Tuesdays With Hildy: Concussions and Drain Bamage - Are They Worse Than We Think?

mouthpieces help, but I’m not sure anything would have helped Cam in that collision… it looked like he got hit right on the chin. I’m hoping for the best, but concussions are scary!

Recovering from one myself, got tripped from behind in my adult league hockey game, no penalty called nothing, went to the docs had a grade 2 concussion and still feeling the effects 2 mnths later

One of my soccer teammates got a really bad concussion one game. She was knocked unconscious, did the whole throwing up thing and blah blah. That was a couple years ago.

To this day, she still randomly passes out. She cannot play any contact sports for the rest of her life, and I am not sure if she is still allowed to drive. And I think she almost had to drop out of high school because of it.

And now that you mention depression as a possible effect of concussions, I can’t help but think of Legace and all his concussions.

… apparently head injuries can also cause ALS like symptoms. The military has been offering compensation to people who suffer from ALS because of the high correlation between some vets’ military assignments and the symptoms.

The complete study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

That mechanical or traumatic injury to the head, neck, or spine might be etiologically related to ALS has been suggested for more than 100 years (42, 43). More recent literature points toward a trend not only between CNS trauma and the development of ALS but also between a smaller number of years between the last injury and ALS diagnosis, and older age at the last injury and the development of ALS (9, 32). In a case-control study of 109 cases of ALS and 255 controls, Chen et al (9) found that having experienced repeated head injuries or having been injured within the 10 years before diagnosis was associated with a more than 3-fold higher risk of ALS (odds ratio [OR], 3.1; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.2-8.1; and OR, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.0-10.2, respectively), with a slightly elevated risk for the interval 11 to 30 years.

Basically, you get whapped in the head within 10 years of an ALS diagnosis, and there’s a strong chance that the ALS is from that whap.

Out covering sports, I’ve seen a myriad of injuries. The scariest I’ve seen was a football player getting a head injury. This kid got hit in the head at full speed and ran off the field screaming and crying. He said he felt like his head exploded and spent the rest of the game shivering, crying with a 1,000 yard stare. Concussions will fuck you up.

The Ol Goaler said we need new helmets, but that’s part of the problem. Kids and adults in football have been told how great the helmets are, and they still use them as a weapon. Its your head, you shouldn’t think you’re 100% safe.

All sports leagues need a policy regarding concussions. I think it should be a mandatory month out of action for each concussion. These things linger and cause serious problems. All signs and symptoms need to be alleviated before a player can return. The worst thing that can happen is returning too soon.

i know wayne used to wear what i called a “pespi” topper (i.e. take a 2 liter pepsi bottle, cut the black bottom off, viola, worthless like helmet).

seems to me the ice is the sad puppy more often than the force of a charging player, and while the ice is hard, and the fall is over 6 ft on todays player, i can’t imagine a one-time impact dome can not be put into play tat has a significantly better result.

the goalie fall? he was in his stance with the besk mask in the nhl on (a goalie mask) and still that unprotected 5 ft drop produced a concusion.

basically tese guys are falling from the height of your child’s second 2 wheel bike and getting far worse injuries.

and as just mentioned there is concern ABOUT helmets, in hockey i know the theory is that once you face shield and cage up all the kids noses, the stick discipline fails miserably, and the hits from behind happen more frequently

so maybe 2 things

1) helmets that work for 6 foot drops to the ice

and

2) respect.

You can’t have ten skaters moving around an enclosed area without contact — even in “no check” hockey.
Checking just increases the frequency and the severity of contact.

For me the frightening thing is that the doctors are still learning about how concussions occur, how they affect the brain and how to treat them. The same impact/contact can affect two indivduals differently. One can get a severe concussion as a result and the other player can be totally unaffected.

It’s why team doctors/trainers must know the “before” player to help them figure out if he has a concussion. Some people are a little thick/fuzzy-headed all the time. Hockey players’ tendency to not report injuries doesn’t help.

But I laugh any time anyone talks about football as a “collision sport” without at least mentioning hockey. Sure, hockey at its’ finest is a finesse/contact sport, but these guys are going so damn fast, on a surface built for speed, on blades thinner than a high school math textbook. It is most certainly a collision sport these days, and concussions like the one CamTits suffered on Saturday are an inevitable occurrence at just about every game.

Here’s what I worry about, and maybe I’m a bit far-flung on this but I really don’t give a rat’s ass . . . what if, one day, our society gets so Goddamned litigious and bent-up on safety that they start banning sports with particularly violent consequences, such as football and hockey, at specific levels? Then what have we gotten ourselves into? Sure it’s way off, but it’s still something I’m SURE some congressman has thought about (and rest assured that I would never vote for anyone that fucking stupid).

If the parade of concussions and the evidence further proving concussions to be as dangerous as it seems we all knew all along continues without drastic changes to head equipment (such as the NFL is seemingly looking into, but running into a wall with players who don’t like the new equipment much like baseball players hate the new helmets THEY can get), then we’re eventually going to get to that level. And that scares the living fuck out of me.