Evidence of meeting #2 for Subcommittee on Sports-Related Concussions in Canada in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A video is available from Parliament.
Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC
That stigma is very challenging.
I went on in school and became a chiropractor and was involved quite significantly as a coach and trainer. I've also treated a lot of patients with concussions.
I know there's a lot of searching out there. I'm wondering if the parents could comment on the challenges they had because they're seeing their daughter going through this and caring so deeply for her and feeling so helpless because they don't know where to go.
Sharra Hodgins As an Individual
I would have to say that, for myself, it wasn't an easy task trying to figure out whom to go see, what doctor. As Carly said, when we went to emergency that day, it was very obvious when I saw her in the emergency department. She couldn't walk. She couldn't focus. She was disoriented. It was obvious she had a concussion. It was, “Well, give her a week or two. If she doesn't get better, then go to your family doctor. Just keep all her stimuli down.”
When she's not getting better and you go to the family doctor, and the family doctor is saying, “Well, you know, just give it time. Over time, it should get better. I'm not sure what else to do”, that type of thing, it's so frustrating.
Then we had to deal with the whole mental health issue on top of it. That piece alone was a huge factor. To watch your child suffer is the most awful thing you could ever imagine, and not being able to help and do anything for them. It's very hard to manoeuvre through the system, especially for kids with any mental health issues.
We have a teen health centre. We ended up going to see a physician there. She guided us with some of our options. We did take Carly to see a psychiatrist, as well as a psychologist. It was more or less us trying to guide our own way. It wasn't like being told, “Here's the road map; this is what you follow.” We were really trying to find the information on our own. Nobody really knows what to do for these kids, truly.
Chris Lord As an Individual
Thank you to the committee for inviting us here, because this is obviously a very important topic.
Specific to your question, I would encourage the committee in aggregate to try to find what all those great things are that do work, that are easy to find and that are replicable. In Rachel's case, there were many things that worked very well that brought a tremendous amount of relief to the parents.
On the downside of that, early in the process, you're at the pressure point of standing in an emergency room multiple times when, as the other mother just pointed out, you know what the problem is but the doctor tells you that if you didn't pass out, if you didn't black out, you don't have a concussion and you should go home, after a month of throwing up and being in bed. As a parent, you know what the problem is, but you don't know what to do about it.
That's the biggest opportunity for all of us to reflect on: How do you encourage that it's okay to say there's a problem? As Mr. Fisher pointed out earlier, it's okay to use the “Let's talk” situation and say there's a problem.
Mr. Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East—Cooksville, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Lord.
We're moving now to the NDP and Ms. Hardcastle.
Windsor—Tecumseh, NDP
Thank you very much, everyone, for your testimony today. I hope I'll be able to give you all an opportunity to say some of the things you haven't said or to go a little deeper.
I'm going to ask a broad question for all of you. You can take up the rest of my time. We'll just be nice Canadians and take our turns.
I'm sure you had a moment where you cried out of frustration. Tell me a bit about why. If you didn't cry about any of this, then just skip the question and let somebody else have more time, but I suspect we can all learn from your answer here.
As an Individual
It's 100% frustrating when you just can't function. You can't walk. You can't talk. You can't do anything without having this headache that's telling you to stop, and all you want to do is lie down because you can't function. That's very frustrating.
It's also very scary when you're in that moment, when you're two months into the situation and nothing is getting better. If anything, it's getting worse.
It was very scary, because school has always been very important to me. I want to go to law school. I've known that ever since I was in high school, so it was very frustrating to think, what if I can never read again? What if I can never go to school and sit under a light and listen to my teacher talk? That was something that 100% I couldn't do at the time, for the first five or six months.
It was very frustrating to think, what if this never changes and this is just my life for the rest of my life? That's very frustrating to think about when you're 16 years old. It's frustrating because you don't feel yourself getting better. It's not like a cold where the next day you wake up and you're fine. If anything, you would wake up and feel worse, so it was frustrating not to see any progress.
As an Individual
Finally, when it got deeper and deeper, months in, when things got worse, it got more frustrating because I could feel my mental health going down. I wasn't hanging out with my friends. I would not text my friends, not only because I couldn't be on my phone but just because I wasn't up for it.
I wasn't getting better. I couldn't go to school. I wasn't hanging out with my friends. I couldn't help myself. I felt as though no one could help me, in a way, because we had tried so many things before.
I wasn't getting better. My mental health wasn't getting better. I wasn't hanging out with my friends. I couldn't go to school. There was just the overall frustration of not being able to fix myself and it being so long.
As an Individual
When Carly was really starting to deteriorate—she was starting to get a little bit better with her concussion, but mentally she was deteriorating—I actually had a teacher questioning why she can't go to school. I think the teacher just didn't understand the whole process of the concussion and the mental health impact.
I think some of the education needs to go to the teachers and the schools and getting that out there to them. That was one of the most frustrating parts for me: watching her go through it and her coming home and telling me what teachers are saying. For the most part, they were great, but then you get a couple of them who just don't know. They're not educated on it. That's where some of that education needs to go as well.
As an Individual
I'll point out a couple of things that I referred to a minute ago. There are many great things that are working, and because they are working, that's when the chronic crying stops sometimes. I'll come back to a comment that was made earlier about the doctors. Where does the decision take place? Where that decision should take place is a question I'd encourage us to look at.
We had a great situation when the athlete started going back to perform whatever sport it may be and the protocols that were in place were very helpful and a huge relief to us as parents. It took the decision to say, “Rachel, you can't go back on that soccer field” out of our hands. That is a very difficult place to be put in as a parent. You know the risks of that child going back out there. When you're talking to a 16- or 17-year-old who doesn't listen to their parents too often, and you have to manage and navigate through that at a very important time in their life when they're emotionally distressed, having a protocol in place where a doctor has to allow that individual to get back on that field took the decision out of my hands, thankfully.
Windsor—Tecumseh, NDP
Understood.
Sharra, can you share with us really quickly some of the functional neurology treatment that Carly had? Was that covered?
As an Individual
Fortunately, part of it was covered under her dad's and my health care plan. The cost was $540 just for the initial visit. Then she went for, I believe, 10 visits, and portions of it were covered. Again, we're still taking time off work to go to these appointments. At that point, I would have done anything anyway. I just think about kids who don't have that coverage. If they didn't have this type of treatment, I don't know where they would be.
The long-term effects.... From what I saw with Carly, from where she started and where she is now, she would definitely not be where she is now, 100%. She was headed down a very bad path. Between the concussion and then the depression and anxiety on top of it, I don't know where she would have ended up had she not gotten that treatment plan. It worked. It saved her life. It really did.
Mr. Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East—Cooksville, Lib.)
We're moving over to the Liberals and Dr. Eyolfson.
Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, Lib.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for sharing your stories. I know it is very difficult to talk to basically strangers in a setting like this about some very personal things. I know it takes courage. This is very helpful, not just to us, but for the people we want to see helped from this. You're actually doing a service to a lot of people by coming here today.
Rachel, I want to get some clarification about the experience you had. When you were playing soccer, was the league you were in through school, or was this an after-school league through a community club? What was the venue or who was organizing this league?
As an Individual
At the time of my concussion, I was playing rep soccer with the North Mississauga Soccer Club. Along with that, I was training with a high-performance soccer academy. I moved out of the rep/competitive league and focused more on the training. It was kind of like a step forward and a lot more intense. It was an academy training boys and girls.
Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, Lib.
Okay, so you're saying this was a reasonably more advanced program that you were in. I don't know if “elite” would be the word.
In a little more detail, and I know this is difficult.... When the actual collision happened, did they find you were confused at the scene? Did anyone ask you questions like “How many fingers?” or “Do you know the date today?” Were you asked any of that at the time of the injury?
November 21st, 2018 / 7:40 p.m.
As an Individual
I was not asked, initially. I was just kind of like, “Ouch, that hurt”, and I got up and continued. After the practice, I was dizzy and disoriented, and my coach asked me those kinds of questions, like “What's the date today?”, “Where are you?”, “What are you doing right now?” and that kind of thing. I was able to answer the questions, so we just moved forward and I went home that night.
Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, Lib.
How long after the injury had this happened?
Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, Lib.
But it was not at the time it happened?