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GB hockey star Danson banged her head laughing. It was a small knock but the repercussions were huge

Alex Danson can now laugh. She can also play a bit. A polite term, she says, but when she wanders around the field around her house, those short, slow steps feel better than just about anything in the world.

& # 39; Heavenly & # 39 ;, she calls it. "Freedom." And then a smile that is followed by a sigh because she knows it's progress and she also knows it's sad. She knows where she was and where she is and she can only hope for where she could ever return. She knows that the Tokyo Olympic Games are rising fast, only 11 months away, and yet the last 11 have been slow and painful.

& # 39; It was so difficult & # 39 ;, she says. & # 39; Sometimes the soul destroys. & # 39; But now she can jog and that is finally something closer to normal.

It's the everyday things that make Alex Danson's traumatic experience so shocking

For 10 months she could and could not. Just like she needed help to go to the bathroom for two months. Just like she couldn't go to a coffee shop or watch television for six months, or watch a screen to check emails for seven hours, and she couldn't stay a minute without a headache for nine years. They would vary between acceptable and unbearable, but they were always there, every minute of every day. Nine months.

Now there are hours that it doesn't hurt. Now she doesn't have to wear sunglasses or sleep 15 hours or faint on the bathroom floor or hit back when her brother laughs. No. That has all been improved. Slow, terribly slow, and there is still so much to do.

But it is better to get started. And so, this week celebrating the three-year anniversary of winning hockey gold in Britain at the Rio Olympics, she can almost grin the moment she laughed and bumped her head against a wall.

& # 39; It was on September 1 of last year – the detail is engraved in my mind, or maybe it should be the back of my head, & # 39; she says.

Danson, now 34, had just finished the World Cup where England, under her captain, had lost in the quarterfinals, just with her boyfriend, Alex Bennett, she escaped to Kenya for a vacation. had been kite surfing in Watamu when Danson one night laughed at her partner's joke. & # 39; I threw my head back and just hit it against a wall. It was about the height of my shoulders, so my head hit the top. No car accident, no fall, not unconscious. I just put my head on a wall.

Danson hit her head against a wall while smiling at a joke told by her friend Alex Bennett

& I laughed it a bit strange but immediately knew it wasn't right. That night I woke up every hour. That was the first sign. I had had a concussion three times before and thought: & # 39; Come on, not during my first big vacation in 18 years. & # 39;

& # 39; I made a mistake the next morning. I suppose it's a habit of sports people to pick up an injury, so Alex and I started running. I felt good, so I thought: "Great, no concussion". When we returned to the hotel room, everything turned around. And that was really the start.

We had five days left and I felt sick all the time, huge headaches. On the drive to the airport I kept my head in tears. Every time we hit a bump, it was terrible. When we arrived on the plane, a flight attendant asked Alex if I was even OK to fly. He said that I was fine, but you would not believe how it went as soon as we returned. & # 39;

Danson sits in a chair deliberately away from direct light in the beautiful house built by Bennett, a project developer, near the market town of Romsey, Hampshire. Her Olympic gold and bronze medals are wrapped in socks in a drawer and there is no memorabilia from a career that places her as England's most capped current player and the top scorer of a nation in London 2012 and Rio 2016.

Danson tells her story while she is sitting in a chair that is intentionally turned away from direct light light

That life seemed to be so far in the last 11 months and Danson wants her experiences with some mildly traumatic brain injury to be instructive for others who may suffer head injury. She does this interview, her first with a daily newspaper.

In summary, she says: & # 39; I waited until about the ninth day after the accident to go to a doctor despite constant headaches. That was another mistake, just like not reporting your symptoms enough, which I did. I was getting ready for an all-powerful crash and I had a few weeks after returning.

& # 39; I had missed hockey for a few weeks and the team from England was on their way to the Champions Trophy in November. I stated that as a goal, which was ridiculous because I had been in a terrible state since flying back.

& # 39; I would be in the house for 24 hours with dark glasses, in bed, sleeping for 15 hours. My head hurt every second. But I pushed to show that I could play, so I went to the specialist and did a Buffalo test as part of the concussion protocol – you walk on a treadmill when the ascent rate increases and you report how you feel. I reported too little and when I went home I was in pieces.

& # 39; The next day I cried and needed help from Alex to go to the bathroom. It felt like a chainsaw had gone through my mind.

Danson wants her experiences with what is a mild traumatic brain injury to help others

& # 39; Two days later there was a squad day, doing team building things, painting egg cups. I went and the wheels came off. The only thing I can remember was that I was with a teammate and when I started to say something, I suddenly realized I couldn't talk. I started to panic, but it was almost at the end and I just wanted to crawl away without making a scene.

I came home but my body suddenly became ice cold and then hot. The next thing I knew was that I had fainted in my bathroom. I called the team doctor and was rushed to the hospital. I had an attack there – the only one I've had – and they held me for a few days. & # 39;

Danson pauses. "I couldn't believe what was going on – a few months after I had led my country to a World Cup, I couldn't go to the toilet alone and I was in the hospital after an attack."

A scary aspect of Danson's injury and so much is that it has never been shown on a scan. There is a theory among her doctors that there may have been a bleeding, but no picture has supported this. Similarly, it is difficult to know whether Danson's post-trauma exercises have contributed to the severity of her subsequent problems.

The worst symptoms only started to decrease in the last eight weeks, nine to 10 months after the accident. .

Danson has been absent for 19 years from the sport she has contested at international level

& # 39; Light and sound have been particularly bad & # 39 ;, she says. & # 39; In the first few months, the sound of putting down a coffee cup made me physically unwell. My brother will not mind telling me that, his voice is deep and quite loud and so is his smile, and I remember begging him to stop talking because he made the headache worse.

& # 39; My body was constantly in fight or flight mode – it could no longer filter danger. If Alex wiped me when I slept, I would jump because my body just wasn't able to filter what was safe.

& # 39; Light has been very difficult, especially indoors. That is why I am away from the direct light that comes out of the window. Screens are also bad. I realized that immediately and even now I can't do long stretching exercises with a phone, TV or tablet without a big headache. & # 39;

In the midst of the limitations, Danson spent much of the past year in isolation, away from friends and the sport she has been contesting at international level for 18 years. & # 39; Heartbreaking & # 39 ;, she says. & # 39; Any injury that I had sustained earlier than planned. This time, the harder I tried, the worse I got.

& # 39; Eventually I learned to stop making short-term goals. That is not possible with the brain. You have to agree and that means having patience and being away from a team from England that has been my life. There is nothing mild about my slight brain injury. & # 39;

marked this week Britain's three-year anniversary that won hockey gold at the Rio Olympics

Rio's golden girls have been holding reunions in December since that night when they postponed the news at ten o'clock. Danson couldn't go last year – she was in bed.

The prospects are finally changing. This year she knows for sure that she will make it. Other things that were once impossible came into the picture. "After six months I got a cup of coffee, then I could start with television, a little screen time, gradually coming back into contact with the world."

Crucially, after 10 months, the headache began to diminish. & # 39; I still have them every day, but sometimes it can take a few hours between them and I can't tell you how nice that is, & # 39; she says, almost in tears. "There was a moment when I would settle down to live a life where I could just painlessly roam the house."

The goals are now moving. Danson knows that she is far from where she needs to be to play international sport – she has not been sprinting or waving a hockey stick for a year. And yet the mindset is determined.

& # 39; I will play again & # 39 ;, she says. For the UK? & # 39; I think so. & # 39; Tokyo? "That must be the goal."

It is an incredible target. But that is why the resumption of walking 10 months after the accident meant so much. & # 39; It's able to do something vague like what I used to do & # 39 ;, she says. "Compared to a training run with England, it's not even remotely the same – it's more like a truffle shuffle.

" It gives me a severe headache but I am jogging continuously for up to 20 minutes and it feels just so wonderful to do it again. & # 39; Bennett, her hero at reaching this point, has become her fiancé since the accident. & # 39; He did everything for me & # 39 ;, she says. They will marry next month.

& # 39; It would become the whole shepherd & # 39 ;, Danson says. & # 39; But we scaled it back. Something big and I may not have been able to copy. It has been another case that I had to manage my expectations, but we're getting married and I know it's going to be a great day. & # 39;

It remains to be seen whether there are more great days on the hockey field. But for now, the truffle shuffle around a field feels like excellent progress.

Alex Danson is an ambassador for Investec. Investec supports women's hockey from grassroots to national team. For more information, visit investec.co.uk/hockey cialis19459014 [cialis19459003cialiscialis19459009]

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#GB hockey star Danson banged her head laughing. It was a small knock but the repercussions were huge

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