With less than a month to go this goal is appearing less likely day by day. Not for want of trying, and perhaps that has been my downfall. On Saturday, in the first 20 minutes of training, I was thrown and landed heavily in a rigid seated position, suffering a mild case of whiplash as my head found it`s point of equilibrium. At the time I thought nothing of it, and felt nothing except for the strange sensation of the back of my head meeting the space between my shoulder blades. I continued to train with out incident, and even felt strong and full of energy for most of our practice, at times urging my partner on.
The next morning I woke with a slight headache and a little stiffness in the shoulders and neck. It wasn’t until I blew my nose that I noticed anything wrong. With the first hint of pressure, there was a rush of blood to my head and an intense pain shooting from the base of my skull, through my temples and to the front of my head. Any sharp movement of my head, forward or back, left or right, would bring a similar response. The headache subsided during the course of the morning, but reappeared shortly after lunch.
I decided to take a rest with the intention of heading back to the dojo later the evening if my condition improved, and sure enough, after an hour or so horizontal it did. It wasn’t until I hit the mat for the first time that I felt anything. Yet again it was the same pain shooting across my head in the same direction. This time accompanied by spotty vision, no doubt it was time to call it a night. I spent the rest of the evenings training session in seiza, watching the efforts and techniques of my fellow aikidoka.
At the urging of the others at the dojo, and on the recommendation of my mother in law, I visited a chiropractic clinic yesterday. I was concerned that the chiropractor would not pay the same kind of attention to the symptoms of concussion as a general practioner, but was grateful for the manipulation I recieved. The headache, although mild is now in it’s fourth day, and gradually subsiding. I don’t have any real neck or shoulder pain above what I would normally feel in the course of a week.
Most of Monday morning I spent researching concussion and recovery timelines. What I had was a very mild form of concussion cause by whiplash and the cerebral meninge has taken some time to recover from swelling. Quite a frightening experience, and not worth risking permanent brain damage to force a timeline for acheiving any kind of recognition in a sport.
I have one more treatment session at the chiropractic clinic on Friday morning and after that I should be able to make a decision to return to training or not.
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