Health & Safety

Early in her daughter Heidi's concussion recovery, pain killers (Tylenol and prescription medications, Percocet, Toradol), which numbed her headaches and helped her overcome the sleep disturbances associated with her concussion, says Dorothy Bedford.

After sustaining a series of hits to her head during the previous week's training, Heidi Taggart asked her ice hockey coach to be excused from goaltending during a game in February 2010 when she began experiencing "flu-like" symptoms.  He told her to "suck it up" and take the ice. During pre-game warm-ups, a teammate's stick hit Heidi in the head during the follow-through from a wrist shot.  She immediately began experiencing concussion symptoms (headache, disorientation, drowsiness), but the injury was not initially thought to be too serious.   It was anything but. As her mom, Dorothy Bedford, now recalls, the road Heidi travelled from that Friday night on the way to recovery from post-concussion syndrome would be marked by a long series of "unmarked detours" taking fourteen months and requiring treatment from more than 10 different medical specialists.

When her concussed daughter Heidi began feeling  "buzzy" for 60- to 90-seconds at a time, Dorothy Bedford was scared, but diagnostic tests (EEG and MRI) were no help in identifying the reason for her symptoms.

An invitation to an annual concussion conference co-sponsored by Boston and Harvard Universities not only gave Dorothy Bedford a chance to visit Fenway Park, but to hear about the latest concussion research, and meet a concussion specialist whose second opinion provided needed reassurance that her daughter was on the road to recovery.

An athlete's extended recovery from concussion disrupts the family, not only in terms of the financial expense but on day-to-day family life, says a mom whose daughter took 14 months to recover from her concussion.

Not only is it important for concussed students to avoid play but they need to avoid cognitive exertion, says the mom of one concussed athlete, which is critical to making a successful recovery at an early point, instead of having it extended, as it was in her daughter Heidi's case.

Mild aerobic exercise such as walking, following an experimental protocol developed at the State University of New York at Buffalo, helped her daughter Heidi's recovery from post-concussion syndrome (PCS), says her mom, Dorothy Bedford.