The story of my son Nolan.

I'm Dr. Joanny Liu and it's been many years since I've been hearing and reading about what happens to people when they don't recover from one or a series of concussions. It could lead to depression and even suicide - the hopelessness and the helplessness is terrible and exacts an awful toll. Too many promising people waste away the life they're given. So imagine how shocked I was when I got a call from my son, Nolan, one night:

“Mom! I’ve got a concussion. I was hit so hard in the head, that I went BLIND!” You could hear a pin hit the floor! Then he told me what happened.

He was playing soccer and marking his man on his side of the field when unbeknownst to him, his teammate on the other side of the field kicked the ball towards him. Well, he was so busy with that guy that he had no idea it was coming. He wasn’t ready for it and he was struck HARD on the right side of the head.

He immediately went down and his teammates took him off the field. He doesn’t know how long he was there, but while he was trying to sort things out he realized he couldn’t see! Imagine what was going through his mind! Suddenly everything changed!

But – thank God – his eyesight did come back. Maybe it was 10 or 20 minutes later – he doesn’t know. BUT he went back on the field even though he wasn’t feeling well, even though he didn’t want to but he felt he HAD to because his team was short handed that day and he felt he could at least give his teammates a break, even if he didn’t do a thing out there.

At the end of the game, he drove home and when he got home that’s when the pounding headaches started. He knew he had a concussion. And then he thought he’d just handle it by himself. After all he’s a grown man. He’s been taking care of himself for several years now. So he decided to stop all his extracurricular activities. But he continued to work in a pressure cooker job as a consulting engineer. He couldn’t afford to take time off because he had a LOT on his plate at work.

So this went on for about 2 weeks when he finally called me that night and asked me for help. Everything was worse now – he wasn’t sleeping. He had no appetite. This is a guy who’s barely missed a meal his entire life. He was headachy almost all the time. He was burning the candle at both ends now. He knew his performance at work would soon suffer because he was suffering and that’s when he reached out to me.

So I said, “OK but you’ve got to do everything I tell you to do.” He agreed and we started to work on his concussion right away. He started to improve right away and within a few short weeks he was back at light practices and started the indoor soccer season on time. He also skiied all winter long and played in his pool league. He was a happy guy again.

It’s been about 32 months since his concussion and he’s had no relapses. No headaches. No eye problems. No depression. He’s living life on his own terms again.