This weekend
I was talking to my brother about Andy and he told me his concussion story,
which I had heard many years ago and forgot (because many years ago, who cared
about concussion stories?).
He was in a
boxing class at West Point – Kiefers have a history of getting kicked out of
West Point – was matched against a 145-pound Boston-area Golden Gloves champ,
and wound up in the base hospital for a week, counting bluebirds and
butterflies.
My boss’ son
was dropped on his head in a wrestling match. My old boss got a concussion when
he was blindsided when he was playing linebacker for Stevens Point High. The
neighbor girl headed a soccer ball. My youngest son’s friend has head three,
one that came with a skull fracture. If we're not in the midst of a concussion epidemic, we're smack-dab in the middle of a lying-about-concussions epidemic.
Along with
the concussion stories have come – I won’t call them angels for fear of being
raided by the Cliché Police – buoys in a dark sea.
Andy’s
coaches were remarkably understanding. Never once did they try to force him to
play when he shouldn’t have played. (Of course, the fear of litigation
impressed upon them by USA Hockey may have had something to do with it.) The
same with Molly’s dance teacher, though that was to be expected. She didn’t get
to be the National Dance Educator of the Year by being a blockhead.
Then there
was my first roommate out of college. We shared the experience of getting
kicked out of rental units in Knoxville, Tenn., in anticipation of a World’s
Fair-fueled influx of tourists that never came. He found me after 30 years
around the time of Andy's first concussion. It turned out he was living around
Madison, and we made plans to vist during state hockey. Then the concussions
came, and the gray fog, and the visit never was made. But he said he was
praying for all of us nonetheless.
To all the
people who volunteered to wrap our kids in bubble wrap, thanks. We get the
joke and we'll take the bubble wrap, any time you want to pony up. Same for all of you who asked whether we beat our kids. (The answer is
yes. I beat them in tennis and Ann beats them in math.) You meant well, give or
take.
And then
there was Rich. Things were really bad a couple weeks into Andy's first concussion. We didn't
know what we were in for, so every day started optimistically and ended in a
state of extreme panic. Approaching the end of my rope on one of those hard-time days, I sent an
email to my friend Rich Diana, the former chief orthopedic surgeon of the Boston
Red Sox, an ex-NFLer who played in a Super Bowl with the Miami Dolphins, a
college-football hero at Yale (and the last Ivy Leaguer to finish in the top 10
in Heisman balloting), and a collaborator. He wrote an arthritis book; I edited
it.
Dr. Rich
came back with the message not to worry, that Andy's young, that he'll heal in
a couple of months, it'll be no big deal long-term, and here's the supplements
he should take to help the healing process. (I forgot to mention: He does a lot
of research on inflammation and injury, and inflammation on chronic disease, and which supplements help with
inflammation.)
It may not
seem like much, but it was exactly the message I needed to hear at the time.
Yes, you can do something, and here's what you do.
It was the
certainty I needed, the certainty we've come to expect -- and demand -- from our doctors. (See "certainty, medicine and," previous entry.) Everything got a
little easier after that, and even without taking the supplements Andy began to
get better.
So there are
buoys everywhere in this big, dark sea. We may be lost in a sea of head injuries, but we're nowhere near as lost as we might have been.
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