4/16/2019 0 Comments Reflective Journal #14This past week I was helping Hannah cover a baseball practice. The athletes were playing a curve ball scrimmage in practice, and everything was going very smoothly. A player then hit a ground ball that shot towards second base, and the shortstop went to get the ball when it popped off the ground, went over his glove and hit him in the face. He immediate hit the ground and stayed there. At first, I thought he was just playing around because it didn’t look like he actually got hit by the ball, but it appeared as if he had been able to dodge. After a few seconds of him not getting up, we ran out onto the field and he would not raise his head. At this point his legs were moving around like he was in pain, but he never lifted his head. We asked if he could look up at us, and when he did we saw a bloody mouth and an already very swollen upper lip. We were able to get him up and over to the dugout where he washed his mouth out with a cup of water. When he was cleaned up, we were able to see that there were two fairly deep cuts under his upper lip and another cut on his bottom lip. I grabbed a nose plug that he could put inside his lip to help stop the bleeding and made him an ice bag. As I was getting him ice, I asked Hannah if we should run him through a concussion assessment, and she instructed me to wait a while before doing so. I didn’t really know why I felt that we should perform the assessment, but my intuition said that it was a good idea. Within just a few minutes, he was telling us about dizziness and lightheadedness that he was experiencing. Within just a few seconds of explaining his symptoms, he began to ask us what happened. He said he couldn’t remember getting hit at all. I then understood why I felt the need to run him through a SCAT.
He couldn’t remember what he had for lunch that day, and even after explaining multiple times what happened, he could not retain the information. I checked his pupils and continued to ask him some recall questions while assuring him that it was okay that he couldn’t remember. We then went inside for a SCAT assessment were he had a symptom score of 25 which confirmed our suspicions of a concussion. This experience taught me that I need to trust my instincts when my gut is telling me something. I often question my intuition, and it was very encouraging that I had the right feeling in this situation. Also, it made me remember just how important it is that we let the athlete know that we are there for them. I was tempted to get impatient when he kept asking what happened, but I knew each time that I explained it that he felt a little better about the situation. His comfort was worth way more than the time it took me to explain what happened a few times.
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