With Matthew's first concussion, we had very few resources. It was the Internet and that's not a good source of information.
When Matthew had his second concussion, the Greater Toronto Hockey League had partnered with Holland Bloorview, so we had resources to go to. We weren't grabbing everything off the Internet, trying to find what made sense to us, and placing it on our kid. We were informed. We knew symptoms. We knew that it was going to be different, that things can come and go, and that symptoms don't even show up right away. They can show up a couple of days later. For us, the big difference was having the care. I mean, it really isn't acceptable for anybody to have to deal with this on their own, using the Internet as their source of information.
I like what Ash had to say about research. There are a lot of great research studies going on right now for youth in sports, trying to pull it together, and I think that's something that should continue. There's that whole component of mental health that even on Matthew's second concussion we didn't get into. There's a whole element where the person does feel trapped. They lose all their support network. The mental health component of it is very key as well.