Let me back track here a couple of years....Going into his freshman year J was on the JV team, so they started their 2 a-day practices before school actually started then on the very first day of school at practice before school they were still no contact (so no helmets, pads, etc) and J was having a hard time with one of the coaches and basically got mad and had a temper tantrum...Coach screamed at him to do something so he takes of running through the football dummies and plows into one of the junior classmen who weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 lbs and lays him out. He said instantly ALL of the guys started cheering for the freshman who just took out a junior and he thought it was pretty funny until he stood up and started blacking out then couldn't hear out of his right ear. Coach asked him if he was ok and then had him sit on the sidelines to rest. After a bit his hearing came back but his vision was a bit blurry but he was released to head on to class. Within the first few minutes of class his teacher knew he didn't look right and asked him if he needed to go see the nurse, he said yes maybe so. Just as he was leaving the class he felt sick, like he might throw up so he's running trying to find a trashcan and well found one but a bit late and ended up wearing it trying to avoid getting it everywhere else...So I get a phone call that he's "not feeling well, bumped his head during practice". So I rush to the school to find my kid sitting in a chair in the office NOT WITH THE NURSE covered in throw up and barely conscious....I WAS PISSED!!! I proceed to ask what the heck is going on in here and why is no one taking care of my kid and WHY did they not call an ambulance if he's obviously in bad shape?! And why the heck did they not give him some clean clothes?! They then tell me that "oops sorry...We've been having trouble with our computer system so we didn't notice"...So they then call his coach who helps him get changed and tell me what happened. I then zoom him to the ER and my boy had a pretty bad concussion, he spent all day there under observation and I had strict observation guidelines for a while after that. So since then he has suffered a couple of mild concussions in basketball so I'm a bit worried about this..
Our school doesn't have the best of equipment for our boys and we were going to buy J a new safe helmet this year after last year one of our boys on the team was lifeflighted out of a game with a massive concussion and never allowed to play football again, and a lot of this kids injuries to his brain were due to the crappy helmet he had..So sad for him! So luckily our new headcoach insisted on some new equipment and basically the top 10 kids that showed dedication to the team were awarded this new stuff and J was one of those kids! Score one for my pocket book LOL!
So he now has a Revolution helmet that is designed with superior safety features! So back to the game...He was playing an awesome game and during the 3rd quarter he got tackled and I noticed when he got up he kind of stumbled and bit and my mommy heart flopped, but he bounced right back and went to have his leg stretched so I guessed that was the problem. Then right before the end of the game he took a running back out of bounds and when he went to hit the kid the kid dropped his head and hit J helmet to helmet (so he told me later, I couldn't see it). After their little victory celebration on the field the team walked through and he stopped to give me a hug but seemed a bit funny to me. He just seemed a bit tired I guessed, I mean he had just played almost the entire game. He went on to shower and then some of us parents were going to be feeding them after the game so we were getting ready for that when a freshman girl comes up to me and says they need you by the locker rooms J is getting checked out by the EMT's. I was like WHAT?! She showed me where he was and the EMT said he was being checked because when the coach tried to talk to him he didn't know where he was or what he was doing. He looked at me and I saw something very familiar in his eyes, I see this alot and have always thought he was just tired when he came home from practice. They had checked his vitals and all was good but when they checked his blood sugar it was low, which is not abnormal after just having played a hard game but a little bit lower than it should have been. And with his prior concussion history they wanted him checked out. So I told them I would take him in but I wanted him to eat (he had not eaten since lunch) and see if this helped at all. So they had someone go with him to shower and then he came out to eat and within minutes of eating his lethargy subsided...BUT he still had a slight headache so off to the ER we went.
After we left I asked him what exactly happened with the coach that brought this to his attention and J said the coach thought he looked "ghost eyed" which to me made total sense because that is exactly how he looks after practice many times, but when the coach asked him these certain questions about the date and where he was and what he was doing he said J did not answer correctly but J says he did. He says the coach was being over-reactive, but I agreed that he was being slow to answer when I first walked up. The ER DR seen him and basically told us to treat this as a very minor concussion and so we did; we followed all the rules but I am not so sure that's what it is. I really truly wonder if he doesn't have something going on with his blood sugar. After thinking back on all of these times I have thought that his eyes looked *funny* or he seemed really tired he always says that he's "just tired" or "he's weak", and many other things. So he is now going to be on a stricter diet and eating special protein bars before practice and 2 before games to see if they help. Yesterday they practiced for 4 1/2 hours and he did 10x's better than he normally does and he had his bar before he went! So we will continue to watch him and pray that this helps!
