidentally hit my head off another surface. Obviously my doctor wasn’t upset with me, but along with my friends’ resounding “again?!”’s and the look on a doctor’s face when they tell you your concussions are cumulative is recipe enough to feel dumb and like a burden.
I got to a place where I was so isolated, having headaches and nausea every day, crying if someone scraped a bowl too loudly and feeling immense anger if I was roused out of my sleep. It is insane how much changes once your brain has been compromised.
That is why I get so angry when people do not take their brain’s safety seriously. It affects EVERYTHING.
The average cost of a TBI is $150,000 USD and less than 1 in 8 equestrians in the US do not use helmets when they ride. The economic impact of concussions on top of the very personal impacts blow my mind.
I suppose ignorance is bliss and you really can’t know the feeling until you’ve gone through it. That being said I simply can’t believe people see all these stories about athletes suffering concussions and continue to choose to partake in their respective sports without helmets. Don’t put yourself through it if you don’t have to. Don’t put your parents through it, or your friends, your kids, your teammates. It is simply not worth it.
My life will never be the same because of a fluke riding accident in 2015. Sh** happens all the time and it can happen to anyone. You only have one brain, put it in a helmet.
