Child’s Concussions Turns Parent into Athlete’s Advocate
“Parents really need to be kid-watchers. Even when your children are in college, you need to trust your instincts. If things feel off, they are off.” Kathleen Majewski, the mother of an accomplished athlete, learned this lesson about sports injuries the hard way.
In the summer of 2002, Majewski’s daughter, Katrina, began fulfilling her lifelong dream. Having graduated with honors from her local high school, Katrina was playing varsity field hockey at a Division One college. In preseason practice, a ball deflected off a stick and hit Katrina in the head. She didn’t black out, but her mother says, “She came pretty close.”
Sports physicians at the college dismissed the injury as a minor concussion, and let Katrina continue practicing with the team. But Majewski, who was in daily contact with her daughter, noted troubling changes.
Since sustaining the concussion, her mother says, “Katrina had become more emotional, her speech was
slurred, her thoughts confused. And she was sleeping much more than usual.”
The trouble was, each time Katrina met with the team doctors, she was seen by a different physician on the staff. That meant no one was able to properly track the changes in Katrina from appointment to appointment.
Majewski stepped in, insisting to team physicians that her daughter undergo further evaluation. The conversations, she said, became pretty intense.
“I had to go head to head with them. They were not hearing me. And she was not equipped to medically advocate for herself.” After much lobbying, the college agreed to have Katrina evaluated by a clinical neuropsychologist, Dr. Jill Brooks of Far Hills.
The news was devastating: Katrina was suffering from post concussion syndrome.
The injury at preseason practice hadn’t been the first time Katrina had sustained a concussion. Injuries had happened ever since middle school when Katrina first started playing Girls lacrosse and Girls field hockey, two sports that do not require protective headgear. In those instances, a coach or trainer had pulled her out for a game or practice, but that was it.
“I was completely unaware that concussions were cumulative in their effect,” Majewski said. “I felt
like I was a pretty plugged-in mom, but I was clueless.”
Brooks’ evaluation revealed “significant compromises” in everything from Katrina’s thought processing to her IQ.
“Here she was,” Majewski said, “an entering freshman with cognitive and emotional compromises. Overnight she acquires, for all intents and purposes, a learning disability.” Based on that assessment, Katrina was pulled from active participation on the college Field Hockey team. And Majewski’s journey as a parent advocate had just begun.
That first college semester, Majewski had to help her daughter ensure she had special accommodations for each college course: including note takers, tutors and small-group testing to help her process information. She was unable academically and emotionally to stay at her school more than three
days at a time, so she would come home to Howell and get academic help and emotional support from her family. She was navigating an intricate network of doctors at school, plus the demands of college courses and college life, while having sustained a significant brain injury.
“I needed to show her how to advocate for herself medically,” Majewski said. “I became an academic coach and a life coach for her.” Majewski considers it fortuitous that her own profession is special education. She works as a special education teacher in Monroe Township School District in Middlesex
County.
“Her brain will never be the brain it was, but the silver lining is I could drop her off by plane in the middle of Bangkok and she could take care of herself. She has had to become so skilled at filtering and editing what she needs.”
Today, Katrina is a college junior with an A average and an internship at a landscape design firm for the summer. For the past year, she has also been a spokesperson for the Brain Injury Association
of New Jersey’s Concussion in Sports Campaign, helping the nonprofit to raise prevention education and awareness. Katrina never will play Division One field hockey again, but thanks to her own hard work and a mother who would not quit advocating, she will graduate from college and has a promising future ahead of her.
Thank you to our friends at BIA-NJ for sharing this story with us.