The worst part, though, was that he spent 16 years not even knowing he had suffered the traumatic brain injury, because he had no memory of it. He wasn’t aware of a ”before” or “after” the injury, so he didn’t know that his struggles were caused by the concussion. Instead he blamed himself, floundering in anger, confusion and depression.
Photo credit: Yarnalgo (Wikimedia Commons)
Lacrosse sticks.
Now a chief resident in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. Cornejo told his story at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association to impress upon his colleagues the challenges of helping patients with traumatic brain injury, especially athletes.
“These mild injuries can have profound effects on your self-concept and your experience as a human being. They can change the course of your life,” he said.
In 1991, he was a straight-A student in his junior year at a college preparatory high school and the son of proud Latino parents who had never attended college themselves. He and his family were looking forward to him getting a scholarship to finance college.
After the concussion, his grades tanked. He barely got by with Cs and Ds. His girlfriend dumped him. He became very emotional. He remembers 6-9 months of bad fights with his parents. “The likelihood is pretty high that this was related to the loss of consciousness,” he said. “For years, I considered myself `not good at’ certain things because of my academic performance in my senior year.”
His behavior frustrated and shocked him. One time he exploded in “road rage,” which embarrassed him even though no one was there to witness it. Another time when he was ordering oatmeal in a restaurant, he could not recall the words for brown sugar.
Photo credit: Sherry Boschert
Dr. Brandon Cornejo
“I developed a significant depression, a huge depression. In retrospect, I have a hard time distinguishing between depression produced by traumatic brain injury and depression because I wasn’t performing academically. My family was counting on” a scholarship, he said. That motivation and a lot of hard work eventually got him back on track academically, and somewhere in his freshman year of college he started to regain some self-esteem.
Years later, in 2007, his father casually said, “Remember that time you got knocked out, and we took you to the hospital?” Dr. Cornejo could dredge up only two memories — one of his coach staring down on him on the field, and the other of being in the back seat of the family car, with his mother saying, “Brandon, you’re really scaring us. Why do you keep repeating yourself?”
At the time of the injury in 1991, understanding of traumatic brain injury was just beginning to emerge, and the primary care physician who saw him for follow-up told his parents that their son should be fine, and they should keep an eye on him for a couple of weeks.
Today, Dr. Cornejo hopes that physicians would not allow young athletes with traumatic brain injury to return to play as quickly as he did, because repeat concussions carry much higher risks. He wishes that helmet designers would improve their products. And he urges all physicians to educate not only patients but their families and significant others about the potential sequelae of traumatic brain injury.
Because the patients may not remember.
–Sherry Boschert (@SherryBoschert on Twitter)