concussion management
Heal First Then Play Hard
Dealing with Sports-related Concussions By Alexander Germanis
A
team works better if it functions like a family; a family works better if it functions like a team. On October 22, 2009, and through the months that followed, the Sons family from Dalzell, Illinois and the girls of a South Carolina college softball team lived by this axiom as the life of a member of both family and team changed abruptly. Samantha Sons, then a freshman attending Southern Wesleyan University, suffered a severe concussion during a muscle building exercise. It was one with which the girls were familiar and had performed many times before, but this time it resulted in Samantha’s head hitting concrete, rendering her unconscious. “[Samantha’s teammates] had been through just as much trauma as our daughter, watching this,” Samantha’s mother, Janel, recalls. “Some of these girls had never seen any injuries like this before…and their main instinct was to get help, to seek the doctors and get it done as quickly as possible…What they did was amazing.” Once Samantha was out of the hands of her caring teammates and into the hands of the doctors, the long road of healing began and Bloomington neurologist, Dr. Edward Pegg, helped guide the Sons family down that road. The first step was in administering the ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing) test, a system that gauges the injured person’s attention span, working memory, reaction time, and problem solving ability, among other things. Through the ImPACT, it was determined Samantha had suffered a grade three concussion with a level one brain injury. Her short term memory was heavily affected, she had bouts of nausea, she suffered from chronic migraines from the time of the accident until March of the next year, and she lost motor control to the point where she had to learn how to walk again. Being an athletic-minded unit, every one of the nine member Sons family was ready to work as a team to help bring their Samantha back. “My husband and I have seven children, so it’s always a team effort,” Janel explains. “This healing process of Samantha’s was also a team effort and it affected each one of us in a different way.” The family helped Samantha with mental tasks like word searches, developed memory exercises while watching movies, made sure she was always under observation, and helped her deal with her emotions to keep any rising bouts of depression in check. Perhaps the most touching contribution to Samantha’s recovery was provided by her younger sister, Maggie, then only seven years old. Acting as her training partner, Maggie would at first walk a mile with her big sister, then jog a mile when the comparatively simple act of walking had been re-conquered, then run a mile after that. Although in the beginning Maggie could always complete the distance in less time than her sister; by the end, Samantha had regained her speed. After rebuilding her body and healing her brain, Samantha was able to return to her collegiate studies, regain her high-level grade point average, and even return to the softball field where, in the spring of 2012, she suffered a second concussion resulting from a collision with a teammate. Samantha was understandably distraught. Page 16 — Healthy Cells Magazine — Bloomington — July 2012
Her parents, however, saw the recent injury as well as its more severe predecessor in a more positive light. “Everything happens for a reason,” Janel says. “What we’ve learned from everything is that you can’t take life for granted.” The Sons family, like any good team, plays hard and when “they play hard, injuries will happen,” Janel continues. “They know not to play with fear. When you play with fear, you get hurt worse.” Fear of injury is definitely something physicians like Dr. Pegg wish to wipe out, not just in the athletes but in their family members as well. “I have noticed, as a result of all the press, people have more fear of concussions than is appropriate,” he says. “A concussion can be a serious problem, but I would like them to feel that when one happens, there are steps that must be taken; if handled and treated properly, it need not be feared and they need not worry.” Through these incidents and a football-related concussion suffered by one of their sons in the interim between Samantha’s head injuries, the Sons family became intimately familiar with knowing how to spot signs of injury, knowing when to seek medical help, and knowing how the healing process works. “You heal—you play,” Janel states, matter-of-factly. “But you’ve got to heal first before you go back to what you’ve got to do, because it can affect you the rest of your life…You need to heal first to be a better athlete for the team, for the coach, and for yourself.” For more information on any neurological issue, you may contact Dr. Pegg at 309-661-7344. He has a special interest in sports neurology and concussion management.