Not Who I Used to Be with Joe Dickenson
Show Notes:
Beef farmer and hockey goalie, Joe Dickenson has suffered from three concussions in his lifetime. On today’s episode, he tells us how he has been able to navigate a full, satisfying life despite the limitations of a post-concussion body. He kicks off our discussion by sharing some of the most significant symptoms he has struggled with and tells us how his chiropractor has been instrumental in aiding his recovery. Next, he talks about his changed relationship with hockey and the importance of finding a high-quality helmet in order to prevent further injuries. We dive into the impact of concussion recovery on work and navigating a career post-concussion, and Joe warns us about the dangers of measuring your productivity according to your pre-concussion capacity, emphasizing the value of doing the best you can. As our discussion draws to a close, we talk about Joe’s changed personality post-concussion and how he has been able to embrace introversion in order to care for himself and prioritize quiet time alone. We hope you tune in today to hear a hopeful story about the adjustments that have enabled Joe to enjoy life after his injuries!
Key Points From This Episode:
• An introduction to our guest, Joe Dickenson, and his history with concussions.
• Some of the pronounced symptoms that Joe dealt with after his third concussion.
• The role his chiropractor played in aiding his recovery.
• Joe’s changed relationship with hockey.
• The importance of finding a high-quality helmet in order to prevent further concussions.
• Find out why, despite his concussions, Joe is pro-sport.
• The impact of his three concussions on his work as a beef farmer.
• Fatigue during post-concussion.
• Tips for navigating a career post-concussion.
• Why you should create a new benchmark by which to measure your productivity.
• How Joe found his personality has changed after his concussions.
• The impact of post-concussion on social experiences.
• Why it is important to prioritize quiet time alone.
Connect with Joe
Check out Dickenson Farms: www.dickensonfarms.com
Follow Joe on Twitter: @dickensonfarms
Follow Joe on Instagram: @dickensonfarms
Check out Ear Peaces mentioned by Bella
Transcript - Click to Read
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:05.5] 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, Joe Dickenson. Joe is a beef farmer in southwestern Ontario near the village of Royal Springs. He is currently a feedlot director with the Beef Farmers of Ontario and formerly a director at large with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
In his spare time, he plays hockey, collects antique farm equipment, and spends time training his working steer.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:31.4] BP: Welcome to the show, Joe.
[0:01:32.6] JD: Thanks a lot, Bella.
[0:01:36.1] BP: To start, do you want to tell everyone about your concussions and what occurred?
[0:01:40.6] JD: Sure. I’ve had three that were diagnosed I guess, for a lack of a better term. My first one happened in, would have been, around Christmas of 1999. I was refereeing a hockey game and it was during a tournament and it was pretty high-level stuff and I went to the blue line to call whether or not the play was onside and two players that really weren’t much smaller than me were going after the pot because of the position of everything. I just ended up going over one and landing on my head on the ice and I finished a game and our knowledge of concussions wasn’t what it is today, even though it was fairly advanced from a few years before.
I was called by my partner for the next game and he said, “Can you do it?” I said, “Sure but maybe you should drive just to be safe.” I went to another game after the concussion that night and I might have done another one that weekend before the tournament was all said and done, so that was the first one.
Then a few years where I kind of didn’t abuse myself quite as badly, that way, that would have been about 2008 or 2009 in the spring, I’d go on and I had some cow’s calving and I had this one cow that I had to catch, he was about a week old and he had quite the legs on him, he could run pretty quick.
I was chasing him down and I was just outside of arm’s reach, so I took a dive and try and catch him, my hand missed his foot but his foot didn’t miss my face. I still remember the call to mom and dad because they were expecting me to come up and do some field work and I said, “I’ll be there but first thing I got to do, I got to go to the hospital, I think I broke my face.”
I went to the hospital and they decided they really couldn’t do much but they did confirm that I did break my nose so they said, “Just take it easy and we’ll go from there.” Well, I wasn’t – I wasn’t too worried because I figured I was going to be sitting in a tractor all day so that would be fairly un-stressful and everything else and I didn’t make it through the day.
I had to stop the tractor, I was nauseous so about mid-afternoon or so, I went home, I did chores and then I was sick all night and I finally ended up calling the hospital and they said, “It sounds like you got a concussion, maybe you should go get that checked out, do you want us to send an ambulance or do you have somebody to drive because you better not be.”
At least somebody was smart enough to tell me what not to do so I caught a ride into the hospital and the same deal. There wasn’t much they could do for me, they said, “Well yeah, you got a concussion, take it easy for a couple of days and we’ll see what happens.” That was in May and I think I did take one day off apart from doing chores but kind of eased back into the thing, swing of things. I did a lot of fence walking and that sort of stuff, so stuff that was a little less jarring and seeing what had to be done.
And then that December when I was playing hockey, and I’m a goalie. We were in, it was bear league hockey so I mean, the definition of [rack lead 0:05:52.5] and somebody were losing they’re out-scoring, out-shooting, out-playing us. We might as well have been in two different leagues. It’s near the end of the game and the puck starts coming down to my end and all of a sudden, there’s a three man breakaway, a three on O and I stopped it but the third guy didn’t really stop, he was getting in on the net and fell on the net, so that was the last couple minutes of the game and finished the game.
We went out that night and I was feeling pretty foggy and I said, “Maybe... I ordered food” I had enough presence of mind not to order any beer and before the order even got to the kitchen, I said to the boys, “You know boys, I think I’m going to head out, I think I got to get this looked at.” So I went back to the hospital and got it looked at and I’ve been having some sleep issues and everything else throughout the summer. I’m not a good sleeper to begin with but it felt a little more pronounced and there’s a little bit of vertigo and that sort of stuff that was new to me.
I hadn’t experienced that before over the course of the summer so I said to the emergency room, “Doc” I said, “Can somebody take a look at this because I had a concussion back in the spring and now probably got another one, can somebody take a look at it?” He called down to imaging and luckily, the guy who ran the CAT scan was still there and it was about 20 minutes from shutting up for the night, so he didn’t have anybody in front of them, they whisked me down and took a picture and thankfully, it came back negative and then I started on to rehab shortly thereafter.
[0:08:00.0] BP: Pretty sure. It’s really common, I’ve gotten lots of scans, it’s more to just rule out the least scary stuff but most of the time, it should – like in the regular, I guess I don’t know if it’s regular but a typical concussions, there’s nothing to see but it is important to rule out for sure.
What type of symptoms did you deal with after that one then? Is that when they started to get more like pronounced, noticeable or –
[0:08:27.5] JD: Yeah, that one was my biggie, no ifs, ands or buts about it. I had some symptoms after the first one but the big one, they’d kind of faded back into the background. The big one that happened, that third one, that’s when the symptoms became a little more pronounced, I had a lot of fatigue, I’m very light sensitive, have always been a little bit light sensitive but more so now, especially if there’s a bit of a strobe effect, bass music, even to this day, even over 10 years after the fact, if I’m in a place that’s playing heavy bass, I’m getting out of there as fast as I can because it just makes me so dizzy, it’s not even funny.
There’s times where I get a bit of vertigo that again, that’s not something that was common before. It’s not something that other people or that other people in my family deal with all that much and yeah, those were probably the most pronounced symptoms I guess for a lack of a better term, there were some having that now but I think they kind of got lost in just the general fogginess that I was dealing with.
[0:09:52.1] BP: Yeah, for sure, the light sensitivity I get, I wear sunglasses and a hat in most places just to kind of block out the sunlight, especially like – even in the winter because with the snow, I find there’s quite a lot – it’s even brighter, right?
[0:10:08.7] JD: I find winter worse to be honest.
[0:10:12.0] BP: It can be. I think there’s less sunlight hours but the snow reflection is really hard if you live where there’s snow. The noise sensitivity, I actually carry around these little ear buds. I’ve talked about them before, they’re earpieces and they’re small and they go in your ears and reduce the noise frequency and I wear them out like because they don’t block out all the noise because earplugs, I want to be able to still have a normal conversation and sometimes you don’t want to listen to music when you're out with people.
The kind of people that are like, “Oh, I just wear my air pods.” Well, I don’t really want to wear mine and look like I’m listening to music when I’m hanging out with someone. Almost seems rude so those really help me but it can take a while to those symptoms to go away or I’m still dealing with some of them and it’s been quite a while but they’re definitely going down quite a bit. Have you found anything that has helped you recover at all?
[0:11:18.1] JD: At the start, my chiropractor did a lot of work with me and for me. He did a lot of work on the neck muscles and just trying to get the muscles a little bit more relaxed. He wasn’t doing the back cracking or anything like that, he was doing nothing that was jarring but he’d taken some training from the Toronto Maple Leaves on how to deal with concussions and so we started to rehab about as soon as possible and the first thought of going to the chiropractor for concussion seemed a little bit out there but there’s somebody I’ve dealt with for sprains and that sort of stuff and when he’s treated it, I’ve had a lot of success.
Because he’s willing to seek out more science and deal with some very accredited places to develop his repertoire and to increase his knowledge, it really helps. We just took things really slow, really gradual and he encouraged me to kind of build strength rather than just sitting in a dark room because my circumstance gave me the ability to do that.
[0:12:48.7] BP: Pretty sure, it’s so important. They are getting better about pushing it now that you have to find someone who is actually interested in concussion and the research behind it as well because it’s also changing constantly because they’re coming out with new information.
Finding someone who has a background in it or at least is trying to understand it is so important because when you see that doctor who has no understanding, it’s also, it’s often when a lot of people end up suffering because they’re not getting the help that they need.
[0:13:23.6] JD: Well, that’s it. I was lucky because in the case of Aaron, he’s an athlete as well so he understands that wiring that we deal with between farmers and athletes. Sometimes sitting in a dark room is the worse thing that can happen for us.
[0:13:44.8] BP: Yeah, it was very recommended when I started and now it’s really not recommended to show how things have changed. Speaking of sports, what are your thoughts – two of your diagnosed concussions were hockey, knowing you played before and probably had others. What are your thoughts on hockey now?
[0:14:06.5] JD: Well, to be honest, I still play. Probably didn’t have very many concussions outside of that, outside of those two because I’m a goalie. Goalies don’t take part in the hitting aspect and the helmets have gotten so much better, the padding is so much better but it does mean that I am hyper-aware of making sure that my helmet is as good as I can get.
I will go a little bit over what necessarily is recommended for my league because of that. The best way I can explain it is, a good goalie helmet, if you can feel a shot, it’s maybe time to start looking at the padding or looking at replacing it. I’ve taken a lot of really good shots off the head and I only hear them just because of how they’re designed and everything else. I mean, hockey is a contact sport, even no-hit hockey is a contact sport.
There is a level of care that people have to assume both for themselves and for their opponents but nine times out of 10, it’s just a fantastic sport and it’s a great way to get some exercise and that sort of thing. In the case of my first incident, that was a case, absolute bad luck and I can have an absolute bad luck injury doing almost anything. I’m not going to blame a sport for that one.
The second one, well, for those that follow hockey and I guess, to put a timestamp on it a little bit, the incident that I dealt with the second time was a little bit of what we saw between Washington and New York this week. It didn’t have to happen and the fact that it wasn’t called made it worse. The refs in that league were unknown, they were uncertified because they believed they didn’t want to play, didn’t want to play the Hockey Canada fees, so those refs weren’t certified.
They hadn’t been tied on calls like that throughout the course of the year and throughout the courses of years before and it started off as a beer league for people who have never played hockey before but because there’s always so many leagues out there and you either had rookie leagues or you have leagues for guys that thought they still had a chance at the NHL [inaudible 0:17:14.9] and I didn’t really fit into either of them.
The league I was in was kind of an upper league of that rookie league, so better players who were going out to play hockey, have some beers after the game and go to work the next day like that was the sort of hockey that we were playing. We were too young to play old timers, we just wanted to go out and have some fun. I mean availability and cost play a little bit of a role and the problem that we ran into there was in order to get both of those, we had to deal with a league that had uncertified refs.
Part of the problem is to try and put pressure on the refs and those leagues and everything else, Hockey Canada actually threatens refs who ref in those outlaw leagues with suspension if they are a certified ref reffing in an outlaw league. I mean it’s – there’s problems one hundred percent but there has to be a way for certified refs to be in any league whether it’s sanctioned or not just because having two people learn on the job who don’t know the rulebook, who don’t have that extra training that they could have had going through ref school or that sort of thing makes them a little more reluctant to blow the whistle because they may have played it or that but it’s a very different thing playing versus reffing.
If you don’t have any experience or you don’t have anyone you can turn to, you’re not going to get better and you can make those games really, really risky.
[0:19:12.0] BP: For sure. Yeah, I never really thought about it that way but like I am pro-sport. I love almost all sports. I’m not against them at all, I just believe we could probably do them a little safer but I am definitely all for it. I just always like to get people’s opinions because sometimes after you get injured in a certain sport, you kind of get a little bit nervous about it but most people so far, I think because as athletes, you get really dedicated to a sport that you like.
That is really not hard to not like it even if you get injured in it and like you said, you can get injured at any time. We have tons of guests who come on the podcast who got injured at home just carrying on their normal daily life. With that, you can follow Joe on Twitter or Instagram @dickensonfarms, which will also be available in today’s shownotes and we’re going to take a break.
[BREAK]
[0:20:10.4] 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 L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N and be sure to tag Post Concussion Inc. in your photos. We’d love to see them!
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:20:37.1] BP: Welcome back to The Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige, and today’s guest, Joe Dickenson. Something that we had kind of mentioned before but haven’t touched a lot on is that Joe is a farmer and being a farmer means that you have to work every day really. There’s not really a day off, so how was your ability to work affected after your concussions and how did you get through that?
[0:21:02.8] JD: As I said, the big one happened in the winter time and I guess in a lot of ways I was really fortunate because especially at that time, my farm was still relatively small. It’s not huge but it is a lot smaller than it is today and so I’d wake up in the morning, I’d do chores. Chores took me an hour, I’d come back in and I’d be out like that was all I could do and it wasn’t that my chores were physical, it wasn’t that they were demanding.
It was just the fact that you had to go out there, obviously when you turn on the feeder and that sort of stuff that cows are going to greet you and you’re driving a tractor. Tractors do not have suspension so they’re not the smoothest ride. Thankfully they go slow, you’re getting on and off the tractor to go through gates here. It is one thing after another and even though the chores were physically demanding, they still took around out of yet and feeding at that time for me, I had to feed the cows twice a day.
It took me an hour to do both and yeah, by the end of the feeding session, I was spent. I have nothing left and that was the way I was and it kind of stayed that way for a few days. I’d switch it up so that every few days I had to put out fresh straw for the cows, kind of change the sheets for them and so when I was bedding them, I do that kind of new one. I’d get up, I’d do morning chores and then I’d lay down and then when I was rested enough, I’d bed them and then I’d lay down and then I do night chores and then I’d lay down and it was like that for, kind of hit and miss, but about three weeks or so.
Then I was able to start adding a little bit more every day or every week and I’d say I’d laid down for about five weeks with that post-concussion.
[0:23:21.2] BP: For sure, fatigue is really common. I lasted a really long time a lot more than a few weeks, like months to a couple of years and there was like a solid six month period where I think I could sleep about 20 hours a day like you were still tired and it just felt like you couldn’t catch up. Easy things would be like, “Oh” and it wasn’t just physical. It’s like your brain energy, so if you had to do a lot of thinking in those few hours then I’d find you’re really tired as well.
[0:23:53.7] JD: Just to go back to that for a second that was the farm side of things. At the time, I was also a director with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. I had a meeting shortly after the concussion. You know, that was probably the most grueling day of them all and there’s no physical demand on me whatsoever but we’re reading through all of these papers, dealing with presentations, we’re having to ask presenters questions.
I had to give a presentation at some point during that meeting and yeah, the actual mental function of it probably sapped me worse than a day where I had to do full chores plus fed the cows and maybe even deal with a sick calf. It is what it is and unfortunately, for the members and for myself, I didn’t have the knowledge enough to say, “You know what? I’m sick like I need to sit this one out.”
[0:24:58.5] BP: Do you have any tips for others in a similar situation? You don’t have a choice, you couldn’t take time off work so you just pushed through, do you have any idea on how to help someone through that?
[0:25:12.6] JD: The biggest thing I can say first off is you’re not alone. There’s a lot of people going through these sorts of injuries and sometimes you can get a little bit of a strength just knowing that there’s other people that have done this. Obviously, if it is a more minor one but that’s maybe step one. Step two, do what you can but don’t push it. If you can get help and not just for healing but get help for that work.
Do it because otherwise, you’re going to drag it out longer but obviously, there are some things you’re going to have to do to figure out what works best for you because nobody is going to be the same. In my case, I had to work during day light because I couldn’t see anything in the barn otherwise but it was winter time so that meant I could get a little extra sleep because obviously, we couldn’t really get going until you could see what you were doing.
Dial it back a gear to you don’t have to push things as hard. Get what you need to do done but if that’s all you can do, that’s fantastic. That’s a great start and don’t measure yourself against what you were before the injury and go from there.
[0:26:51.8] BP: Yeah, that’s some great advice and it does take time and you’re right, a big problem a lot of people have is you push too much and then it delays your recovery even more for sure. Something we haven’t touched on yet but we did touch on when we talked before was how much we change after a concussion or after multiple concussions. How do you find your personality has been affected since your concussions?
[0:27:20.2] JD: I’ll say that I’m a lot less social than I used to be and it’s not because I was ultra-social before. I’ve always been a bit of an introvert – okay, a lot of an introvert but the fact of the matter was, whether it’s through school or university, social groups, whatever you’re always encouraged to be as extroverted as possible and whether you were or not and I finally hit the point where I said, “This is exhausting.” I’m dealing with physical issues.
I’m dealing with physical limitations. I’m dealing with physical symptoms and then on top of that, I’ve got this mental struggles of trying to be somebody that I’m not and let’s lighten the load a little bit here. I can’t do much about the physical right now. I’ve got to deal with it but I can do something about the mental.
Finally, I started being a lot more introverted than I was before or I guess exhibiting more introverted than I was before and I still to this day obviously with the lockdown, it’s a little bit different but when things are open in that, if I put in a full day of work and I had to pick up stuff in town, I go out for supper or that but I’d always find a spot that was kind of where I can be by myself even though the room was full and there were some very well-meaning people sometimes that wanted to get into that space.
Sometimes, maybe I wasn’t quite as friendly as I would have been in the past but I needed that space and sometimes that’s okay. I think the biggest thing was since my concussion, I’ve become more of who I am. There’s a lot less of a mask on me than there used to be.
[0:29:29.6] BP: Yeah, well that’s really good though because a lot of people find after their concussion, like you said, like you’re faking it. You are kind of being someone you’re not and you’re just trying to cover what’s really going on and it is important to kind of just stop because it’s exhausting. It’s so much energy and it’s true like I have always been – I wouldn’t say I’m an extrovert or an introvert. I think it’s an ambivert or something where it’s like you’re half and half and that’s me but I am also very comfortable being alone.
I work alone all day, I don’t need – I’m good. I don’t need to socialize with people all day but I’m also good with the day where I do socialize all day but it’s okay to be either or, it doesn’t matter but you’re right, schools and stuff, they really do push like presentations and speaking and all of that but it is kind of aligned.
[0:30:26.3] JD: Group work.
[0:30:27.5] BP: Yeah, group work, oh yeah.
[0:30:30.6] JD: Probably one of the best examples I guess of the change was about two summers ago I think, I’ve got into the one pub that I would normally go into if I was going to eat and I walked up to the bar and sat down and one of the guys that I play hockey with was out with his wife and he flagged me down and so I said hi to them and then carried on up to the bar and sat down. On my way out, he cussed me out because I didn’t sit with them to have supper.
He said, “Why? You didn’t want to share?” and I looked at him and I said, “You know, I’m a goalie. I don’t even share a bench. I have my own things in life and I am good. Why would you expect me to want to share any other time?” but that’s the thing. It’s okay to want your space too and I think, sometimes, there’s enough pressure on people to think that they should be seeking out more connection, more connection, more connection but sometimes, people need that quiet recharge as well.
[0:31:45.2] BP: For sure, especially after a head injury. Quiet is nice. Well, thank you so much for sharing and joining in on The Post Concussion Podcast today.
[0:31:57.5] JD: Not a problem.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:32:01.4] 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]
OTHER CONTENT YOU MAY LIKE
