The Dalles High School freshman lineman Orville Grout took a double hit one day during scrimmage, first getting hit in the helmet, then falling backwards to the ground.
He felt a shock for a second, and “then it started hurting.”
One of his coaches called him off the football field and asked him if he was OK. He said he was. He sat out for “just a couple minutes and I said I was fine and went back out there.”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal, I just thought I got rocked, just hit hard, and it would be over in a little bit,” he said.
A full week would pass before Grout’s dad, worried about his son’s persistent headache, called the team’s athletic trainer, Lauren Miller. She quickly diagnosed a concussion.
(See related story on concussions at the high school.)
On the mid-season day he got hit, Grout said the coach never asked him if he had any pain or other symptoms, and he didn’t volunteer that he had “slight” head pain and felt nauseated. But he thinks he “probably” would’ve admitted it if he’d been asked.
“I think he would’ve asked,” about any symptoms, he said of the coach, “but he was kind of busy and barely saw it.” Miller, who attends all the practices and games she can, was not there that day.
Grout has had other players tell him they wouldn’t volunteer any problems if asked. “I said, ‘That’s not smart, you should probably just tell them.’”
He figured he didn’t have a concussion because he’d heard other players being evaluated, and knew they were asked questions like what day it was and what their name was. He knew those answers, and figured he was fine.
(The Chronicle reached out to several students it learned had concussions. Grout agreed to be interviewed and named, and the paper confirmed this with his father.)
Being alerted by his father, Miller started asking Orville questions. “What really told her I had a concussion, she asked me, ‘how long’s your head been hurting?’ I said, ‘a week,’ and she said, ‘is that when you got hit?’ And I said, ‘yes.’” He re-took an online cognitive measurement test, called ImPACT, (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing), that he’d taken at the start of the season. He scored a few points lower than his original, baseline test.
“I was a little foggy,” he said. “I can remember most stuff, but there’s a couple things that were kind of hard.” Math has never been his strong suit, “but there were times when I really strained myself trying to remember something.”
Once he was diagnosed, he was not only done with football, but PE and weightlifting. In the classroom, tests were postponed and he wasn’t even required to take notes. But he took notes anyway just to have them. His grades went down a bit. “It wasn’t too drastic. It was a slight change.” They eventually came back up. He was even allowed to sleep in class if needed. He did, not of medical necessity so much, but just because he could. “It was mostly the freedom of being able to. To show off.”
In fact, he and his best friend both had concussion at the same time, and they enjoyed the special status. “We could brag to everybody about what we could do. That was fun.”
They’d say to fellow classmates, “’Are you guys taking a test? Ha ha.’”
He got cleared for PE and weightlifting a couple weeks ago, and this week hopes to get cleared for sports again, since he plans to be on the wrestling team. Grout was shocked when Miller told him he had a concussion. He had no idea, even though his persistent headache – which was a five on a pain scale of 0 to 10 – would not go away even when he took pain medicine.
His dad reported he acted more irritated, and he also slept more. He didn’t miss any school, but was late one day because he was so tired.
He had balance problems and was dizzy and “kind of stumbled.” His vision was poorer too. He went to physical therapy six times and saw the doctor three times. His vision and balance are now back to normall. He did have a scare when the athletic trainer told him he could’ve died if he’d gotten a second concussion when he was still injured from the first one. “I thought that was a little severe, or creepy.”
Even so, the experience has not put Grout or his parents off football. “I’m gonna keep playing,” he said. “It’s a good sport."
Commented