Retrograde amnesia, or loss of memory from the past, and anterograde amnesia, or the inability to make new memories, are typically caused by a form of trauma to the body or mind. A pictorial representation of these two forms of amnesia would be (taken from the book):
Amnesia in any form can be detrimental to the living ability of the affected person. Moderate amnesia, as the severity ranges based on the trauma, can be commonly attributed to blunt force to the head. A concussion is a common sports injury that can, in some cases cause the inability to form or remember events.
A concussion is a form of traumatic brain injury that causes the brain to move quickly in the skull and bump into the inner edge of the cranium. One of the common symptoms, in addition to, light sensitivity, headaches, nausea, etc., is difficulty recounting or creating new memories. As someone who has been diagnosed with 3 separate concussions, the effects of memory loss can be very scary.
When I first began to play junior high football, I was barely able to fill out my pads. At the overwhelming weight of 95 lbs and height of 5’3”, I was the smallest starter on the team. By the time I finally reached high school, I was still only 5’7” and 120 lbs. I was one of the smallest on the team, and was much smaller than everyone else that we played against. My experience with slight amnesia occurred in my final year of football as I was getting thrown around.
An important side note is that the following story has been recounted to me and viewed on film. I personally had no recollection of these events. The story begins with me playing cornerback on the defense side of the ball. The running back begins to bump a run out to the sideline. As I shed my block and move towards the sideline to make the tackle, I get pushed in the back by the tight end coming across the field. Since the running back had fallen out of bounds, I was making an effort to go over the top of him to avoid a penalty. The push to the back caused me to flip up and over the back, landing straight down onto my head. As I sat there dazed, I was immediately pulled off the field. Luckily, I was able to generally remember where I was when the trainers asked. They followed that by giving me a set of 5 words to remember for a short amount of time. As I sat on the sideline as they attended to another injured player, I quickly forgot the 5 words I was supposed to remember. At the time I was only worried about going back into the game, so I had someone else give me the words that I had forgotten. Despite my best efforts to “cheat the system” and get back into the game, I failed many other aspects of the tests that they gave. Looking back this experience with amnesia was very scary. Concussions are nothing to sneeze at. I soon realized that the mind was more important than the few more years of playing football. Following that concussion, and year of football, I hung up my helmet.
When talking about amnesia and concussions, football and other contact sports are usually one of the first things to come to my mind. I think you made a good decision by hanging up the cleats after that injury. Many prominent NFL players are choosing to retire early due to the brain damage that almost all NFL players go through in their careers. With new research proving more and more signs of CTE among professionals, I believe football is a sport to avoid until helmet technology is able to prevent this. Many professionals report having ten or more concussions through their careers, most going unattended or ignored.
I liked your blog post entry on amnesia it was very realistic to read. When talking about brain injuries similar to amnesia and concussions many people fail to realize how important they can be. Too many concussions to the brain can cause much more serious problems to a person than many can imagine. I liked how you included your own personal experience with your football career. After suffering from that serious incident and deciding what was best for you was to quit, in my opinion was a great decision. No sport is worth risking your own health.
This post was very interesting as I have been exposed to many concussions in my life. I have had three concussions through hockey, and all of them had serious short term affects on me. I experienced short term retrograde amnesia when I got my most serious concussion, as I really could not remember anything that I had learned in my memory before the concussion for a good five minutes. Luckily, I was able to remember the events that had happened to me before the concussion after the first five minutes. I didn’t experience any anterograde amnesia, but the retrograde amnesia did scare me for my jeopardy of playing hockey, just as it did for you and football. If I had experienced retrograde amnesia for longer than the five minutes, it is likely that I would have stopped playing hockey.
I love the way you described your personal experience, it is very descriptive. reading the title of your blog post, I immediately thought about football and boxing. Many professional boxers and football players have health issues after they retire due to repeated brain trauma during their sports career. Muhammad Ali developed Parkinson’s disease at such a young age may be due to the brain traumas he had and also genetics. A concussion can be extremely detrimental when it comes to adults, just imagine the effect on a developing brain during the child to adolescent years. There are parents that are letting kids play football at such a young age which may lead to some serious head traumas if things were to happen to them.