We just about joined that unwanted club – the one for kids who’ve suffered their first sports-related concussion. Our false alarm happened during a ridiculously windy baseball game in Lakewood, not that it’s ever good weather for a brain injury.
At seven and eight-years-old, these boys are now pitching to (and frequently hitting) each other, as the first step toward more competitive play. My son Nathan is in the so-called “Midget Level.” When sports leadership endorses a politically incorrect name like that you have to wonder how behind-the-times they might be on other issues, like player safety.
Nathan who is not yet four-feet tall sports a narrow strike zone (and apparently an off-color comparison to adults with dwarfism), was squinting into the 30-mile-an-hour wind when he took a pitch hard in the right eye.
It was one of those moments when every parent on the bleachers issued a collective “Ooh!” Two coaches, including Nathan’s father, rushed to the plate. I found myself trapped behind the backstop, desperately trying to hear over the gale how bad the damage was.
After a couple minutes, Nathan bravely took his base to much encouraging applause and my dismay. But as soon as he got back to the dugout the tears and fears started flowing, “Mom if that ball had hit both my eyes I would’ve been blinded!” he wailed.
I spent the rest of the game icing his swollen brow as a spreading bruise traced and filled in the ball-sized circle of contact around the bone orbiting my baby’s baby blue. “That kid could not have thrown it hard enough to cause a concussion,” I reasoned. But I wasn’t sure.
All parents of children who play in the wild world of youth sports know the day may come when an injury will enter them into that club they’ve been dreading. Every parent gambles that the injury will not be a life changer.
By the time our children graduate from High School we will have all witnessed some real doozies, like my neighbors the Hubers did last summer when their 13-year-old son Joe suffered severely fractured tibia and fibula bones in his left leg during a play at the plate.
Joe caught the full force of the sliding runner’s cleats right above his ankle, snapping his foot into a grotesque 90-degree angle and damaging his growth plate before the horrified eyes of all present. Thankfully I can report today Joe recovered well from surgery and physical therapy, and is happily playing ball again. And he got the out.
But I don’t want to develop the skills of a triage nurse, nor memorize the fastest routes to the nearest ER where I will learn about CT scans, stitches and surgery. Yet I feel I’m bound to acquire this knowledge, and I suppose I need the perspective to keep me from over-reacting to every little bump and scratch. I know I need to ease up if I’m going to get through the next decade as a spectator-mom.
“It’s going to be a shiner,” several dads assured me as the wind-blown innings passed. Just a boyhood badge of honor. But quietly I sat reviewing the signs of concussion, and wondering whether Nathan’s first out and just been recorded.
“Is he acting tired?” one mom asked. Another told me when her son was hit above the eye with a ball, she studied him at lunch to see if he would vomit. Driving home I listened attentively to the conversation between Nathan and his brother. It sounded normal. Energetic even.
I brought up Dairy Queen, my impulse to treat trauma with ice cream acting up, but Nathan declined. I offered other food, eager to try the vomit experiment, but he wasn’t hungry. Should we get an X-ray? “Hey Nathan, what day is it?” I asked. He knew the answer. “How do you spell your name?” He got it, but maybe these were the wrong questions?
I called my sister whose son has suffered three concussions in the past three years. The first during a football game, the next two playing rugby – in spite of his padded scrum cap and mouthguard. This did not sit well with my family who believed Andy was risking his health and future for the sake of his teenaged social life.
His parents had given my nephew the “three-strikes and you’re out” warning after the second concussion, so he knew his number was up. Yet he couldn’t remember anything that had taken place the previous three days. “I knew I had a concussion again, and I kept fighting it,” Andy explained, “I can’t really explain how it feels, it’s just confusing. I don’t really remember much about it.”
At his end-of-season team party, Andy was given the “Where Am I?” award by his rugby coach. He and his teammates laughed, as did all the parents, including my sister. But it’s that foxhole humor that belies an understanding the situation might be serious, and it’s too late to do anything now but hope he has truly dodged the bullet.
The ER doctor in Salt Lake City told my sister each concussion has a cumulative effect. Sometimes symptoms don’t show up for weeks or months. In Andy’s case, so far, he has not displayed the more disturbing results of multiple concussions like clinical depression, chronic headaches or fatigue, blurred vision or slurred speech. Of course multiple concussions are now being studied for a possible link to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
By now every coach in America, yes even volunteer coaches in the Midget league, should be familiar with the signs and symptoms of concussions, and prepared to respond appropriately. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has developed an educational program called the “Heads Up Initiative” detailed at where coaches can download fact sheets to keep on clipboards in case of a questionable hit. No more sending a young athlete back out to play after having his or her “bell rung,” because the risk for a second concussion and permanent brain damage is now widely recognized.
And no parent should plead ignorance to the dangers either. While I’m not ready to pull the plug on baseball for turning my little guy into a black-eyed pea, it did raise the question in my mind- what if this had been a concussion?
It is the parents’ responsibility to decide what the limit is, and not leave that decision up to the coaches or kids themselves. How many injuries, especially brain injuries, are you willing to allow your child to suffer?
I want my boys to be good sports, if not good athletes, but more than anything I want them to make it into adulthood with their bodies and minds intact. For me, pending further medical advice, the good game rule and guiding life principle will be: three strikes and you’re out.
Kristen Kidd (kiddstories@gmail.com) is raising two sons in Highlands Ranch and writing a screenplay about Kathryn and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
