An Advocate for Change: My Journey Through PCS and Probable CTE

Stephen is an award-winning, forward-thinking and progressive employment lawyer. He is a 2013 graduate of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Stephen champions human rights, equality and justice and has focused his attention on being a brain injury advocate and agent of change. As a survivor of repeated head trauma, brain injury and ongoing post-concussion syndrome, Stephen's goal is to facilitate increased awareness of these troubling and often misunderstood issues, particularly within the area of employment.

As I write this, I am feeling tired, beaten, worn out and fatigued — mentally, physically, and emotionally. My life's journey has been a long and troubling battle with head injuries, depression, anxiety, exhaustion, substance abuse, self-loathing and mistreatment by my profession. 90% of the time, I can hardly function in my day-to-day life, as I deal with extreme migraine headaches, profound body pain, incapacitating fatigue, severe depression, sensitivity to noise and light — I can check all the boxes. I have problems with memory, impulse control, mood imbalance, cognition and executive functioning. Every physician has delivered the same answer: my brain has been irreparably injured by way of repeated blows to the head. I do not have cancer, a stroke, or ALS. I have a brain injury — a serious and likely progressive medical condition.

A Childhood of Hard Hits

I was a happy and energetic child. My passion for life and high-energy caused me to hit my head a lot. Whether it was throwing rocks with cousins, running through school hallways or playing sports, my head took the brunt of many inadvertent hits. My love for sports began early and it wasn't long before I was playing football and baseball at a high level. In football I was a wide receiver and kick returner — I loved to run fast, dive for catches, and lay it all on the line. In baseball, I was a centre fielder with a cannon arm. My on-field passion caused me time and again to hit my head, but at that time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, neither I nor my coaches thought twice about it. I recall one specific instance at football practice where I took a vicious helmet-on-helmet hit and woke up covered in my own snot — dazed and confused, I got right back out there with my coach's blessing. What we thought was a normal football play was no doubt a concussion, one of hundreds of undocumented TBIs I have likely sustained.

The Hit That Changed Everything

In March 2013 — only one month from law school graduation — I attended a law school mixer. At the end of the evening, I was attacked from behind and thrown into a cement wall. I have no recollection of what happened and my understanding is based entirely on what witnesses told me. I was knocked unconscious and awoke disoriented in a pool of blood with a severe laceration to my head. A CT scan revealed no skull fracture or internal bleeding. Still disoriented, I was discharged and sent home alone. Since that day, I have never been the same.

In the weeks and months that followed, I began drinking heavily. My start-date with a large national law firm was delayed because of how I was feeling. This instantly created tension. "Concussion?", "didn't you recover from that bump on the head?" they would ask. They just didn't care to understand. I was expected to work 60–80 hour weeks and be on call at all hours. My medical condition didn't supersede this "rite of passage." It wasn't long before I couldn't keep up. I was placed in a small office in an entirely different building and essentially left to rot in silence. Senior members of the firm had been circulating emails with funny memes poking fun at me for being a "drunk" — people I trusted, responsible for my legal training. It was unconscionable.

Another Crash, Another Setback

All of this progression came to a screeching halt in November 2014 when I was involved in a serious car accident. On my way to the gym one night, completely sober but extremely fatigued, I went through a red light and collided head-on with another vehicle. I do not remember the accident. Another serious concussion — only 17 months after the last major head injury. My vehicle was a total write-off, my head slamming violently in every direction. I am ashamed of it, and that driver's wellbeing still weighs on my heart.

Over the years that followed, I was diagnosed with an irreparable injury to my pituitary gland — my brain had been so badly battered that the blunt force trauma caused my pituitary to stop functioning. This meant my body was no longer producing growth hormone necessary for basic bodily functioning, compounding the effects of PCS dramatically. I was hospitalized, went through residential treatment for substance abuse, nearly lost everything financially, and came dangerously close to ending my life on more than one occasion. But for the support of close friends in my circle of sobriety, I would not be here to tell this story.

An Advocate for Change

Over the course of 2018–2020, I was relentlessly targeted, harassed and discriminated against by my professional association. My medical condition was referred to as a "mental break-down" — as if it were still the 1970s. The professional association and my legal profession cast me aside and wrote me off. They were referring to medical documentation from my comprehensive team of concussion specialists as "insufficient." After graduating from law school at the top of my class, my career, livelihood and ability to provide for my young family was stolen from me — not because I did anything wrong, but because I have a brain injury that was unrecognized and laughed at.

I do not know what the future has in store for me. I do believe I am now suffering from the deleterious effects of CTE, and that is a very scary thought. I'm nevertheless proud to have pledged my brain to the UNITE Brain Bank to help further research into concussion and CTE once my time is up. I want to be an agent of change. PCS is all too real — it's time society recognized it in a manner no different than cancer. Don't let anyone tell you to be quiet. Silence helps no one. Talk about your problems and don't be afraid or ashamed. We all lose when these things aren't talked about. We're in this together.