learnteach

I am just thinking about concussions in a general family sort of way. I have a lot of experience of them, and also a lot of experience of downplaying my own head injuries. I thought that was just a matter of not wanting to use up my whining points when I might need them for dealing with migraine or motion-sickness or something else that could be dealt with more usefully. When modern concussion awareness programs started treating injuries like concussions if people were not unconscious for very long, I started reassessing a lot of the falls in my memory.

(That led to weird conversations with neurologists.
"Have you ever had a concussion?"
"Yes."
"How many?"
"I don't know." This can't be that unusual for people with seizures, even non-convulsive seizures like mine are fall risks. But he looked so very surprised.)

For quite a while I looked back on it thought it was just exhausting to deal with my parents' approach to medical emergencies. So I had years of solidly motivated reasoning to convince myself that any head impact I could walk away from must not be a concussion. Then I remembered it wasn't just the kind of exhausting as their, "Oh no! A child has a bad cut! Let us all run around in a panic and shout at everyone who can possibly be shouted at until the ER doctor stitches it up!" (Which is exhausting, and not what the first aid manual means by applying pressure.) It's that AND their belief that people with suspected concussion ought not be allowed to sleep.

A few decades ago, when I was feeling oddly wistful about young athletes growing up with the modern concussion awareness programs, I thought how great it was that they were prescribing more rest as well as diagnosing concussion based on less severe symptoms. Oh well, too bad we didn't know about that back in the 1970s, isn't modern medicine great? It turns out that my mom still believes people with suspected concussion should not fall asleep. She fell and hit her head a few days ago. She didn't want to drive herself to urgent care because she felt dizzy and her vision was kind of blurry, and she didn't want to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room with a terrible headache. But she suspected she might have a concussion so she had to stay awake for 24 hours. After doing so, she called me and said she was fine and I shouldn't worry. I told her that modern best practice was to get some rest after a head injury, ("But this might have been a concussion! I had to stay awake to make sure it wasn't a concussion!") but first phone the doctor to ask if you have one of the symptoms that would need the ER. ("Why should I go to the ER? If they tell me it's a concussion they would just tell me to stay awake for 24 hours and if I do that at home at least it won't hurt my back.")

I'm not sure how I feel about this.