Concussion Log #1

I heard a story about Jack Kornfield, a well-known meditation teacher. During the beginning of his meditation journey at a monastery in Indonesia, he caught malaria from a mosquito. He was sitting out his meditation class, feverish in his hut. After class, his teacher came out to check on him. He asked how he was feeling, and told him that he would get medication in a few hours. In the meantime, he should sit in the pain and learn.

There is much in life that is unpleasant, painful, unbearable. It would be preferable that we wouldn’t have to go through these experiences (like much of 2020). Given that these experiences are certainly not by choice, it would be a shame to waste them entirely. Instead, we can take whatever opportunity there is to learn something new— about life, about our suffering, about what we can accomplish in the face of adversity, about who we are.

Here I am, two weeks into my first concussion, still in the thick of recovery. I’m going to attempt, while going through this, to document lessons learned. Entries may be brief, given that I have no idea how long I’ll be able to write before getting a headache. There’s much, however, that’s worth taking from this experience (at least for me), and I’m committing to getting as much as I can down in this blog.

How did I get this concussion you might ask? Somehow, I managed to hit my head on the basement ceiling at the bottom of the stairs, at that point where so many of us have smacked our heads at one point or another, where flat ceiling bends upwards to follow the stairs up. I must be incredibly lucky as Miriam and I have no idea how I actually pulled this off, as there are typically several inches of clearance above my head. I’m that kind of special. I didn’t fall, I didn’t faint, I just experienced a whole lot of pain on my unprotected (shaved) scalp. I sat through dinner with a ziplock bag of ice precariously balanced on my head. My children laughed.

Blessing number one: my sister is an accomplished occupational therapist who specializes in concussions, is developing an app for better treatment of concussions, and is herself experiencing a persistent concussion syndrome (that she’s experiencing it is not a blessing— that she has the experience of going through it, which she can share, is a blessing for me). She’s kindly guiding me (and making me her guinea pig). I’ve been following her instructions, which included going first thing the next morning to urgent care and getting a CT scan. I then learned that a CT scan doesn’t actually tell you if you have a concussion— it just checks for brain bleeding. So, maybe a concussion, maybe not. Then the symptoms started getting worse, so yes, a concussion.

More of the account later, as my head is starting to go. But, first, there are a few blessings that need to be put in here, because in the midst of this, I feel an immense amount of gratitude.

I feel grateful to my family, for being kind and patient and supportive. COVID is a brutal time to be a parent of young children, and my wife is taking on even more than she has in giving me the space I need when my head is pounding from the kiddos making just a bit too much noise for me and I need to shut everything out for twenty minutes. Many times a day.

I feel grateful to my congregants and professional partners, who are enormously kind and encouraging, going so far as to sternly tell me to work less so that I can fully recover.

And I feel grateful for my mindfulness meditation practice, which is providing me with badly needed regular reprieves when I’m approaching the point where all I ought to be doing is exactly nothing. And for the first time in my life, after near-daily meditation for the past year, I’m actually able to sit for 10 minutes at a time and do nothing.

That’s all for today. Meditation time.

Watch your heads.