This is Christine’s first article! Christine was a competitive soccer player from the age of seven, and began playing hockey later in life. Last year, while playing co-ed hockey, she was inadvertantly struck in the head, snapping her neck to the side. She then noticed a “fuzzy feeling” as she tried to make it to the bench. By the time she had made it, she knew she was in trouble, and placed her head down. Christina awoke to paramedics around her, and her husband calling her name. At hospital she was told she was fortunate not to be paralyzed and to avoid playing contact sports again. 

Christine is a working mother of two teenage boys and has been happily married for 20 years. She specializes in working with individuals who are deafblind.

By writing about her concussion, her questions, her uncertainty, Christine helps me, and hopefully other readers, see the difficulties from a new perspective. A perspective I will never be able to experience first hand. Thank you Christine! 

by Christine

It’s not easy for me. I have always had an inner need to be very strong, independent, to not rely on others too much, God forbid they let me down. So now, as I’m facing this journey of recovery, dealing with therapy appointment after therapy appointment with no end in sight, with all of these limitations now surrounding me, my independence suddenly striped from me, I’m torn. How do I accept help? Who do I allow into my innercircle? Who can see me so vulnerable? So weak? I’m haunted by my worst nightmare; will my friends and family judge me, will they think I’m less of a person now? Do theyreally understand what they can’t physically see?

I’ve always been the one providing the help and service to others. I know the tips, the tricks, the lines, but to accept it is a whole other story. The teacher has just become the student.

As a mother I am supposed to be strong. I should be able to overcome anything and make pain go away for my kids. I’m the miracle worker in their eyes and now I’m not…Now I can’t walk without getting dizzy. Now I can’t see properly and I’m crying because my head hurts so much. Now my kids ask me if I’m ok and what they can do to help me, and that’s not right, that breaks my heart as a Mother.

This was my first real adjustment and this continues to be the hardest one!!