Life After Football with Raymond Ciervo
Show Notes:
From the age of five, Raymond Ciervo was hitting his head playing football. As he got older, the trend continued until eventually coaches, doctors, and his family advised him to give up the sport he loved so much. Today, Raymond’s passion for football hasn’t changed, though his mission now looks a little different. He wants to be a part of a movement not only to educate the world but to specifically educate athletes and their parents about concussions. He believes, with the right knowledge, a difference can be made for young athletes. As our guest today, Raymond begins our chat by telling us more about his football history and some of the injuries he sustained. After hearing about his various concussions and knock-outs, he tells us what led him to ultimately take a step back from the game. Following this, Raymond opens up about the varying concussion protocols he has been exposed to and contrasts the difference between school and college protocols.
Later, Raymond explains the image troubles pro athletes suffer through in silence and touches on the importance of them speaking out about their hidden injuries and symptoms. Before we draw the show to an end, Raymond shares details about his support system, why it is important to prepare for life after football, as well as some great parting advice. Be sure to join us today to hear more on Raymond’s special story.
Key Points From This Episode:
Introducing today’s guest, Raymond Ciervo.
Raymond shares some of his history and talks about the injuries he sustained.
What led Raymond to give up his life joy, football.
How Raymond managed to accept his fate.
Raymond expands more on some of his injuries.
Hear about some of Raymond’s treatment protocols.
The contrast between school concussion protocols and MD and college protocols.
Image problems that pro athletes are faced with.
Raymond tells us about the support system he had.
Advice Raymond has for families of injured athletes.
What Raymond is focusing on now.
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Transcript - Click to Read
[INTRO]
[00:00:04] BP: Hi. I’m your host, Bella Paige. Welcome to the Post-Concussion Podcast, all about life after experiencing a concussion. Help us make the invisible injury become visible.
[DISCLAIMER]
[00:00:21] BP: 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 concussions and post-concussion syndrome.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:03] BP: Welcome to today's episode of the Post-Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today's guest, Raymond Ciervo. From the moment Raymond was born, his hands knew what it was to hold a football. From the age of five until he was 19, his life was all about the game. From youth leagues, to high school, to college teams, his skills took him across many states; from South Florida to Brevard College, in North Carolina to Delaware University outside of Philadelphia. Despite his love and talent for football, he sustained multiple head injuries throughout the years.
Too many concussions to count resulted in the loss of his peripheral vision due to impact. Long-term issues with his memory and a number of other symptoms. Still, Raymond rose up to be the best linebacker in the state of Florida and played on multiple teams, despite his injuries. He wants to be a part of this movement, not only to educate the world, but specifically to educate athletes and their parents. He believes, with the right knowledge, a difference can be made for young athletes, now and in the future. It all starts with the truth. Welcome to the show, Raymond.
[00:02:15] RC: Hey. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be able to be here and share my experiences and hopefully, educate the youth and parents out there.
[00:02:23] BP: To start, can you tell everyone a bit about your history in the injuries you sustained?
[00:02:27] BP: Of course. I mean, I was thinking about this for a long time, since we had our original call. From the age of five until 19, smacking my head around and having concussions started at the age of five. There's really no talent on the amounts and throughout the years in how they developed and added up. A lot of concussions, a lot of head impact. I've had about three concussions that have knocked me out, woke up in the hospital, plenty of others that have been in games that I have a lot of shame of hiding and beat myself up still, because it's just not right. Just countless of other injuries that come along with playing in the game.
[00:03:07] BP: Yeah, I've been there. Hiding it is super easy. Or it's really bad to do, but it's really easy to do at the same time.
[00:03:14] RC: Yeah, I agree. Especially, because as we go along with how many that we've had, we know what they're looking for. I know exactly the questions, my trainers are going to ask me, and I know how to respond, even though I'm in these foggy moments, and my head's pounding. I've sat myself down and gone over all these questions. I know when I have these concussions, it's going to be like one, two, three and four.
[00:03:39] BP: What led you up to stopping?
[00:03:42] RC: It wasn't a personal choice. I had gotten my last concussion in college in camp, at the beginning of August. That was actually my second one in that camp that year. At that second one, my coaches sat me down, my linebacker coach, and we had a very deep talk on just about myself and my health that ultimately, in that moment, I didn't even get it. Then that just led up to me dropping out of school. My parents brought me home. Had to start meeting with a group of doctors and a couple sessions in with them, they sat me down and said, “You know, Ray, you're done. You're not walking back out on that field.”
[00:04:21] BP: How was accepting that? I had a really hard time. I had a lot of doctors tell me to stop and it took me a lot longer than that one conversation, actually, to quit.
[00:04:32] RC: Of course. Yeah. Accepting it is ultimately the hardest part that any athlete, any human has to do, or go through, except that whole scenario. It took me what, five, five years now, five and a half, six years to fully accept that you're never walking back out on that field, man. Ultimately, your health is more important. When I was 19, 20, 21, so on, I didn't really realize what these doctors were doing. In my head, it was like, “You took the only thing away.” That was football. I look down on them for that. I beat myself up for that.
[00:05:13] BP: Did it create a lot of anger in you? I was really angry at doc – well, I was mad at the doctors for not being able to help me, to the point where I could ride again. Then, I was really mad at myself for not taking breaks when I know I should have, and allowing myself to get better.
[00:05:30] RC: Yeah, I agree. It created a lot of anger. It also created a lot of other feelings that I've never really experienced, or also had the time to feel those feelings with being so busy. Just anger, anxiety, nervousness, which like you said, I beat myself up a lot, because I felt I could have taken myself out of certain situations, certain plays, certain runs, where I could have not gotten hit in the head. Now, I can't beat myself up, because it's inevitable at that point.
[00:06:07] BP: No. I've gotten over getting mad at myself. I didn't know a lot and I definitely wasn't educated to the point where I am now. I wish I did. I wish, as you said, what those doctors were saying is, they were trying to help me. As a teenager, I refused to accept it. I was just, “All these doctors are dumb.” I was16-years-old.
[00:06:31] BP: Yeah. These guys have gone countless years of school and I was doing the same thing. I was looking at this, “Doc. No, you're wrong. Everything you're telling me is not true right now. I'll be fine. I'm going to take a couple weeks, and I'm going to go back out there.” Then, that obviously didn't happen.
[00:06:48] BP: No, of course not. Which is probably a very good thing. It does take a lot of time to get through that though. The most interesting part of your injuries is your peripheral vision. Do you want to explain that to everyone?
[00:07:00] RC: Yeah. It’s definitely the most interesting thing to explain to people to and watch people's reactions. Because people look at me and 25-years-old and healthy-looking and not that I'm unhealthy, but just healthier and fit. Then you tell them like, “I lost my peripheral vision due to my concussions.” Then they look at you like, “You're fine. There's nothing wrong with you.” Then I tell people, “I've got nothing to prove to you here. I'm not going to get anything out of this from lying to you about this. If you watch me throughout. Follow me around for a day. You'll see me. I run into things. I fall. I run into cars, parked cars, aisles in the grocery store.”
A lot of previous jobs, I've worked in restaurants and I'm always running into people. I'm always knocking things over, because I don't see them. Then it dawns upon people that after I tell them, they watch me for weeks, and they're like, “My goodness, dude. You weren't lying.” I'm like, “Yeah. No. Duh. I’ve got nothing to lie about.”
The way I break it down for people and the way my father always explained it to people, was when a horse has those blinders on, they just see what's in front of them and that's about it. It keeps them focused going forward. That's pretty much how I see. I see what's in front of me.I don't see anything on the sides. I can't. It's not that it's there. There's just nothing there. I imagine if it was for people that have peripheral vision and where their vision just cuts off on the ends there, mine just cuts off a lot shorter.
Then you get those questions like, “How do you do this? How do you drive? Blah, blah, blah.” I'm like, I keep my head on a swivel. I apply my football skills now to my everyday life, because if I don't, I'm going to hurt myself again.
[00:08:49] BP: Did it scare you when it went away? Or was it a slow process where you started to notice that it was getting narrower?
[00:08:57] RC: It was honestly, I never even knew it was gone, until another doctor sat me down and said, “You know, you're supposed to see this.” I was like, “Really?” They were like, “Uh, yeah. Duh, Ray.” I was like, “All right. Well, I guess we have a problem here.” None of it was ever really scary. As I went through certain special tests, certain head doctors and whatnot, it wasn't that it was scary. They also reassured me a lot that what is going on here is not affecting anything else in your body. It's not causing anything else to go wrong, or whatever else may be. I had a lot of good reassurance that it was just the vision. Yeah, not having it is not okay. In the bigger picture, everything else was intact.
[00:09:44] BP: Yeah. No, that's a good point. I never thought of running into things all the time when you told me about it. At least, you have a good sense of humor about it now. I feel like it's pretty funny to explain to people.
[00:09:56] RC: Oh, man. telling you, the reactions you get. Then they watch. Then, it's like night and day of facial reactions. I mean, a lot of things now, it's just humorous to me, because I can't dwell on it anymore. We both know about dwelling on these problems that it gets us nowhere.
[00:10:13] BP: It really does. It's really hard to get over that. Once you get over it, it makes it a lot easier. Laughing about it, you sound crazy when you laugh about it, but it makes it feel so much better to deal with.
[00:10:25] RC: Yeah. It just makes it seem that yeah, these are very serious injuries. Then again, let's chalk it up and have a good time about it, so we're not so stressed all the time.
[00:10:36] BP: Another thing, you had already mentioned it is you had quite the team of doctors and healthcare physicians set up to help you when you are going through this. Do you want to go over some of the treatment protocols that you did?
[00:10:51] RC: Yeah. Countless different types of therapy, physical therapy, mental health therapy, just working with a concussion doctor, an MD doctor, an eye doctor. I think that's it. Now I'm going to be blank about it. Again, and all these guys obviously know concussion protocol. A lot of these doctors, this is what they specialized in and developed a lot of their own protocols. I'm going to one doc, I'm going to three, four doctors a day, and I'm going to do what they've got me lined up to do. I got to go to my eye doctor and do eye therapy and what she has planned, and the spectrum of different types of treatment and protocol actions that I've gone through, I can't even –
Now that we think about it, I can't even recall them all, because there's just so many different things. When college and high school, just the generic concussion protocol. We sit down, they ask you your questions. A lot of times in high school, they ask you like, who's the president? Do you know where you are? Do you know what you're doing right now? In high school, a lot of times, I could not answer those questions. There was a time where I was knocked out on the field for probably 30 seconds and came back to it.
My father, coaches, the paramedics are all standing around me. The first question they asked me was, “Do you know who your father is? Point him out?” I said, “I can't. I can't do that right now. I don't know where I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what just happened.” From college, it obviously gets a little bit more not difficult, but a lot more actions to the process. They're not just asking you questions.
Now, obviously, yeah, they have your trainers. You get hurt in college ball, you're meeting with doctors right there on the field. Then they're looking at you, they're doing their protocol and what they want you to go through and it's questions. A lot of it had to do with balance, remembering early in the day. Then again, in college, a lot of those times, I could not answer those questions. Then after college, working with the doctors, it was – I was doing things that I've never even heard of, seen of, thought about, or anything.
From my MDs, to my concussion doctors, they have me doing just generic workouts to get the body back in line and slowly work at it through there. Working with my therapist, to just make sure that one, my brain is okay. Two, I'm not letting all these extra feelings brought along with the injury, me beating myself up, get to me. My eye doctor, doing eye therapy was a very new one for me. This was doing a lot of different things with strings, distances from your eyes, focusing your eyes, twitch your eyes back and forth, the focus.
It was really cool to see all the different doctors and the different protocols that they put you through and how they work about a concussion, or any head injury. My physical therapy, this was just very general stuff again, with the MDs and muscles, your neck, your bones, just making sure that all the impact hasn't destroyed most of the bones to an extent.
Yeah, so it was very cool just to see. At those times, though, I didn't think it was cool. I thought it was the most annoying thing I ever had to do. Go into an eye doctor, go into physical therapy and go back to the medical doctor, and all the same day. I was like, “This is stupid. Why am I doing this stuff?”
[00:14:34] BP: I've been there. I went through seeing a ton of doctors all at once and therapists and our different therapies and doing it now, I’ll be like, “Oh, I'm done. Give me a break. I'm done.” I’ll take a month off, which is terrible. I was young. I was like, “I can't do this anymore. I don't want to swallow this many supplements a day. I don't want to keep track of what I'm eating. 24/7. I want to be a teenager.”
[00:14:59] RC: Yeah. I just want to live my life normally. All my friends, they don't have to go see three, four doctors a day. They're going to class, go on the football and that's it. Here I am and I'm not even in school, and I'm beating myself up. I think a lot of it too was the fact that we have to go to these doctors. Yeah, it's a problem, but they have to talk to you about these issues and the problems, the injuries. Realistically, that's the last thing I wanted to hear about and this is the last thing I wanted to talk about was football at that point.
[00:15:30] BP: I still remember sitting in the office with a therapist and my mom. They're like, “Let's talk about riding.” My face just fell apart. Everyone's like, “Yeah, that's a touchy subject.” Is literally what she said. She’s like, “This is a very – you want to talk about it, that’s fine, but we’re working on this.”
[00:15:48] RC: Yeah. We might not get far. Yeah. I know. That's how I was for the longest time, which I didn't want to talk about it. There are still days today where I'm like, “Man, if someone were to talk about this, I probably don't want to talk about it.”
[00:16:00] BP: Yeah, it can be hard for sure. I have now gone to a lot of horse shows with friends. It took me a little bit to get over that hump of their showing. I am always happy for them. It was originally really hard for me, because you're there and it's like, “Oh, I would like to be in the ring too and compete with you. Not just be here on the sidelines.” I've been able to accept that and get over it. It did take me a lot of time.
Something I'm really glad you did mention was how the protocols got better when you go to college football, because there's a lot of concerns out there about athletes, especially football and hockey, very commonly talked about. It's great to hear about how they did actually have doctors there for you, to do some of those. Well, one of the things we had talked about when we met previously was the image problem of pro athletes who are suffering in silence. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[00:17:00] RC: Yeah, of course. Obviously, these guys are elite athletes, they beat all odds to get to that platform, to play the game of football. I give them the round of applause, because the beating your body takes to get there, then the beating your body takes while you're there is unprecedented. You can't compare it to anything else. Then now, we have these athletes who are putting their bodies, their brains through just the absolute worst things that they can do to it. Then, they can't go out and express this. They can't show what they have to do to get better, or the actions taken that they have to take a lot of times are just brushed under the table.
If there are any actions. A lot of things I watch nowadays, I try not to follow it because I get mad about it. It's just terrible that we have this platform, that is one of the largest in the world, that these athletes have to go and brush some of these under the table. We're not even talking to anyone about, or even show signs of having these injuries.
To me, it's not great. What they do, they're making a living, they're providing, they're doing everything that was against them and showing people that they can still do it. Again, I give a round of applause. Ultimately, we're talking about a brain here. The brain is obviously, one of the strongest muscles in the body. If we don't treat it, right, we don't let it heal and we don't do the thing to let it get better by itself, it's going to cause more issues down the line.
In that moment, yeah, it might be all peachy and keen, and you get these headaches and whatnot. Five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line, your body might be okay, but your brain is going to be the one suffering. It's just not fair to these guys that are putting their bodies on the line, then being told that they can't do certain things for their treatment, or let alone, tell anyone.
[00:19:22] BP: I was actually talking with someone the other day. It was about the big football player, I'm terrible with names. I don't follow sports too much, mostly because it hurts my head watching athletes hit their heads. A big football player got diagnosed with concussion. Three days later, didn't have a concussion. It was a bit shocking. People were really angry in the news.
One of the things I said is, get the athlete’s point of view to keep playing. I get that. If I was supposed to be in the Olympics, or the Super Bowl in a week, I would tell you, “Get off my back. Go away and let me play. I've been living my whole career to get to this point. Go away.” I also know the consequences of that are huge, to keep going. Sub-concussive impacts are a huge issue and a very big problem with athletes, because we ignore the signs and then keep playing and then suffer a lot more.
One thing I did say was, if you are a professional athlete and you are hitting your head, you should probably be in concussion treatment the whole entire time that you are an athlete. Because even if it's an hour a day, where you're doing eye therapy, or neck therapy, or any of those different treatments that we have available, that lots of doctors and therapists are coming up with, that should be part of your weekly training. Because if you're going to keep pushing yourself through it, that hopefully that will help protect your brain, because when you retire, you're going to start really noticing the impact that you're dealing with.
[00:20:57] RC: Definitely. A way I explain it to people now is that take your brain out of the picture. Now, when these athletes are out there, anything else on their body gets hurt, they get treatment. They get treatment on the sideline. They get brought back in the locker room to get X-rays done. They can get scans done back there. Now it's a concussion. They take them back. Next thing we know, it’s nothing.
[00:21:23] BP: They're back on the field.
[00:21:24] RC: Yeah, the next weekend, they're back on the field, like nothing happened.
[00:21:27] BP: The long-term, it's the long-term effect. It's not just, “Oh, they're going to not be able to play for a few months. What about their life when they have kids, or grown-up kids and they have to do something else for the next 30, 40 years of their life?
[00:21:41] RC: Yeah. The way I put it too is life after football. There's going to be life after football, if it's after high school, college or pro. There's some type of life for you after this game. We're not preparing anyone at any level for any type of life after football. We're just setting them up for in the moment success. When their time is done, we're on to the next. Then again, it just goes back to pushing it back all under the table for there.
[00:22:13] BP: That's a great way to put it, is there is life after sport. It can be really hard to accept. It took me a really long time to get over it. There is a life after it. Something that I found really important when talking to you is there's so many athletes, we focus on big pro athletes, which are great to focus on. There's so many athletes that don't make it there, because of head injuries way before that point.
There's kids that have to stop in high school, even college level, or right when they start, because they don't even get to make it to that pro level, because of head injuries that already occurred and we're not talking about those people and there's so many of them.
[00:22:53] RC: At that point when I was in that situation, I never felt more of a statistic than ever. Because I got hurt, I had to quit football. All the things that came along with playing football and being able to go to class and attend meetings, be a part of a team was all taken away in the split of a second. Then we have these big athletes that get these concussions that young athletes look up to so much, and that's all they want to be and we’re ultimately just setting these kids up for failure. It's just the definition of insanity for these kids.
We're not going to get anywhere, until we change the system here across all boards, whether it's football, soccer, and riding horses. A head injury is a head injury. We both know, there's no degree and they can't tell you that, “Oh, man. You were hit today in a football game. Or wow, you fell off your horse today.” It's a head injury. Your brain is hurt. It doesn't matter where it's done. The matter of the fact is now, that it's done. You have that injury. If we don't educate the youth and parents on the right processes and what can really happen after these injuries, we're going to get nowhere.
[00:24:09] BP: We're going to talk about a lot of that after the break. Make sure you stay tuned to hear about family relationships and some advice for young athletes.
[BREAK]
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[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[00:24:48] BP: Welcome back to the Post-Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today's guest, Raymond Ceirvo. We were discussing a lot about family, so let's keep it going. How did you handle it with your parents and how did they handle your early retirement and then also, all the health problems that you had?
[00:25:07] RC: I couldn't have asked for a better support system. My parents, my sisters, everyone always had my back. Playing football and the moment I was done, I knew I was going to be okay, because I had them behind my back. It was tough. I was always the athlete of our family. It was a time where we could all get together and go watch a football game. Obviously, I wasn't watching. It was a time that we always all looked together, especially in Little League, I played football. My mom and my sisters would come and we just kept that train going.
That was one thing that I didn't know how to handle either after getting hurt. Was that, like right now, I'm just a regular piece of our puzzle here. It's just going to be normal, I guess. We got to be a normal family and do normal things. It was a very tough adjustment period, because it was such a big part of our lives and a part of my life, that I honestly didn't know how to communicate with anyone. Because I was just so stuck, and didn't know how to talk to anyone else. Because we were always talking about football, or something related to football. We had other conversations, but that was the majority of everything.
It took me and my father a very long time to work on our relationship, because a lot of it was football. Not a lot of it — all of it was football. I'm telling you, it took us two years of really working on ourselves, to have the relationship now that we have today. I used to look at him and stare at him, because I didn't know how to talk to him. I didn't know what to say to him. I felt like I couldn't relate to him anymore. It was stupid of me. It's my father.
[00:26:54] BP: Yeah. No, but I get it.
[00:26:55] RC: Yeah. It was like, now that I think about it, I'm like, “What were you thinking, dude?” It was a lot of work, though. You don't realize it until you're in that moment, or you look back on it like, “Wow, we really had to put a lot of effort in to develop new relationships.”
[00:27:12] BP: Do you have any recommendations for other families going through the same thing?
[00:27:16] RC: Yeah, definitely. Really, just focus on each other. Really learn about each other, because there's more to your son, your daughter, your child than their game. Yeah, it's awesome. It's amazing that they have these opportunities and abilities to go out there and do. I guarantee you that your child, your human, your friend, whatever it is, has a 100 other hobbies that they don't talk to you about, don't tell their parents about. That was me.
I had other little things that I would do that I had joy in, that I would love to do and not share with other people, because they always saw me as a football player. Why would they want to hear about anything else then? How are they going to not learn about you if you don't tell them things? A lot of ways I break relationships down to people, it's a two-way street. As you're playing that sport, we had a very good two-way street going. I got taken out, it was a no-way street. That's a lot of times, they get stuck. People are at a four-way stop now staring at each other, because they don't know where to go, what to do, how to experience life outside of the sports together.
[00:28:26] BP: It's really important. It's true. I had a lot of trouble. I didn't have trouble talking about, because I kept riding. I didn't really stop right away, so it wasn't like an abrupt stop. We could still talk about it a little bit, not in the same way. I definitely had a lot of trouble telling my family about how I was feeling more mentally, to actually tell them that I was not struggling, I was really struggling with the whole not being able to go to school and all the changes that I had. I was struggling with severe depression. I didn't know how to bring that up. How do I go? “Hi, mom. My name is Bella and I have depression.”
[00:29:07] RC: “I'm in a really bad spot, mom.”
[00:29:09] BP: Yeah. I didn’t know how to start that conversation. It took me some time to bring that up. It was really important, because it did help me a lot with them understanding my mood swings and things like that. Do you have another thing, so you're giving advice for younger athletes? I had a lot of trouble and I always tell younger athletes, like the first thing that you can do for yourself is to take the time off, because it won't hurt you in the end. It'll just benefit you.
[00:29:35] RC: Yeah. No, I agree with you a 100%, that time is the best thing for these injuries. Because just because your friend had gotten an injury and they got cleared to play in two weeks, and you're still sitting out, that has nothing to do with you, your ability, your presence as an athlete. Don't ever feel that you're being looked down upon that anything would be taken away from you in those moments, because it's not right to treat yourself like that. Because my body to your body is a 1,000% different. The way our brains are going to react to these injuries are going to be a 1,000%. Some people's brains can recoup a little bit quicker than others. My brain never liked time. It always wanted to take its time to heal him. I was like, “Screw this. It’s good. I'm good. The brain’s good.” Don't ever do that.
Time and longevity in any sport is what's going to take you to the next level. Just because you have a big game coming up, you have to get in a big competition coming up, you think you need to perform, don't think like that. Because if you go out there and you have a decent game, but ultimately, you got yourself hurt even more, colleges, higher athletes, they are going to know this. They know that you went out and got hurt, because your trainers have to report this to people.
Then, it's just going to put your timeline at a lot shorter. Then people don't want to invest in you if your timeline is short. We need longevity out of these athletes. The longer we can let their bodies take a beat – essentially, the longer you're going to make it in the game, or any sport that you're in. I know it, because I've been in that situation to where I've had a big game coming up. We were playing the number one high school in the nation in two weeks and I've already been out for two weeks, and I was our starting linebacker. I called our plays. I needed to be out there with my team. If I wasn't going to be out there, I don't know how I would have responded.
Ultimately, I was able to play, but I was healthy able to play and nothing wrong. If I were to put myself in a situation where I was not okay, which I have, and gone out there, gotten hurt, I would have taken my opportunity away, because I could have taken my next step to college ball out of the picture. We don't want to do that. I want kids to have that dream to play college, to play pro, or any athlete, the Olympics, I want those to be alive.
[00:32:25] BP: Yeah. No, don't be so afraid of losing a scholarship or something like that. Because, I know so many athletes are like, “Oh, well. There's scouts out there watching, or there's someone in that audience. This is going to get recorded and sent, so I need to be there.” Don't be that afraid, because your health is way more important than that scholarship, even though it might not feel like that right now.
[00:32:47] RC: Yeah, definitely. Health, no matter what it is, what level it is, your health needs to be your number one priority. Just because you're not out there for that game, that competition, does not mean that school is not going to give you a scholarship. Just because that one game, they're there, doesn't mean they're not going to be there at the next game. Because trust me, if they want to come see you, they are going to come see you when you're playing.
I guarantee you, they would much rather you take the time to get 110% healthy, than to go out there and try to please them. Because you're just going to make the situation 10 times worse. Then you go out, you get hurt. Now that scholarship’s completely off the table.
[00:33:29] BP: You end up not being able to play at all. That might happen, even if you do take all the repercussions, but why increase your risk of having that happen?
[00:33:39] RC: Yeah, exactly. Again, I think to me, and I did a lot of coaching and would love to get back into it, is the longevity. I want to teach kids the longevity to treat your body the right way. Even if it's taking a month off of your sport to let your body completely heal, that's okay.
[00:33:58] BP: Yeah. The sports is not going anywhere, despite your thoughts.
[00:34:01] RC: No. It's not going anywhere. That college isn't going anywhere. Your brain is going to go somewhere, and it's not going to be a fun spot and we both been in those spots.
[00:34:11] BP: Is there anything else you would like to add before ending today's episode?
[00:34:16] RC: I would just like to add that no matter what the stigma is on head injuries, no matter what anyone tells you, don't beat yourself up. Take it as is. Take the bull by the horns and tackle that objective straight up. If it takes you a month, two months, a year, five years, who cares? Worry about yourself. Worry about your brain and your mental health and take the time that you need.
[00:34:42] BP: That is great advice. I hope some athletes start to take it.
[00:34:47] RC: Athletes too.
[00:34:48] BP: We're laughing, but we struggled for a long time. Don't think that this isn't serious. The suffering is not worth it. Make sure you listen. Thank you, Raymond, so much for joining and sharing your story and insights on athletes’ lives post-concussion.
[00:35:04] RC: Yes, of course. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:35:09] 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 concussions, by giving us a share. To learn more, don't forget to subscribe.
[END]
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