ONE YEAR! with Bella Paige
Show Notes:
It's been a stressful, exhausting, exhilarating, and rewarding journey for Bella to get to 52 episodes of the Post Concussion Podcast. Today we hear a recap of the lessons learned, the advice Bella has on continuing one step at a time, and what’s to come in 2022. We find out why Bella needed a break in December, and how she discovered a new hobby that gives her the same joy she felt when entering the ring to show jump. Bella gives some sage advice on how life and post concussion syndrome both have their ups and downs; the important thing is to just keep going. Find out how you can contact Bella for support for yourself or your loved ones, or to find specialists in your area, and why it’s so important that your family understands what you’re going through. We also discuss how to maintain respect for your healthcare providers, even when you’re feeling frustrated, and why you should always consider what other people may be going through. Tune in to hear all this and so much more, in the 52nd episode!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Welcome to episode 52 of the Post Concussion Podcast, celebrating a year of podcasts!
• Why Bella needed a break from podcasting in December.
• The good things that can also be invisible: peace, love, and happiness.
• How post concussion syndrome, like life, has its ups and downs.
• Schedule a one-on-one session with Bella for you, or your loved ones, to get help, or to just talk.
• Learning not to beat yourself up when things are going poorly.
• Why it’s important to consider what other people might be going through.
• Maintaining respect for your healthcare providers, even when you’re frustrated.
• What’s to come in 2022: more podcasts and the release of Bella’s book (Concussion 101).
• How this podcast is here to help your family understand, and why you should take their experience into account.
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Transcript - Click to Read
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:05.2] BP: Hi, I’m your host Bella Paige and welcome to The Post Concussion Podcast, all about life after experiencing a concussion. Help us make the invisible injury become visible.
The Post Concussion Podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post-concussion syndrome. It does not provide nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussion and post-concussion syndrome.
[DISCUSSION]
[0:01:03.2] BP: Welcome to The Post Concussion Podcast with myself Bella Paige. I am so excited for today. Can you believe this is week 52? I can’t, honestly. One year of podcasting, it’s crazy to think just over a year ago, I didn’t even want to hit “Record”. If I could explain the time and effort that goes into getting these podcasts out to you, you may not believe it. There was a few moments where I became completely burnt out, which is exactly why December was a month of repeats.
I needed some time to regroup, to continue the podcast for another year. I just can’t believe I actually made it, to be honest. I am so happy we made it this far. It has been a roller coaster to say the least, just like having post-concussion syndrome.
I just want to say thank you to all of my guests. I truly couldn’t have done it without all of you. All of your inspiring stories or help with survivors as professionals, it truly is so inspiring. Thank you to all listeners, all your feedback and support has made a world of a difference, we are now in over 50 countries and I couldn’t be happier.
Something I wanted to talk about today was that good things are invisible too. We often talk about how difficult it is to have this invisible injury and it’s true, the invisible aspects of this are sometimes harder than the symptoms themselves. It was so hard for people to not understand that I wasn’t okay even though I was smiling and laughing with them.
[0:02:45.0] It took me a really long time to get over that and we’re so stuck on how hard it is for things to be invisible but there’s also good things that are invisible like love and sometimes happiness is invisible. I know it’s not something you can always see within someone and something else that I recently learned about, well, maybe not learned about, recently felt again for the first time in a really long time and that’s peace.
People always say that you need to be at peace, I always thought they were kind of crazy to be honest, I never know what that meant. I was like, “Well, I can’t sit there and just breathe through my thoughts, I overthink and it never goes well.”
I finally understood what they meant when in my back yard actually, walking with my dog and I just felt like air, like no stress, nothing to worry about, just happiness and peace and I could really breathe and it was an amazing feeling and I have actually haven’t felt that feeling probably since I used to show jump horses and it used to be the same feeling that I would get when I would enter into a show ring with my horse and it was just this feeling of pure joy and happiness and I never knew if I could find that again.
I actually get the same feeling when I’m jumping a dirt bike, as dangerous as that sounds, but those few seconds in the air, I actually get the same feeling that I would get entering the ring in a horse show or jumping a horse and it’s amazing to know that I can now get that feeling just by going for a walk, that’s where my mental state is right now.
[0:04:37.1] It’s incredible to think that two months ago now, I was having a mental breakdown, laying on the floor, telling my mom that I didn’t know how I was going to keep going. It’s something that happens. Mental health doesn’t go away, well, mental illness doesn’t go away not like people think it does.
That’s why we explain that ball in a box theory here on the show because that ball never leaves the box and sometimes, it can be really tough when that ball grows big all of a sudden in a few days and it can be really overwhelming. I just couldn’t handle it.
It was November and I just told my mom, “How am I still here? How am I still having headaches, how am I so stressed out, I can’t get out of bed again and everything seems like it’s just flooding” and I said, “I just wanted to live a normal life and be done with this.” I just couldn’t think and I could barely breathe.
That lasted for a few days and then it passed and now I’m back to the happy go lucky self that I’ve been for a while. It wasn’t just a walk in the park, you know? You can have a really great week and then — or a great year. I’ve had a really good year for the better part of it. Things can still go wrong and that’s okay and it’s okay to have those moments as long as you know that they don’t last.
That you can recover and feel that peace or that happiness or joy again, sometimes it just takes time and sometimes, we break down to realize that we need to change some things and that’s okay too.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:06:31.2] BP: Support the podcast. If you truly love the podcast, please consider supporting us through our tip jar, find the “support the podcast” link in our episode description, all tips are greatly appreciated.
[DISCUSSION CONTINUED]
[0:06:50.2] BP: Now, something I wanted to start because I get so many requests for help that I can’t always keep up. I figured it was time to set something up a little bit more official. You can now schedule one-on-one sessions with me for any help you may need. This isn’t just for survivors but loved ones as well.
Sometimes we need to talk to someone and ask all the questions to truly understand what someone else is going through. I will help you find specialists in your area if you need, help you find a new normal with your symptoms and help you feel less alone. I also provide help to athletes who need to take a break or retire early and students who are struggling to get through school.
Something I wanted to talk about that kind of reflects back to what I talked about in my mental breakdown was, how to make it when the world feels like it’s against you. That’s something I used to feel a lot. No matter what I did, nothing was right and it’s a hard feeling to have when it just feels like every step, maybe you use a ladder for example and you’re caught in this ladder in your life and every single time you make it up a step, you fall down four.
That’s kind of what concussion recovery can feel like. You think you made it and then all of a sudden, everything goes wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re not making it up the ladder but sometimes it can be really frustrating when it feels like nothing is working.
You just have to learn how to not beat yourself up about those moments because those moments are going to happen no matter what you do, it’s just a part of it, it’s okay if you fall all the way down the ladder. I’ve been reinjured and have felt major setbacks in my recovery. I can honestly say now, I am living my very happy adaptive lifestyle as I like to call it.
[0:08:51.2] I don’t not have post-concussion syndrome anymore. I don’t know if I will ever not have it but I can definitely live this life very happily with it. I do get more headaches probably a lot more than the average person but I know how to work with them, work through them, deal with my triggers, eat properly, I know how to really focus on my health and readjust when I need it.
When I had a mental health breakdown, I know how to readjust and figure out, “Okay, what do I need to do next so that I can get out of this crack in the road?” or whatever metaphor you want to use, I can get out of this and carry on.
Something else about when the world feels like it’s against you, you’d be amazed of how may other people feel that way who don’t have an invisible injury. Sometimes it’s just the feeling we get and these two years, these last two years with COVID have been extremely difficult for a lot of people.
It’s very emotionally draining, as I said to my girlfriend the other day, “I’m done with COVID, I’m over it. I’m done, I don’t want to do it anymore.” I feel like a lot of people felt like this a year ago and now we’re on to year three. It can be really overwhelming to think that we’re doing this again.
[0:10:21.1] You just have to kind of try to keep your head up, hopefully carry on and take it one day at a time as I always say because you can’t overthink when all of this is happening because the world changes every day, the rules change all the time. For example, I live in Canada and the other day, we’re in a new lock down. All of a sudden, can’t go out to eat, can’t go to restaurants and can’t go to the gym but you can do other things.
I wouldn’t say a lot of it makes sense but we are back in a lockdown and it’s really emotionally draining for a lot of people and a lot of families. Don’t forget about that when you are dealing with people because a lot of people are dealing with a lot of stress right now and it’s important that we realize that.
The next thing I wanted to talk about was respect. When I was going through this, I was really mad at all of my medical professionals because they weren’t helping. Even though they were trying to help, they just — nothing felt like it was working and I think it’s really important that we do respect the doctors and professionals in our lives because just because they don’t have the answers doesn’t mean they’re not trying to.
Something I’ve been frustrated with before is when my family doctor refers things out. Oh, does that make me angry some days. Because for example, I’ve come up with research and therapies to try and specialist and medications and I bring them to my family doctor and say, “I’d like to try this, can we try it?” and sometimes he would say yes and other times, he would refer it out.
When it was something he could just prescribe or give to me and I would get so mad but it really makes a lot of sense because referring it out to a specialist is what they should be doing. The only thing is sometimes referrals take a very long time. There is one more referral I got that was a year later and I remember laughing, telling the medical institute that I was at that it was kind of ironic that I was seeing someone in a year about what was happening right now.
Those wait times can be really frustrating as a concussion survivor because you want to get better now or yesterday or last month or last year. Having a delay, waiting to get referrals can be really frustrating. Try to breathe when your doctor refers things out because they are doing what’s best for you even though it might not always feel like it.
[0:13:10.0] It’s been a year and a year of podcasting and it’s sort of hard to explain the feeling of getting to this point but it is amazing and it’s kind of exhausting. It is truly amazing to get to this point and this next year, I am so excited as we continue to grow and reach more people and help more survivors and their families, that’s all that matters to me.
In the next year, what is to come? We’re going to have more podcasts of course, every week, every Thursday, so make sure you are subscribing to our podcast. You can also support it, don’t forget. The other special thing that I’ve been working on, I’ve discussed it a few times on the podcast but not that much is my Concussion 101 book.
It’s 101 tips for living a post-concussion life and that release will hopefully be for this summer as an ebook and an audio book, of course as reading, we all can be a very big challenge when recovering from a concussion or brain injury. I will make sure that both get released at the same time for everyone and it’s really just dealing with life because I think it gets forgotten.
So often, it’s one of the biggest reasons that I started this podcast is that everyone was forgetting about my life. They were so focused on my health and they forgot that I still needed to live a life every day, even though I was in therapy every day and handling post-concussion life like handling friends and relationships and my family wasn’t something that I was prepared for or helped with.
[0:15:13.2] Speaking of families, I have been thinking about that a lot and a lot about how my family got no support when going through all this. It was really just them left in the dark because I wasn’t explaining it to them.
I didn’t know how, I didn’t know how to talk to anyone about what I was going through, which is why I am so thankful for our guests who do come out and speak because when I have a headache every single day, I didn’t talk about this at all. It took me a long time to really just talk about it openly with people because I never liked that pity look that people give you when you tell them about being ill.
So, I didn’t talk about it and I didn’t know how to talk about my bad thoughts. I didn’t know how to tell my parents that I didn’t want to live anymore and I didn’t know how to tell them that my head pain was so excruciating that opening my eyes hurt and sitting up hurt and walking hurt and it was kind of a crazy time in my life to also help my family to get through it.
That’s why I think it’s so important to send the podcast to your family or my one-on-one sessions because someone needs to explain to them what’s going on and that is okay if it’s not you as a survivor because it can be really hard. I know a few doctors would try to explain things to my parents but they missed so many important pieces of what was going on.
[0:16:42.1] Like retiring from a sport, that mentally was extremely difficult on me, one of the most challenging things to this day that I’ve dealt with because it’s a part of your identity and now you’re changing it, so how do you do that when you’re a stubborn teenager who doesn’t want to do anything else with their life?
How do you take away the identity of me reading books and getting out of bed and hanging out with friends? It’s just crazy to think that this is all invisible and that we need to be able to talk about it. Like I said, it is okay if you are not there yet. That is why I’m here, that’s why the podcast is here because sometimes you need that extra support and your family probably needs it as well.
I felt so bad for my siblings as I started to get older and really realize what I put them through not purposefully but what they went through with a sick sister. It must have been very challenging having a sister who never got out of bed for a long time and would get out of bed and sit with them for an hour at the table and then go lay down because I’d be in so much pain.
It’s really important that we have support for both our survivors and their families and loved ones and their friends, anyone who is close to you. I just want to say thank you to all the family members that are listening to the podcast because your support, it may not always feel like it but we are so grateful for your help and your support because it does make a really big difference in our lives.
[0:18:18.1] Thank you so much for listening to this quick recap of our one year with podcast every week, every Thursday and I am so excited for another year and make sure you check out our one-on-one sessions and that book when it comes out. Don’t forget, if you’re listening to the podcast, you’ll hear about it or subscribe to our email list.
I can’t wait for another great year. Don’t forget to take it one day at a time, I honestly love you all.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:18:52.2] BP: Has your life been affected by concussions? Join our podcast by getting in touch. Thank you so much for listening to The Post Concussion Podcast and be sure to help us educate the world about the reality of concussion by giving us a share and to learn more, don’t forget to subscribe.
[END]
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