It’s my “off-season” of sorts here on the blog. Add into that a growing, young family and time just seems to be hard to come by (not to mention my real “day job” of taking care of hundreds of athletes at a high school). However, I am always listening and reading.
Today I stumbled across an Australian Rules (Footy) article about a knee injury but what I found in the article was a quote, from a professional athlete, that made me smile. It seems that self-awareness and concussions is starting to take root (emphasis mine);
“I went to lunge to tackle Dangerfield and I remember Jimmy coming the other way and he sort of clipped my head and at the time, I didn’t think too much about my knee, I was more worried about my head,” Armitage told AFL.com.au after he was released from hospital on Wednesday.
If you read about the knee injury and the subsequent teammates horror over that you would wonder why he was thinking about his head. David Armitage, without realizing it, has shown people, athletes are cognizant of concussion and in this instance placing that injury above a knee injury (albeit a laceration – significant enough to warrant a nine-day hospital stay).
This is where we need to get to, acceptance of the injury. Understand that this will and can happen and then move on from there.
Its not the injury of concussion that is the real issue, rather it is the mismanagement of the concussion that is the real problem.