—Submitted by San Juan Island School District Concussion Committee

(This is part one of a two-part series)

The San Juan Island School District and the sports community are in the process of improving procedures for concussions.

The tragic effects among professional athletes have focused national media on concussions. Locally, the concern is the treatment of our children and addressing misconceptions about what concussions are and what the implications of these injuries are.

The brain is a gelatinous supercomputer in a bone box. When a blow occurs, it bumps about inside the box. The blows come from any number of sources: the ground, a car windshield, another head, or a helmet.

Even protective head gear cannot stop the rattling and bruising of the brain. In the young adult, this fragile instrument is growing and changing. During a concussion tenuous connections get stretched, micro-bruised and sometimes broken. Nothing may appear to be wrong.

Helmets do dampen severe injuries so tests such as CT scans and MRIs can give a false “normal” result.

Damage ranges from briefly “seeing stars” to dizziness, confusion, memory loss, or unconsciousness. Too often in the past, only the most obvious symptoms were taken seriously, and the child resumed their individual activity or was put back in the game.

Most kids who resume their activities are fine after a concussion. But many have persistent effects. They may have trouble paying attention, become distractible and have fatigue, dizziness, headaches, blurred vision, nausea and surges of emotion.

Bright lights, loud noises and screen exposure may worsen these symptoms. Such problems may continue for weeks or months resulting in major impacts in school and daily life.

Another blow to the head soon after the first can be disastrously life changing.  This happened to Tahoma high school student Zachary Lystedt who became permanently disabled following a second concussion.

His parents championed legislation culminating in Washington becoming the first in the nation to legislate what is needed for a child to resume school sports: now, only a medical professional can permit a child to return to play. Because less than half of youth aged concussions happen in supervised sports, a tracking and management system to capture all concussions is the logical next step.

From November 2011 to August 2015, San Juan Health Care treated 30 childhood concussions; seven were repeats. Of the 37 events, 17 occurred during school sports but 20 happened elsewhere including falls from horses, automobile accidents, and trampoline injuries.

Half had rapid resolution while the other half had symptoms lasting long enough to require temporary modification of their school program. A quarter had findings lasting months to years. This is an under count as there is no community-wide data base of concussions.

Neither are there uniform methods to determine exclusion or approval for full participation.

Next week, Part Two will continue the discussion on concussion.