I’d appreciate some advice about this. Will try and keep short!
My son has just started in Y7 at secondary school. It was going fantastically well until a PE lesson in the final week before half term. They were doing contact rugby for the first time, having previously done touch rugby, with professional trainers supervised by the PE staff. My DS (who loves some sports but doesn’t really like ones that involve a lot of contact) was tackled during a jogging tackle drill and banged his head. He carried on playing but after the class said he felt dizzy and was taken to the medical room and we were called.
We took him to A&E and he was diagnosed with concussion, and has now been diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome. He was off school for a week, then it was half term, and he went back this week but has really struggled and we collected him early today. He is having problems reading (he says the words are fuzzy and float around), is still getting headaches and feeling nauseous, and is very anxious about being bumped and jostled. He’s not sleeping very well either, poor love.
There are 2 strands to this I’d welcome advice/views on.
The first is whether anyone has had experience of post-concussion syndrome. We’ve taken him to the doctors a few times now, and he has been seen at the hospital twice since the original concussion diagnosis (the last time during half term). The medics are always very reassuring and say his symptoms are classic post-concussion symptoms and that they will pass, with the recovery period varying from person to person. So if there is anyone who has had the experience of this with their child I’d be so grateful to hear it. Were there any things that your school put in place that helped them during their recovery?
The other thing I’d welcome views on is what you’d expect your school to do if this happened there. I’ve been a bit shocked at how relaxed the school seem to be. They have sent me (because I asked) an account of what happened, but it doesn’t tally with what my DS has said and they have not responded to us pointing this out. It isn’t clear whether he was actually knocked out. The school account specifically says not, but the tackle the account mentions was, according to my DS, an earlier one and not the one that caused the problem. At any rate, the hospital were very clear that you don’t need to be knocked out to suffer concussion.
After a few days faffing about trying to find out what happened I asked to see the head – but couldn’t get an appointment for over two weeks (though I appreciate half term will have been an issue here). The main thing we want to discuss with him is the PE lesson and what happened, but also to say that we feel let down by how poorly the school have communicated with us.
On the plus side, we have had support from the head of his year who we contacted early on, and she has suggested and implemented a few things to help (like being able to leave lessons early to avoid getting caught up in the crowds).
I really appreciate that schools have lots of pupils to worry about but I’d imagined that a child being that seriously hurt in a PE lesson would be something that really concerned them, and that they’d actively stay in touch with us, which hasn't been the case at all. Am I being a bit unrealistic?
Thanks if you've made it this far.