My concussions as a wrestler played a major part in my decision to pursue a Doctorate in PT.
By Jamil Kassam
Hello, my name is Jamil Kassam. I am currently 23 years old and I suffered 3 concussions during my time wrestling in High School. My injuries in sports led me to pursue my Doctorate in Physical Therapy, and I would have to say the unfortunate thing about concussions is that there is such a lack of knowledge around what they can do to us long term, as well as the stigma that surrounds sports related injuries.
My concussions consisted of 1 main concussion that was severely debilitating and was diagnosed by my physician, followed by 2 smaller concussions, commonly referred to as “bell-ringers” which were not diagnosed by my physician. With all contact sports there is the risk of injury, but when it comes to performing a sport like wrestling where your entire goal is to physically submit your opponent, it’s only a matter of time before injuries occur. Our coaches told us all the time that we needed to “suck it up”, we needed to “be men”, we needed to “push through pain no matter what”, and this led to an environment of athletes hiding injuries, including concussions.
We were never told about the symptoms of concussions, what causes them, or how they could affect our futures, but instead we were told that “at some point you need to be a man and get through the pain.”
To this day I still have large gaps in my memory surrounding the time, and due to this fact, I cannot pin the exact event that caused my first concussion. I know that I was struggling with taking so many blows to the head, and that I had been suffering from some mild levels of headaches, but after competing in a 4 match tournament and suffering a hard loss in my last match, I knew something was wrong. When my parents came to pick me up, I could barely open my eyes from the headache that was being caused by the sunlight. I was unable to look at almost anything, including the interior of my parent’s car on the account of the sunlight causing a severe headache. I remember my neck hurting me, but I cannot remember anything else from that day. My fiancé informed me that we went to dinner with my parent’s and sister, and went for dessert afterwards as well, yet I can’t remember any of that to this day. The gaps in my memory leave me remembering nothing in between driving home with a severe headache and neck pain, to me being in the doctor’s office with my dad nearly a day later being examined for a concussion. I was diagnosed with a concussion and a mild strain of the sub-occipital muscles of my neck, and had to end my season there.
As many people already know, after you are concussed once, it only gets easier to get concussed again. When I was cleared by my physician to return to training, I suffered 2 more concussions, unfortunately neither of these were diagnosed by a medical professional, but I am certain I was concussed again. Both concussions occurred as a result of me hitting my head very hard when I was at practice, and this is because we were taught to never quit no matter what we were feeling. I understand the sentiment of wanting to teach young athletes about the value of perseverance, but my story is not unique, too many athletes are taught to push through any pain they feel and they end up with brain damage, which is unacceptable. We can change this by teaching young athletes the value of being able to push through pain just like we push through the challenges we are faced in our every day life, but at the same time being able to identify when our body is sending us signals to stop what we are doing, especially when there is potential brain damage involved.