The Concussion Blog

Hello, once again, let me reintroduce myself. I am Dustin Fink, an athletic trainer in Illinois that has made it a special interest and hobby of mine to learn and talk about concussions [/sarcasm].

It has been some time since I have delved back into the blogosphere and I don’t feel I owe an explanation (to be honest many of you wouldn’t care, it’s rather boring), however things are about to change.  I cannot promise that this space will be as prolific as it once was with concussion news and commentary however I think it will be more active that it has been the past year or so.

The exact details about how and why this change is occurring I cannot say quite yet, all I can tell you is that nearly five years of work has been realized and this now gives me the reason to get back to this part of my life. To say I am excited is a vast understatement at this point.

While I have been away I have seen my growing family get more active and my resources as an athletic trainer get more useful and respected within my workplace/school. It has been quite the adjustment going from covering a small school to a medium school with all the events and time constraints. And back to the kids, my kids, they are crazy busy with baseball, volleyball, basketball, softball, flag football, etc. it will be entertaining trying to watch this family juggle three kids in all of that (will take unsolicited advice from parents any time).

Concussions have not and will not go away from the sports scene no matter how much snake oil we throw at it. Simply, concussion is a risk associated with activity – any activity – not just sports. It seems that the general media (those beyond the taboo “blogs”) have become a bit more familiar with it and there are plenty of organizations and people stepping in dog doodoo when handling the actual injury or the public relations portion of it, so coverage has been decent. We have continued to field interviews and speak to classes and groups about concussion as well as advise those that ask, in reality The Concussion Blog has not gone anywhere (still Tweeting up a storm).

There are many opportunities coming down the pipe in terms of concussion legislation, concussion rehabilitation, concussion identification, and a myriad of other things related to this brain injury (including the shams and rhetoric about the danger). This provides a chance for us to discuss those many things; highlight the positives and critically examine the questionable topics.

I am looking forward to letting you all in on the news, next week, but for the time being you will be seeing many old posts come back to the top of this blog as a reminder of where we stand and where we are.

I appreciate all of you that have stuck with this blog for so long and continue to click on it even though the content is not as fresh as it once was. I don’t know how long this adventure will last but lets take advantage of the time while we have it!