Happy Football Season!!

Football season is upon us and I could not be happier!  Football is my favorite season out of the year.  The games, the atmosphere, the excitement.  It's just the best season!  However, with football comes injuries.  And I definitely don't want to hammer home concussions any more, but it's unfortunately something that everyone has to deal with.

I am going to share a story with you that I heard when I was in grad school doing a clinical rotation at a high school.  It goes like this:  Years ago, there was a football player.  He was the stud of the team.  I believe he was the quarterback.  One game during his senior year, he got sacked.  He popped right back up, argued with the ref about a bad call, and then dropped to the ground in a Grand Mal seizure.  He was air lifted to the hospital where he had emergency brain surgery.  Subdural and subarachnoid bleed.  He should have died.  Luckily, his athletic trainer knew how to handle the situation.  It helped she was a paramedic as well.  She immediately radioed for the helicopter and stabilized the athlete as best she could.  He was diagnosed with those bleeds due to Second Impact Syndrome.  Apparently, he had gotten hit in the head in a practice or game (I can't remember which) and never told anyone that he was feeling bad after the initial hit.  Denied any symptoms and there were no signs showing a head injury.  Well, the fast action of his AT saved his life.  If she wasn't there, he would have died.

The moral of this story is that we need to be more aware of kids trying to stay in the game after a head injury.  I am not saying that this AT had any knowledge of the first hit.  She didn't.  I'm saying when we have control.... It makes me cringe watching some hits in college football, where an athlete is unconscious on the field, and then goes back into the game.  How is this teaching our youth that head injuries are serious?  I can't fathom that any of the players I have seen "knocked out" (i.e. the Michigan player last year) being OK to return to play after such an injury.  If a player is unconscious on the field, he/she needs to exit the game and not return until further evaluation and rest.

Am I the only one that feels this way?