Sports Head Injuries and Memory Loss
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DR. DAVID DODICK: Yeah, so Sydney, a beautiful young girl from Nebraska, high school student—I met her in May of this year, 2012. And the story is that back in April of 2010—she's a soccer player and a softball player. She headed the ball, and as soon as she headed the ball, she got a headache, felt nauseated, was unsteady on her feet.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: I used to play sports, soccer and softball, at my high school. I'm going to be a senior. To be honest, I don't really remember much anymore. But my freshman year I played soccer and softball, and I don't really remember either of those seasons. So from what my coach said, there was just a hard ball that just came, like, darting at me. I guess I headed it and I scored, so that's good. But I don't really remember. I don't remember anything actually.
DR. DAVID DODICK: She came back to the sideline. They decided that they would hold her out and repeat the baseline test that she had. She actually had a concussion baseline test. They repeated that and found that she didn't do as well, and she did significantly worse, in fact, than she did at her baseline. So that plus her symptoms, they held her out.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: Red flags just popped up everywhere. So they knew I had a concussion.
DR. DAVID DODICK: Unfortunately, she continued to be active. She kept going to school. She kept exercising. She kept trying to play sports even while having symptoms, which is the first no-no.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: I definitely came back too soon from the first one and tried to play sports again, and I had lied, which is not good now. But I lied to my parents and to the trainer and said that I'd felt better.
DR. DAVID DODICK: Well, they just tried to work through it, right? They figure it isn't that bad. I can work through this, and I'll just continue to do what I normally do and try to work through this. I'll tough it out, so to speak, without realizing that the cognitive and the physical exertion that they put themselves through—when the brain is telling you I can't handle this, it's going to tell you by increasing your headache, by causing nausea, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to noise, unsteadiness. You don't sleep well. You got irritability in your mood. You can't fight through that. So your brain is actually telling you, I can't handle the cognitive and the physical demands that you're placing on me until I recover from the injury that I just had.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: I can't even tell you. You don't really understand until you have it, but I would have from a seven to a 10 headache daily, never go away, throbbing in my temples. That was for two years.
DR. DAVID DODICK: She really didn't have a waking moment where she was free of pain. And when you are not free of pain, that gives rise to a whole host of other symptoms. You don't sleep well. When you're sleep deprived, you're moody. When you have pain, you're moody, you're irritable. Just the sensory environment around us just drives them mad when they have continuous pain in their head.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: I felt like I had lost my passion, my whole life pretty much up till I got injured, and finding something different to do with my life was really difficult. And honestly, chronic pain is probably what most of that was from, but it was just so stressful having headaches all the time and I honestly don't know. I tried to make myself happy, but it was hard. And everyone around me noticed my moods were different, like, my friends, my family. Everyone knew something was wrong, and it wasn't until I really snapped on my mom and I told her how I was really feeling that anyone knew at all how severe it was. And I had thought about suicide. I mean, I hadn't planned anything out. I just was like, it would be so much easier not being here. But now that I got help and everything, I feel much better.
DR. DAVID DODICK: So the next step was to get rid of the pain in her head. So with appropriate therapy that we used, we got rid of the pain in her head. And lo and behold, when you got rid of all the symptoms she was having from the blood pressure and heart rate standpoint and when you get rid of the pain in her head, many of the other symptoms just cleared up on their own.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: It happened rather quickly. I was on some beta blockers that helped. I just completely stopped working out. I rested. I didn't use my cell phone as much. I just pretty much laid off of stuff, and I felt better probably a few weeks after I returned home from the Mayo.
DR. DAVID DODICK: What delighted me and I got chills when I spoke with her father recently just to hear how well she was doing, how happy she was again. She's now the girl that he knew two years ago. So to give that back—to get that girl—give their daughter back to that family, there's nothing more gratifying from a physician's perspective.
SYDNEY URZENDOWSKI: Well, the advice I would give other athletes would be, if you feel anything weird after any blows to the head, to stop. It's not worth it. Like, if you feel anything at all honestly. And don't lie about it like I did. Don't lie about how you feel because I thought it would put me back into the sports field sooner, but it actually set me back and made it worse.
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