A Personal Experience with Concussion

In 1991 I graduated with a Ph.D., in clinical psychology with an emphasis in neuropsychology. I completed additional training in neuropsychology at the Cambridge Hospital (a training hospital for Harvard Medical School) and then at the University of Michigan Medical School. I was in my fourth year as a staff neuropsychologist at a residential brain injury facility in East Lansing when I had my first and only concussion.

I was at the Michigan Athletic Club, a sprawling recreational facility in East Lansing, where I spent several hours every day playing basketball and lifting weights. There was a regular crowd of us that played pickup basketball there daily and we all knew each other pretty well. On this particular day there were not yet enough of us to play a full game so we were messing around playing a kind of half-court free for all.

I remember jumping and reaching for a ball that was coming off the hoop when a good friend of mine got under me. As I started to fall, he tried to help me but in his effort to do so he tied up my hands so I could not use them to help break my fall. With my hip on his shoulder and my momentum going sideways I quickly pivoted and hit the back of my head on the floor with significant force. I remember a bright flash of light and some localized pain at the site of the impact. I did not lose consciousness (only about 10% of concussions involve loss of consciousness) and I remember feeling alarmed that I had hit my head with such force.

As a neuropsychologist I had seen many people whose lives had been devastated by trauma to the head and as I got up off the floor a wave of apprehension swept over me. I walked over and sat on the stairs by the court and began a kind of self-examination. I was not entirely sure what day it was, my mind felt kind of foggy, but other than that I seemed to be OK. After about 15 minutes of sitting and continuing my self-examination I walked to the locker room, gathered my belongings and went home.

As concussions go, mine was relatively minor. I had some residual fogginess through the evening, I developed a low grade headache, and I definitely did not feel as sharp mentally as I usually did. That lack of mental sharpness persisted for a couple of days, but lucky for me it was the weekend and by Monday morning I felt fine resuming my normal duties.

When I think back on this experience I am grateful that I knew enough to not put myself at further risk of injury before I was fully recovered. It is these additional injuries that occur before the initial concussion is resolved that seem to do the most severe damage.