Expectation vs Reality with Caleb Kamins
Show Notes:
Sustaining an injury is a challenge for everyone, but it is particularly tough on young, high performing athletes. Today, we speak with Caleb Kamins, a 23-year-old graduate and snowboarder who has sustained roughly 10 concussions over the course of his life. On today’s episode, he tells us how the most recent of these injuries opened his eyes to the world of brain health, and opens up about some of the areas of personal growth that his recovery has sparked. Caleb kicks off our episode with a history of his injuries, mainly related to snowboarding. He talks about some of the forms of treatment he used to try to alleviate his symptoms, with Cognitive FX as the most constructive and significant of these endeavors. We delve into a conversation about the role of diet and nutrition in recovery and how to understand food as an inflammatory trigger, and Caleb introduces us to a significant helper on the road to his recovery; integrative health practitioner, Chelsie Moore. We talk about the importance of shifting the narrative to focus on appreciation for the good in his life and how he learned that his relationship with himself was the most important thing, as well how he is weighing up the risks of re-entering the world of snowboarding. Caleb also opens up about how his recovery has changed him. Tune in for an uplifting episode filled with practical insights and positivity to fuel you on your own path to recovery.
Key Points From This Episode:
• Caleb tells us about his injuries, mainly related to snowboarding.
• Some of the forms of treatment that Caleb tried to use to alleviate his symptoms.
• Caleb’s experience at Cognitive FX using the FMRI treatments.
• How Cognitive FX gave Caleb a new understanding of brain health.
• Understanding food as an inflammatory trigger.
• The role of diet and nutrition in recovery.
• How finding integrative health practitioner, Chelsie Moore, helped Caleb on his journey.
• Why it is important to be cognizant of the type of water you are drinking.
• The necessity of shifting the narrative to appreciating what he had.
• Changes Caleb experienced post concussion and how that impacted his relationships.
• How Caleb learned that his relationship with himself was the most important thing.
• How Caleb thinks his recovery will impact his re-entry into snowboarding.
• Weighing the risks of snowboarding versus waiting for longer before doing it again.
• Caleb’s thoughts on PTSD as an appropriate response to traumatic experiences.
• The personal growth Caleb has experienced through his concussions.
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.
Welcome to today’s episode of The Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige, and today’s guest, Caleb Kamins. Caleb is a 23-year-old graduate from the University of Colorado who has sustained roughly 10 concussions throughout his life as a snowboarder.
His last concussion, which is the one he started to experience post-concussion syndrome, opened his eyes to the world of brain health and higher life changes after TBI.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:29.7] BP: Welcome to the show, Caleb.
[0:01:31.5] CK: Thank you for having me.
[0:01:33.2] BP: To start, do you want to tell everyone about your injuries and what occurred?
[0:01:37.6] CK: Basically, it all centers around my snowboarding with basically one unrelated concussion in college. Start from the beginning, I’ve been snowboarding for 12 years, avid snowboarder and I grew up snowboarding in Massachusetts at a local hill called Butternut and that eventually led me to go to a snowboarding camp called Woodward where I met my coach who kind of convinced me to attend the winter sports academy called Mount Snow Academy.
From 8th grade till my senior of high school, I was basically Mount Snow Academy in Stratton Island School and we were snowboarding every day. Every other week we were on a hill and while that allowed me to really get a lot of progression in and a lot of time on the snow, it really came at a cost of concussions and I would say from 8th grade to senior year, I probably sustained eight or nine concussions and what’s really interesting about that is I recovered fine from all of them. That led me to never really take them too seriously or even understand the seriousness of them.
I kind of kept that mindset all throughout college and I kind of manifested in a bit of recklessness in my junior year of college, I fell partying night and woke up in the hospital and had no idea what happened, could have hit my head once, could have hit my head a bunch of times but I knew I was concussed.
Regardless, I really treated that concussion just like any other concussion. I rested for a week, did the protocol of solely integrating myself back into school and stuff but aside from that, I didn’t really take any precautions. I eventually got back into drinking, snowboarding and just living a life without any worry or worry of head injuries. That kind of led to a setback in June this last concussion that I was talking about in my junior year happened on April 19th, 2019.
That June, I ended up going snowboarding at Arapahoe Basin and was hitting this cornice and I kind of saying to myself, “As long as I don’t hit my head, I’ll be good, just don’t hit your head” because that’s how I thought that was the only way you can get a concussion. I was hitting this cornice and was landing, falling, compressing pretty heavy and didn’t hit my head so I thought I was good and I was driving home that night and all these symptoms kind of came back and that’s when I realized that just the compression of hitting that corners and the shock of that can really do some damage.
That’s when I realized that this was more than just a concussion and that post-concussion syndrome is very much a reality. I would say it was that last concussion coupled with this last setback in June that really solidified the post-concussion syndrome.
[0:04:15.5] BP: Yeah, you’re not the only one where you’ve had that. They had all these concussions and I had quite a few when I was younger too and I didn’t really think about it. Probably a week or two maybe, I was ill and then I was back to my normal self, didn’t affect me really. You just kind of bounced back and carried on with life.
Then, when you do have that one or for me, it kind of was a bit more gradual but when those symptoms come on, it can really – it’s like, “Whoa” like you said, you take it for granted because you didn’t realize how bad it can turn out and it’s kind of hard to accept but it’s something that happens to so many of us. What have you tried to help in your recovery once you realized that this isn’t going back to normal?
[0:05:03.7] CK: Yeah, my recovery process, it was pretty extensive and what’s interesting about the process itself was I think the treatments I did chronologically speaking kind of reflect my increasing seriousness towards the recovery as well as my appreciation for brain health.
At the start, again, I didn’t really know what was good or have any understanding of what was wrong with me so I kind of went the conventional western medicine route and that kind of looked like CT scans, MRI’s, optometrist, neuro optometrists, neurologists and that was really just to rule out some overarching issues and thinking about that is, they base all of their diagnostics off of testing, right?
If it can’t be seen on a test then they rule it as nothing being wrong. I think that’s a really big issue with just concussion care at the moment and I think there will be a lot of change in the coming years but right now, I think and in the beginning of my recovery it was nothing was wrong with me so to speak and no one saw anything and that was really disheartening.
After those first two months, I kind of started to search for some more unconventional modalities, whether that was niche, acupuncturist or neuro chiropractors or even some cranial synchro work, I really started to kind of grab at anything I could because again, I didn’t understand the root cause of my symptoms or really how to best treat them.
I was grabbing at anything because I still knew something was wrong. Still, that didn’t alleviate any symptoms. About six months in when I returned to my senior year at college, I met with my neurologist and she was a big proponent of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I ended up doing about 80 dives of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The whole rationale behind that is the idea that brain cells really need oxygen to function properly.
After a blow to the head, there is this disruption of oxygen and that really impacts the blood flow to your brain and ultimately brain function as a whole. Given that that was the premise of what I understood hyperbaric oxygen therapy was, it seemed pretty promising. You basically get put into this glass see-through chamber, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone if you’re claustrophobic but –
[0:07:22.8] BP: That was my problem, I had a huge issue with it.
[0:07:26.1] CK: Yeah, you get put in this chamber in and it pressurized oxygen in hopes that it can more readily deliver that oxygen and kind of help that damage brain tissue and promote healing or even reduce swelling and inflammation and I did 80 dives and it definitely helped, I saw some clarity but it still wasn’t enough. I still felt that lingering brain fog and vision as well as those pulsating headaches.
It wasn’t where I wanted to be at, nowhere close where I wanted to be at so I still knew that there’s some more that had to be done and that was basically throughout my whole first semester of senior year and what’s really interesting is I didn’t really understand how subjective post-concussion syndrome is. Before I actually got post-concussion syndrome, I had a friend of a friend who had dealt with it for eight months and I kind of went in with this mentality of give it eight months and then you’ll be good.
[0:08:27.6] BP: Okay, yeah.
[0:08:28.9] CK: You can go back to drinking, you can go back to just living your life and I learned quickly that that wasn’t the case and that every brain is unique and mine was not [inaudible 0:08:38.4]. After I did 80 dives, I kind of just jumped right back into college and tried to live my life as normally as I could or whatever my definition of normal was. It was alright, I mean, it wasn’t terrible but I was still having like headaches and my mental health wasn’t good.
It was still a very debilitating thing that I was dealing with. I was pretty hopeless at that time and funny enough, I was listening to one of my favorite snowboarders on a podcast, Chris Grenier who’s I think had like 10 concussions as well and he actually talks about his experience with concussions and brought up this treatment center called Cognitive FX and it’s a concussion treatment center in Provo, Utah. After doing some research I kind of saw a lot of promise in that and ended up doing an epic week there, which is kind of this week long treatment.
What’s really interesting about this treatment center is they have this crazy piece of technology called an –
[0:09:42.1] BP: MRI
[0:09:42.1] CK: Yeah, official technology but it’s basically used to kind of really – on some unprecedented levels, understand blood flow to your brain and they use this FMRI to kind of create an individualized treatment. This FMRI and the strand that it creates, when this is coupled with this multisensory approach that they take to this epic week, it’s really just revolutionary and it’s really the only treatment that I saw a great deal of benefit from.
What I really want to touch on is this multisensory approach because the brain is such a complex organ and it never works in isolation, right? It’s never just using vision or it’s never just using memory, it’s always working in tandem and Cognitive FX understands that so they kind of do this multisensory approach with all the therapies.
They do that and it kind of really helps reconnect blood flow that much better and again, that really kind of saved my life to be honest with you. I really owe a lot to Cognitive FX, they helped with a lot of symptoms. Cognitive FX in general kind of gave me a greater appreciation for brain health, I mean, by this time, I really understood the gravity of the situation, understood how many parts were in play. I didn’t know that vision was contributing to my headaches.
This was probably the greatest resource that I got out of my whole journey so far and I really encourage anyone who is going through this to reach out to Cognitive FX because I think they’re on the forefront of clinical concussion recovery right now. That’s my whole recovery story.
[0:11:23.4] BP: For sure. Well, thank you so much for sharing it all and I like that you mentioned that it’s invisible and it’s a big problem with healthcare. My head hurts and then they go, “Well okay, but everything is fine” it’s like, “No, everything’s not fine.” I remember trying to explain that to not even just healthcare professionals but people around me and my life, I was like no, I know I look okay but I’m not okay and it took me a while to kind of get past but not everyone was going to understand that.
I tried the H Bot as you mentioned and I was so claustrophobic. I can’t. It definitely is something worth trying and Cognitive FX. Actually I had a meeting with the head doctor today about coming on the podcast that will be great. Something you didn’t touch on but something that helped me is learning my triggers and one of those happened to be food.
If I eat anything with sugar, even just like a cupcake, I know that I kind of going to enhance my symptoms. How has diet helped you recover at all?
[0:12:31.7] CK: At the root of most concussion cases, I think there’s a chronic inflammatory response that the brain just can’t seem to get a hold of and that’s something I completely overlooked and I really didn’t think about diet at all. I didn’t make the connection that food really is medicine and it can really help with that inflammatory trigger.
Most people my age in college, I was eating pretty unhealthy diet. For me, that looked like a super high sugar diet, high gluten, a lot of bad fats, which I learned is really bad and you know, this is particularly detrimental because after a TBI or a concussion, the blood brain barrier gets really damaged. In other words, it allows for increased permeability.
Non-essential nutrients or other toxins can really easily cross that and damage the brain the brain that much easier. I didn’t understand that neuroscience behind it at all and it really justified a lot of the headaches and brain fog that I was experiencing.
Really up until Cognitive FX, I didn’t have like a diet regimen or anything but after Cognitive FX, they sent me this list, I want to say like a month before my treatment with the recommended foods and a lot of that was nuts and vegetables and greens.
I definitely started to prioritize a lot of greens and nuts before and after Cognitive FX but it wasn’t until I was like scrolling Instagram, probably like five months ago, I think it was like snowboard post or something and one of my favorite snowboarders Pat Moore basically wrote a comment on the post, typing up his wife, Chelsie Moore who is a – I might butcher this but she’s like a naturopathic doctor with a niche study in like concussion rehabilitation. I know she was on the podcast.
[0:14:21.1] BP: Yeah.
[0:14:23.6] CK: I ended up finding her Instagram page and she really dedicated her whole life to it and really took the route with neuro nutrition, right? I think that’s a really undervalued aspect of the concussion recovery and once I found this Instagram page, I found her program and her cookbook and really understood that this chronic inflammatory response could be mitigated by food. I ended up getting on her program and it’s been pretty helpful. I’m still only halfway through so I have a lot to do with a lot of other stuff so far I’ve – I did a 30 day autoimmune protocol diet, which was really helpful because it basically cuts out any inflammatory triggers from your diet and you’re really doing a lot of fruits, vegetables, fish, it’s a lot of paleo but basically taking out any inflammatory triggers and you slowly reintegrate them to see if any are triggering any symptoms.
From that, I was able to get a good understanding that gluten and dairy were providing a lot of symptoms. Completely or not completely – I tried to cut gluten and dairy out, super hard, I don’t know if you cut those out but it’s just so hard to do.
[0:15:42.1] BP: Yeah.
[0:15:42.0] CK: Like everything but –
[0:15:43.7] BP: I like bread.
[0:15:45.6] CK: Gluten-free bread too, it’s gross.
[0:15:48.3] BP: It’s just – no, I think gluten free pizza, no thank you.
[0:15:52.3] CK: I’ve eaten a lot of cauliflower crust pizza.
[0:15:54.3] BP: Okay, yeah.
[0:15:55.1] CK: Not bad but yeah, aside from this autoimmune paleo diet, I really just understood like the importance of essential fats like your brain is like 60% fat and that’s just crazy that we’re giving our brain like saturated fats and just really bad fats that are not conducive to any good cognition and aside from that, there’s this whole aspect and component of water and how helpful that is in providing the essential minerals and nutrients that we need as well as how bad and how misunderstood tap water and certain water is on a national level.
I think it’s kind of misconstrued to where people think, as long as you're drinking water, it’s all right but the fact of the matter is, a lot of toxins and contaminants get into our water and it’s just getting that much easier up to the brain so it’s really important to be very cognizant of what water and the type of water you’re drinking so that was another big aspect I’ve learned.
Gut health was something I had no clue about at all, I didn’t understand that there was like a gut, brain connection at all. There’s all these stuff that I still have to learn, I still have to learn how to optimize my blood sugar and keep my energy levels up because at the end of the day, concussions really do create that gnarly energy deficit so I mean, I’ve learned a lot about inflammatory triggers but I do still have a lot of work to do about blood sugar and keto and energy deficit. Diet has been a really cool aspect in my recovery that I’m still very eager to kind of dive into.
[0:17:34.2] BP: Yeah, well, that’s great. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, Chelsie was on the podcast in episode 13. I’m not exactly sure what she would consider herself, she does functional medicine and now, inflammation training. She’s training in a ton of different nutrition aspects and integrative health and all that stuff but yeah, that’s episode 13 if anyone wants to take a look at that.
With that, we’re going to take a break.
[BREAK]
[0:18:04.0] BP: Want to create awareness for concussions? Want to support our podcast and website? Buy awareness clothing today on postconcussioninc.com and get 10% off using “listenin.” That’s “listenin” and be sure to take Post Concussion Inc. in your photos. We’d love to see them.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:18:30.5] BP: Welcome back to The Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today’s guest, Caleb Kamins. Something that we kind of talked about before recording and something that helped gave me a lot of perspective through all this is that it’s hard to accept but the theory of having enough sadness or to appreciate things like happiness. How is appreciating the good times helped you?
[0:18:54.6] CK: Yeah, this has been kind of like mindset shift for me that it’s something I’m still working on. It’s something that is really hard to adopt but I’m just trying to find gratitude in these challenges and I think kind of switching the narrative is essential in getting acceptance for one but moving forward and prior to my concussion, I really took life for granted. I mean, I was a very fortunate kid, I had a lot of good opportunities and I think given that, I took my good mental health for granted.
When I ended up getting this TBI, it really flipped my whole life upside down. I mean, I did a complete 180 so to speak and I had a messed up mental health so it was really hard to accept and I was experiences all these new emotions and feelings that I never really experienced before and I think the initial kind of condition response we all have is to dwell on it, on this new reality and that’s not conducive tanning growth or any recovery.
While that may be hard to understand at first, it’s definitely necessary. Eventually, I realized that I needed to shift the narrative then that to me looked like realizing that I needed this experience and I needed to better appreciate and understand the happiness that I felt prior because at the end of the day, it really is a balance of opposites and you can’t have a definition or an understanding of what happiness is if you can’t compare it to sadness.
I think that reality was pretty eye-opening to me and it really highlights the importance of mindset and recovery process. You know, ultimately what you think and your thoughts that impact your actions and out large your life. Having that theory of enough and appreciation of happiness was pretty pivotal in my recovery. It’s definitely a work in progress still, I mean I am still struggling with finding the light in the darkness if you will but it’s important to everyone who has been through suffering and trauma.
[0:20:52.8] BP: Yeah and it definitely takes time, I definitely get that. For example, the weekend before we’re recording this, I spent two days in the sun and then I paid for it and I spent the whole day in bed the next day and then I got up and I just carried on the day after that and that was something I would not have been able to do in the past. It would have ruined my mood for the week because I would have been so kind of angry for myself for pushing it, myself too hard or the fact that I am still getting headaches and things like that but mindset has been huge for me as well.
It definitely takes time, it is not something that tomorrow you’re going to have this perfect mindset and everything is going to be good. It really doesn’t work that way but it is very important to think about something else. We kind of talked about was relationships and a lot of the time, our relationships change. My relationships changed a lot but it’s also been nine years, so I’m sure they would have changed anyways but the expectation versus the reality of friendships and relationships, how has that been since your concussions?
[0:21:58.5] CK: This is an interesting one because I did not foresee this at all. I didn’t think it would change me in my core and I still don’t think it did. I think at the end of the day I’m still the same person but it does have a pretty drastic impact on who you are and your personality and I think what’s super important to recognize is that your relationship with others is super contingent on your relationship with yourself, right?
If you can’t love yourself, then how could you have the capacity or willingness to spread love and kindness to other people? It is just not the case so that’s something that was really hard for me to kind of experience was not so much my relationship with others and while I do still think there’s a place for that, I think I struggle most with kind of my relationship with myself because my whole life, I really built up this personal narrative of who I was and who I am and that really completely changed once I experience this TBI.
I thought I’d be the same person but truthfully, I mean, your brain is changing on a neurological level so you’re bound to have some physical and mental limitations and for me to think that that wouldn’t be the case was really doing a disservice to myself because I found that I often times romanticize my old self a lot and I think that’s a thing that a lot of post-concussion syndrome patients struggle with and it really is a notion that you were this crazy awesome person who could do so much before.
Now that you can’t do it, it’s like your life is being taken away from you. What’s interesting is I built up this idea that if I could get back to my old actions, my old way of thinking, my old self then I would have truly recovered and yeah, I mean that kind of looked like me going back to college and trying to party as hard as I did, trying to just do all the stuff I used to do and at the end of the day, the truth is that lifestyle just isn’t sustainable anymore and that is a hard reality to face but it needed to be done.
Realizing that my relationship with myself, you know, my understanding of who I am and my confidence and my experiences that’s really hard to accept but I think everyone at some point in their life is going to experience some internal battle with themselves and at the end of the day, it can either make you or break you. At the moment, I am trying to have it built some character and stuff but I don’t think it’s enough to lose any friends or anything like that and I am not too concerned with that.
If they don’t want to be with you then that’s their own issue, it says a lot more about them but one thing that has been a bit disheartening is just kind of this stigma around head injuries that a lot of people just think you’re being weak and can’t handle it and I don’t blame them. At the end of the day, I think it’s an invisible injury and they have never experienced it so I can’t expect them to sympathize with me but it was definitely a bit shocking to receive.
Again, I don’t think it’s been anything that’s I’ve lost friends over but it’s definitely been more aware of, so it changes. It’s an isolating experience and you’re going to have some changes that you don’t see with yourself and it is an invisible injury but it’s definitely very real internally.
[0:25:25.1] BP: Yeah, it definitely is and I find men not to be –
[0:25:30.4] CK: No, no worries.
[0:25:31.1] BP: Biased but it’s true, men have a harder time with the – we’ve talked about it before on the podcast about the like, “Get tough. What do you mean you’re still ill? That was a year ago” or six months ago or “You’re not better yet?” like that kind of thing.
[0:25:44.5] CK: Yeah.
[0:25:45.0] BP: That mentality comes through and then the whole men are tough kind of aspect is also another issue for sure but something I know you have done is snowboard again since your concussion, so how has that felt?
[0:25:59.7] CK: Yeah, this is a dream in itself. I mean, at first when I think this kind of parallels with my – the treatments I’ve done and kind of my mindset on my whole injury but on the first season I got back, I really didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. I felt as if I didn’t hit my head I’d be all right and you know, I should have learned that given the corners and that setback that kind of causes the whole post-concussion syndrome that is not the case.
For some reason, I felt that as long as I don’t hit my head I’ll be posted and that looked like me taking turns and going up the mountain every day that winter and to be honest, I am not too concerned with that because at the end of the day, taking turns is second nature. I’ve been on a board for over a decade, I could take turns but what’s interesting is how quickly that develops into me going into the park and 50 footing a rail and then board slide and by the end of the day, you’re –
It is a really fine line between doing what you know is responsible and doing what you love because it gives you sight and enjoy and I think it kind of – to put it in analogy, it’s like this piece of cake that I know you kind of spoke on but –
[0:27:15.1] BP: Yeah, it’s my favorite.
[0:27:17.6] CK: It’s this notion that you can’t eat a piece of cake without eating the whole cake and I think that is super valid with me and my snowboarding at the moment. I just can’t get on a board and be comfortable and okay with myself just taking turns. I have to snowboard at the level that I know I can do and moving forward, I think that’s something I have to change. Going into next season, I mean I took this whole past season off and that in itself was crazy.
I didn’t think I had it in me to not snowboard for a season but it was really cool to kind of see my identity and myself outside of snowboarding because it attach so much value and identity to snowboarding that taking the season off helped me kind of understand characters as a side from that but moving forward, I do plan on getting back onboard next season, although I know my mom would probably ring me if she heard that.
[0:28:11.6] BP: I get that.
[0:28:12.9] CK: I might have to get into split boarding and some safer methods of snowboarding but I’ve learned to not push myself too far and to really weigh the risk versus reward and I think engraining that mindset and that understanding of being kind of pragmatic it’s been something that I’ve learned throughout my recovery as I’ve done more treatments and as I’ve gotten better, I have ultimately gotten more of an appreciation for my brain and I think that will definitely affect my snowboarding for sure.
[0:28:44.6] BP: Yeah and the piece of cake is my favorite analogy as I have explained it to you before because that’s my issue with riding is like I can’t. I can’t do with a piece of the cake, I have to do the whole cake so I am going to eat the whole thing. I do better without it but I wouldn’t say I don’t still risk myself doing other things. I’m really into dirt biking right now and but because –
[0:29:10.1] CK: That’s to me like even gnarlier and like more.
[0:29:13.9] BP: To me, it’s not because in my brain, the horse has its own brain. If I tell my dirt bike to go left, it goes left. If I tell my horse to go left, it can go right so that’s kind of my theory but I can also just do it like I don’t do it a lot. I go sit on the track with friends and stuff and I’ll do four laps and they’ll do 30 in a day and I’m done or we’ll do a trail and I’m good. I’m not in a rush because I really like it but I don’t have that obsession with it like I did with riding.
I am okay with just getting the adrenaline rush out and then calling it a day. It’s really helped me with my mental health because I need that rush and it’s helped because I know I’m not so obsessed with it that it’s like I’m going to push too far.
[0:29:59.0] CK: Yeah.
[0:29:59.4] BP: That’s really helped me because riding, I just push like I’ll ride six horses a day and not stop and jump and do it six days a week or seven days a week and then that part is really hard to control. When you’re in sports, it’s really hard because you want to keep going and then deciding whether or not to – if I had a lot of people look at me like it’s kind of crazy for still riding but when I stopped I went crazy, so that part was really hard for me. How has that been with snowboarding?
[0:30:32.0] CK: Yeah, I mean I think to the end of being pragmatic and weighing your risk versus reward like to go back into snowboarding, I mean I think there is also a component of my mental health and my own identity that is kind of being lost if I don’t snowboard. I think there is pros and cons to both sides of snowboarding and not snowboarding again but I think at the end of the day, if I can snowboard at a safe, I mean I don’t know what constitutes safe anymore but not risky level, then I think then that would do way more good than harm.
I am super keen on getting back into snowboarding. I think most snowboarders who have gone through TBI, their end goal isn’t to never snowboard again. I think the idea is, how am I going to get back onboard and snowboard safely? With that being said, I really look forward to kind of getting back on a board and really just making turns. I know I may not be able to jump and hit rails like I used to but I am still stoked to just get back on a board and continue doing something I love.
[0:31:38.0] BP: Yeah and it is about doing it safely, right? That’s a big thing that I try to promote and also knowing that now if you hit your head, you are not going to get on a snowboard the same day. You know that is something I didn’t know before. If I fell off a horse, I would just get back on. If you weren’t going to the hospital, you get told to get back on your horse and that’s how it worked and there’s that aspect and then there’s also the aspect of lots of my guests get injured at home, in a car.
You know you can get injured anywhere, any place, anytime and that’s something that we talk about a lot so living in fear also isn’t something you want to do.
[0:32:16.5] CK: Yeah, and that is honestly something that I still struggle with to this day. I want to say like most of my cognitive issues are good, vestibular like ocular I’m good but something that I am still actively working on is my mental health. I think there is a PTSD component to it where I am afraid to get back on a board now and I am afraid to do a lot of stuff that maybe perceived as super risk-averse or super timid and the fact of the matter is that might be the case.
Having some level of PTSD is a healthy response to trauma and some people trying to understand and kind of make peace with so that it is not super debilitating and I think getting back on a board is definitely going to help find some peace with that.
[0:33:09.5] BP: For sure, and I get that. I get the fear factor. I used to get on any horse, like you point at it and I’ll get on it but then when I was getting back into it even like after a few of the head injuries and once the headaches started, I started saying no. I wasn’t getting on anything unless I knew it had a higher – safer, right? There was no getting on something that ran out of control or spun really fast or none of that. Like you said, it’s thinking about the risk and then being smart about it.
[0:33:40.5] CK: Yeah and I think there is a level of maturity that comes with kind of these TBIs like having the aware of thought to really say no and know your boundaries is at first glance, it’s kind of disheartening but at the end of the day, it takes a lot of willpower to know your boundaries and have the power to say no. I think there is a silver lining of the whole head injury and I think it will move forward in most regards.
You know, I am just super grateful that there’s podcasts out here like you and niched communities of people and doctors and people that are out there that really know the truth about post-concussion syndrome and TBI like it really validates my experience and I don’t want to speak on other people’s behalf but I think it really provides a lot of hope and resilience to push forward and I think that’s something that’s been missing in the concussion community for so long.
I think given this podcast, given so much traction that brain injury awareness has gained, I think the protocols and the narrative around brain health and concussions will change drastically in the next decade so I am stoked to see that and I am stoked to continue helping my brain and helping my mental and yeah, I look forward to what the future holds and just keep strong and keep fighting everyone.
[0:34:59.7] BP: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining and sharing your story post-concussion.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:35:07.1] 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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