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She remembers the collision with another player, the fall to the ice, the feeling of dizziness. Skating shakily to the bench, she told her coach she had a concussion.

“How do you know?” the coach asked.

“Because I’ve had them before,” Jessica Raymond replied.

For the minor hockey player, it was her fifth concussion, bringing with it months of nausea, headaches and dizziness – and an acute awareness that head injuries hardly afflict pros alone.

“With minor sports, people don’t always think about concussions,” said Ms. Raymond, 19, of Waterloo, Ont. “So many people don’t know how serious they are.”

In the National Hockey League, a spate of recent injuries has rammed the issue of head shots to the top of the agenda at the general managers’ meeting this week in Boca Raton, Fla.

But an estimated 10 per cent of minor hockey players suffer concussions each year, and many more are sustained on soccer pitches, toboggan hills and other sporting venues. Experts say the country is not doing nearly enough to stop it.

As a coach, I think the players want to return to playing, so they give their word they are feeling better – ‘I’m fine, I can play’ – when in reality you don’t feel fine. Kim McCullough, director of Total Female Hockey

It’s a different story in the United States. Washington and Oregon have passed concussion-specific laws for scholastic sports – moves that came after tragedies in which players were killed or severely injured in games – and more states are expected to follow. They mandate education for high-school coaches, immediate removal from play of any athlete suspected of a concussion and proper medical clearance before an athlete can return to play youth sports.

A prominent expert in concussions, Maryse Lassonde, says the same laws should be passed in Canada, where efforts so far have focused on educating the public. While she notes that more rigorous practices exist at the professional level and in some university sports, that is not the case for younger players who are particularly vulnerable.

“A life can be broken, especially young ones,” said Prof. Lassonde, who holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Montreal and is a neuropsychologist for the Montréal Canadiens. “They should be aware of that.”

Her group published a study recently in the journal Brain showing impairments in movement and thinking skills in otherwise-healthy retired athletes can be seen 30 years or more after suffering one or two concussions. The problems are similar to those found in patients with early dementia.

“Schools and sports teams are all built around rules,” said Patrick Donohue, founder of the New-York-based Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, which has been pushing for legislative change across the U.S. “So until you make it a rule or a law, it’s not going to have the same type of impact.”

Kim McCullough, director of Total Female Hockey and a coach at the high-school and midget level in Toronto, said most coaches do not have any formal training on concussion. They sometimes mistakenly believe a player has to black out to have one, she said. Even when concussions are diagnosed, the problem is knowing when to let the player return to action.

“As a coach, I think the players want to return to playing, so they give their word they are feeling better – ‘I’m fine, I can play’ – when in reality you don’t feel fine,” said Ms. McCullough, who teaches at concussion clinics. She said it is important for players to know how to take a hit properly and how to protect themselves on the ice.

Prominent concussion expert Charles Tator said coaches at all levels should recognize and manage concussions but “not every coach follows that. Every week I see at least one hockey player in my office that has had a concussion,” added Dr. Tator, founder of ThinkFirst, a non-profit organization that educates coaches, parents and children about safe sporting practices.

Living with a concussion Listen as 14-year old Samantha Yurechuk explains the lingering effects she experienced after suffering a concussion (orginally published Jan. 2009)

This winter in his Toronto office, he saw a 16-year-old boy who sustained three concussions – which he says is pretty typical of the patients he sees. And he has hard words for hockey: A season-long suspension for a head shot should be followed with a lifetime ban from all organized hockey leagues if the player does it a second time.

Mike Slater, a Vancouver lawyerv who has experience in brain injury cases, said there has been more litigation around concussions as more people have become aware of them. But he thinks the new legislation in U.S. states is the way of the future. “Washington tends to be a progressive state,” Mr. Slater said. “If it works down there, I can’t see why it wouldn’t be the next thing to happen up here. I see it as a positive thing.”

Three of the five concussions Jessica Raymond suffered from January, 2007, to January, 2009, were in hockey. The others were playing rugby and women’s fastball. While doctors do not know for certain why some players suffer more ill effects than others from concussions, they do know repeated concussions over a short period of time can cause the worst symptoms, as the brain is not fully recovered.

Ms. Raymond knows that all too well. A former “student of the year” when she was in her final year at Bluevale Collegiate Institutev in Waterloo in 2008, she’s still getting A’s in first-year media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber. But Ms. Raymond has been diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and had to give up contact sports. She does, however, play first base on a women’s fastball team, figuring the sport offers the lowest risk of concussion.

Her mother, Marty Raymond, a school vice-principal in Waterloo, says when her daughter was knocked unconscious in a rugby game in May, 2007, and had been bleeding from her nose and mouth, no one bothered to contact her.

“And they let her drive home after she had been unconscious; they thought she was okay,” said Ms. Raymond, who has asked her school board to have coaches educated about concussion. “It certainly is a big problem. There’s not a lot of understanding about how to keep kids safe.”

Course Description
This is a post-advanced level clinical course designed for clinicians with significant clinical experience – and who often mentor students and/or colleagues – working with individuals with acquired neurological dysfunction, and who have a specific interest(s) in advancing their clinical understanding and clinical reasoning.

Course pre-requisites

• Minimum 5 years clinical experience in neurological rehabilitation (acute, post-acute or chronic)
• Current position involves at least 50% clinical work
• Successful, certified completion of basic 3 week Bobath (or NDT) course
• Successful, certified completion of no fewer than 2advanced Bobath (or NDT) courses

The deadline to register is April 23, 2010 and the course is limited to 10 participants.

For more information, visit
http://www.torontorehab.com/education/BOBATH10_masters.html
or contact Conference Services at 416-597-3422, ext. 3693

At Toronto Rehab, we’re doing Everything Humanly Possible to advance rehabilitation and enhance quality of life.

For further information regarding this 1.5 day course and to register please visit: www.mindworksgroup.ca
MindWorks
312 Rubidge Street
Peterborough, Ontario
K9J 3P4
Tel (705) 741-3412 ext. 10
Fax (705) 741-4098
Toll Free 1-800-559-8323
Email: admin@mindworksgroup.ca

Brain Injury Association of Nova Scotia
Room 13-009/010
13th Floor, Victoria Building, VG Site, QEII
Phone: (902) 473-7301
Fax: (902) 473-7302
Mail: PO Box 8804, Halifax, NS B3K 5M4
Website
A Helping Hand to a New Beginning

Whether you live with a physical, cognitive, visual, hearing, mental health or invisible disability, no matter where you are in your career, we want your stories of challenges, successes, stigma, accessibility, disclosure and empowerment, in your own voice and in your own way. Please send us your nonfiction contribution of no more than 1500 words; we encourage a variety of formats, from prose and poetry to art, photography, cartoons and more.

Our goal is to break down the real barriers to employment (stigma, fear and misunderstanding), to spread the “Equal (fair and equitable) Not Special” message, and to increase awareness of the advantages and achievability of inclusion, with strategies and solutions for the future. We’re interested in particular incidents and/or your overall experience. Topics you could focus on, but are not limited to, include:

1. How has your disability affected your getting a job? How do you feel about disclosure? If you have disclosed your disability in a job interview, what happened?
2. Have you felt accepted or excluded by management and co-workers?
3. What sort of barriers have you encountered at work? How have you dealt with them?
4. If your disability or issues surrounding it arose while you were employed, did things change at work, and if so, how? Were accommodations made? Did you leave work?
5. Has your disability influenced your job choices? Have you changed careers?

The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2010.*

*Please include your name, age, sex, disability and location. Your piece may appear anonymously at your request. Submission is not a guarantee of publication. Submissions are considered donations and are not compensated. We reserve the right to edit.

For more information or to make a submission, please contact:
Karen Janik, First Person Project Editor
editor@reachability.org
Tel/TTY: (902) 429-5878 | Toll Free/TTY: 1 (866) 429-5878
6389 Coburg Road, Suite 200, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 2A5

The workshop, presented by Glenn Larrabee, author of Assessment of Malingered Neurocognitive Deficits will focus on the issue of performance validity and test validity in the context of underlying neurological disease and neurobehavioural prediction. The afternoon session focuses on the development of an ability-focussed neuropsychological battery for assessing performance validity.

Further details of the workshop (pdf)
For registration information, click on the International Academy of Applied Psychology link at: www.koenigundmueller.de

Best wishes,
Gerhard Müller and Team
Dipl.-Psych.
International Academy of Applied Neuropsychology
Semmelstr. 36/38
D-97070 Würzburg
Tel: +49 931 46079033
Fax: +49 931 46079034
http://www.koenigundmueller.de

If unable to listen to the interview live, just google The Current after noon tomorrow and it should be available.

Mary Anne Ostapovitch BSc. PT
Program Director
Direct: 403-217-2493
Main: 403-242-7116
Fax: 403-242-7478
Email: mao@arbi.ca

www.arbi.ca