Bumps & Brains
A personal commentary on concussions in mountain communities.
In seventh grade, I hit my head in a soccer game. I don’t remember it. I hit my head again a few months later and I didn’t go to school for a month. I experienced a brain injury the next year. And my senior year of high school. And my freshman year of college. The same day I got my fifth concussion, I traveled to the Tetons and did the most intense mountaineering that I’ve ever done. At the end of that day, as my friends were skiing, hooting, and hollering, I was almost vomiting. I had to hitchhike home.
According to the Mayo Clinic's online article titled "Concussion", published on February 17, 2022, concussions are traumatic brain injuries that impact your brain function. The online information for post-concussive care is scarce, suggesting a decrease in mental exertion for at least two days post-concussion. However, brain injuries are often much more complicated than what reaches the surface, and healing from one is non-linear.
Concussions are not taken seriously in mountain towns. They are difficult to diagnose and treat because they’re unrecognizable to the naked eye. Add in the fast-paced environment of Bozeman and you've got yourself a perfect storm.
Think about dropping a cliff. Your ability to stay upright, balanced, and coordinated is controlled by your cerebellum. Your motor cortex activates the muscles that let you react to your environment. Your occipital lobe lets you absorb and process your changing environment down to the millisecond. Oh, and that joy you’re feeling? That's your hypothalamus, your emotional regulation center in that pretty noggin of yours. Brains aren't just for choosing the best line. They help you understand your environment. They let you feel emotion, pain, elation, sensation. In short, brains are the human experience. And yet, we do not take care of them.
Healing after traumatic brain injuries should be a priority in our ski communities. Healthy brains set up individuals for a long life full of experience, instead of a brain burn out in their 20s. It's easy to tell when someone's had concussions and has not taken care of themselves. A common word for this phenomenon is "fried". In other words, after multiple brain injuries, functions such as emotional regulation, thought processes, and general intelligence are diminished. We all know people like this. I once watched a boy try to do a flip on a table, break it WITH his head, and then go skiing the next day.
As a young adult with a brain injury, one of the hardest things I dealt with was honesty with myself. I had to slow down, heal, and miss out. In the ski community, this is a hard thing to do. My call to action is to create an outdoor community where brain health is taken seriously. This looks like keeping yourself and your friends accountable, having conversations about realistic brain health, easily accessible brain injury information, and creating the space within your own community to put this information into action.
I often wonder how my brain may have developed if I didn’t have multiple brain injuries at a crucial development age. Don't be like me. Don't go mountaineering the next day after you hit your head. Take brain injuries seriously. Take a week off skiing, pick up an easy hobby like basket weaving, and take care of your brain.