It was back in 2015 when I had my concussion. I just played soccer. I loved it. It was my whole life. I played it six times a week. My life revolved around soccer, so I didn't really think about the consequences it could have.
I tore my MCL, but that healed itself. It was fine. I never really thought about how if I took a ball to the head too hard, here I'd be, four years later, really struggling to read a piece of paper in school. I never really thought about that. If you hurt your knee, you're going to have some trouble running, but I never really thought about how if I hurt my head I wouldn't be able to function outside of soccer.
It's very different. The injury is different. If you hurt your knee, you can still go to school. It's completely separate. When I hurt my head, I couldn't go to school. I couldn't see my friends. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't leave my house, essentially. I couldn't even talk to my family members without having this headache where I would have to walk away and go and lie down in a dark room. I never really thought about the consequences of a head injury. It was more like “I don't want to hurt my knee because then I can't run and I'll be out of soccer for a couple of weeks.” I never really thought about my head.
As I mentioned before, my goalie had a concussion, but to me it was, yes, she's a goalie, and she kind of dives right into the ground. It made sense to me that a goalie would get a concussion. I was a centre midfielder. If I was going to get an injury, I thought it would be to my ankle or my foot. That's kind of what I thought about it. I wasn't worried about concussion until it happened.