Dear future President,

Imagine this… You love football, you think about it all the time… you think about different ways you can get better, plays that you love to run, teams that you root for, the whole 9 yards… but all of that gets cut short when your doctor tells you, “You have a concussion.” Now you ask, “what is a concussion?” Well, “A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), is caused by a bump, blow, or jolt to either the head or the body that causes the brain to move rapidly inside the skull. A concussion changes how the brain normally functions” (brainline.org). In more simple terms, a concussion is a mild head injury that really isn’t so mild, it affects the way the brain functions. Football is a major cause of concussions in students. “An estimated 1.6-3.8 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur in the United States each year” (protectthebrain.org).

Concussions can have a large effect in the lives of many different people: the person or student injured, the parents of that person, and also the teachers and administrators from that student’s school system. I know from personal experiences and from what the doctor told me throughout the concussion recovery process, that not only is it the injured person affected, but because of concussion protocol, they miss a lot of school, which is a stressor for the teachers too.

The people affected, are affected both mentally and physically. The physical aspects of the concussion would be, headache, nausea, confusion, delayed reaction time, and more. The more mental aspects of the concussion would also be the confusion and delayed reaction time, as well as the stress caused by missing so much school, and extracurricular activities.

Why does taking concussion protocol more seriously matter? This is a huge thing, because like mentioned above, you love football or whatever sport or activity you participate in, and so you want to get back to that sport, or get caught up in your school work. The stress of missing out on all of these activities and schoolwork all gets prolonged if you don’t take every single step of concussion protocol seriously. For that reason, it is important to follow concussion protocol and take it very seriously.

In conclusion, the way that we could solve the problem of concussions becoming serious brain injuries is by following protocol and taking it very seriously. I know most of the information provided from my concussion experience with what the doctors have taught me along the way. That protocol is there for a reason, the government spent a long time working on that protocol for your well-being, so we need to take it seriously.

Dylan H

Sources - brainline.org, protectthebrain.org, my personal experience with a concussion, and my doctor.