It's not Just a Concussion

           I was always told that whenever you hit your head in any case, especially in sports, to go see the doctor immediately. I thought this was ridiculous until I walked into the doctor one day thinking all I had was a minor concussion and walked out having discovered that I had fractured my skull. Just a minor fracture but still nothing to just brush aside.

            I remember the whole thing happening; the sound my head made when it connected with my teammate’s head and the groggy feeling I had after getting up from the ground. It was during an intense and close basketball game when it happened. The score was tight, we were only up by one basket. Everyone was playing hard and fast. No time to slow down or ease up at this point in the game. There was only about three minutes of play left in the fourth quarter and we needed to win to advance to the next game. We could do it if we just continued to work together as a team. And then it happened, one of my teammates missed a pass and the ball was rolling towards the other side of the court. I had to catch it before it crossed half or we would lose possession. I took off running as hard and as fast as I could. I needed to get that ball. Little did I know my teammate had the same idea. Neither of us saw the other coming and we collided, hard! Crack! She hit me like a football player going in for a tackle. It was a straight connection of her nose to my skull. We bounced off each other and landed on our backs. The only thing I remember after that is waking up a few seconds later and seeing that the game was still carrying on and my teammate and I were still down. I hopped up to my feet as graceful as I could after a blow to the head, staggering a little as I tried to help my teammate up. Looking back on it I’m sure we looked like a bunch of drunk buffoons, one pulling the other up while still stumbling herself. What still gets me is the referee didn’t blow the whistle until he noticed the blood gushing from my teammate’s nose, or what used to be her nose at least.

            The swelling started by the time I had reached the bench. The side of my head appeared to have grown a golf ball sized tumor right above my left ear. At this point my head was throbbing like crazy, but besides the lump I appeared to be unscathed. Pop a few Advil and I would be ready to play again. I went right back on the court and played until it was over.

            We won despite the whole escapade. My teammate went to the hospital and got her nose put back in place and I iced my lump as we waited to start the next game. I played three more games like this, just popping Advil and applying ice to the lump. Nobody thought the better of it and took me in to the doctor. I had a splitting headache but nothing out of the ordinary after a collision like that.

            When I got home I told my parents about the story and explained to them that something just didn’t feel right. Was my head missing a piece or something? The headaches were no longer just like a regular headache and it was through this that I realized I had a concussion. So into the doctors I was dragged by my mother. I knew that during this visit all he would say was that I couldn’t play basketball for a long time and I had to take it easy. These are two things no athlete wants to hear, ever! My team was doing well! We had a great chance of making it to provincials if we could all just stay healthy and continue playing so well together!

            When I finally got in to see the doctor, he ran some standard concussion tests on me and diagnosed me with a mild concussion, but he was quite concerned about the lump on the side of my head. He did not like the way it seemed to mold its way around my glasses as if it were a piece of silly putty wrapped around a child’s finger. After he poked and prodded the spot until I could not bear the pain anymore he decided to go the safe way and order me an X-ray. So off I went, down to radiology to get the X-rays done to be sure I had not done any further damage to my head.

            When I got to radiology I was already the joke of the entire clinic. How do you run into your own teammate so hard you might have cracked your skull? The technician asked me to hop up on the table and they took pictures of the area from several different angles. She said she could hardly believe it! My skull was fractured! Just a few centimeters from my temple I had a two inch fracture that curved over and behind my left ear. The doctor told me and my mom we should go buy lottery tickets immediately. Just a few centimeters over and I would be dead, even another minor hit to the head could have killed me.

            This was definitely a lesson learned for me. Whenever I hit my head now I head straight to the doctor. It is no joke: it could mean life or death in some situations and it could even mean saving yourself from deficits later on in life. Yes, you will have to take it easy and not play the sport you love right away but it is better than never getting to play ever again. If I wouldn’t have been forced by my mother to go to the doctor to take a look at something I thought to be just a small concussion I could have started playing basketball again too soon and would have risked my own life even more than I already had. Head injuries are not something to be taken lightly, no matter the circumstance.