I’ve had 4 concussions related to cycling. The second concussion happened in the Tour de Guadeloupe in 2012. I’m not exactly sure what happened but I remember coming into the last kilometer of the race then waking up slowly on the ground while one of my teammates was freaking out on top of me as they loaded me into an ambulance. I was off the bike for 10 days; the team was staying just outside Toulouse, so I had the opportunity of recovering on a farm house which was fairly ideal.
The next concussion was in 2013 in the Tour of Utah where I got hit from behind by a motorcycle. I spun around and landed on my back and had whiplash to the back of my helmet. The recovery from that one took a bit more time.
The real problem came in February 2016. I was racing a criterium series in Los Angeles in this industrial parking lot. It’s a great place for bike practice. The race format was a dash for cash where you win $20 across the finish line every lap. I was going there to gain some fitness and maybe win back my entry fee and gas money.
I had taken a handful of the laps throughout the day and it was coming into one lap to go when I was drifting back from the front of the pack. I had no interest in a top 5 or dealing with the shenanigans of a SoCal criterium bunch sprint. For whatever reason, someone else mistook my casual drifting backwards for a desire to take one of the Williams brothers’ wheels. Justin and Corey are two very talented sprinters from Southern California, and I guess this guy thought I was trying to take him off the wheel. This guy was 6 ft 5 and his thigh – when it was at the top of the pedal stroke – went over the top of my handle bars. He moved over on me pretty quickly and pedaled onto my handle bars. That launched me across the peloton at 30 miles per hour. It was a typical bike crash but once again I cracked the back of my helmet.
The next day I started having visual symptoms. I would be looking at repeated patterns in the doctor’s office, like the patterns in the carpet which would move or vibrate.
I was under the impression that the best thing to do for concussions is to rest physically and mentally. I ended up isolating myself. It turns out, that’s not recommended these days from studies they’ve done. As the recovery extended itself, I felt worse. I was crying every day when I had to talk about how things weren’t changing and why I thought this was going to be the end of my career.
My wife gave me this standard worksheet to fill out that psychiatrists use where you rate your symptoms.
There was a question on it. “Have you experienced any suicidal ideations?” It hit me. I was like…uh, yeah. I hadn’t considered the actual mechanics of a suicide, but I had start to wonder about it. I’d think about it when driving back from the grocery store.
I’m was on the minor scale of major depressive issues but I’ve been a pretty mentally healthy person my entire life, so it was a stark contrast to have those thoughts float through my mind. My identity was rocked.
When the details emerged of my teammate Kelly’s death, it struck me I had more of a direct experience with what she was going through than I thought. I read one article on her and I couldn’t stop thinking about how similar my experiences were. Clearly, she had a lot more going on than I did and ended up being a more serious problem for her.
My mom called me up the next day and said she read the same article and had the same thoughts about what I’d gone through.
It’s not to say that all concussions end of up like this. Symptoms end up being different for different people.
There are things you can do now for concussions like active recovery same as you’d do for any other injury. It was enlightening the last time I recovered from one. I was doing a lot of balance and eye movement exercises as was tolerated by my symptoms. It was annoying because it was 20 minutes, five times a day but it ended up speeding up my recovery significantly.
I was getting massaged on the base of my skull and neck specifically for the whiplash injury. Apparently, those muscles can get tight and pull on your skull and deform things that causes symptoms.
I’m sharing my story in the hope that it will be helpful for others who might go through these injuries.
Tags: mental health, road cycling Last modified: Jan 19, 2020
