WASHINGTON – The volleyball thudded off the back of Hannah Zarnich’s head, producing an instant, searing headache. It was a hard shot, in part because Zarnich was in her usual position along the front row, her back to the server, and hadn’t seen it coming. She shook it off and kept playing. After the February game, the freshman at suburban Chantilly (Va.) High School took two Tylenol and finished the tournament, though she felt lousy and didn’t play well.
But that night the scary stuff started. Over the next four weeks, Zarnich at times couldn’t do her geometry homework because the symbols made no sense to her. She was nauseated. She was constantly tired but had trouble falling asleep at night. She couldn’t understand the crawling words on her family’s TV screen.
And she would become irritable at odd moments (yes, even more unpredictably than an average teenager).
Unless you’ve been hiding the sports pages for the past few years, you know where this is headed. Zarnich had a concussion – one whose symptoms are still with her in milder form more than a month later – though the slim 15-year-old has never strapped on a football helmet or swung a lacrosse stick.
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1 comment:
As the mother of two young girls avidly engaged in sports, this chilled me to the bone. I can count at least 3 times each of them have been struck in the face with a soccer or basketball. Luckily, neither exhibited symptoms of any kind, but I could see where one would overlook the ball strike as a cause. Even girls are told,"You're fine. Keep going! Shake it off!" This will stay on my mind now at every one of their games!
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