Play safe to guard against traumatic brain injury
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Editor,
Woo-hoo! It’s football season in Montana! So much excitement for all the players, schools and towns of all sizes. But I have always felt a sense of dread come the fall knowing there may be another young football player who suffers a traumatic brain injury and a screwed up life from playing football like I did at age 15. Or that someone dies from it.
Players please don’t use your head as a weapon when tackling, clocking or running the ball. Your brain is in there and it is who you are. It is just not worth the risk of permanently damaging your precious, young, still developing brain and ending up like me. Google Michael Sidney Allard. Nothing good there. My life since my brain surgery has been a series of disasters that have negatively affected so many people and I cannot say I’m sorry enough. It breaks my heart that I have hurt anyone. I have been forgetful, erratic in my emotions and behaviors and often make questionable if not poor decisions. I have made hundreds of good and great friends and a couple very close, loving, potentially lifelong mate relationships. But my instability just wears thin and breaks people down. Nobody has had the patience or understanding to remain a friend or partner and they are not at fault. I am a faulty person. Worse, I am untrustworthy. To others and to myself. I am in constant pain, my head and eyes shrieking and feeling as though they are at the point of breaking apart. I am on the autism spectrum. I enter into dissociative states. I have memory loss, chronic fatigue, and cannot verbally communicate well at times. The worst pain I suffer is loneliness.
Parents, friends, classmates, girlfriends, boyfriends and community members – all – make sure your players’ coaches are teaching proper technique and your players are using it. You other kids, use a helmet when you skateboard, bicycle, snowboard, in-line skate, rock climb, ski, ride horses, bulls or broncs. Protect your brain. It’s who you are. Play hard. Have fun. Be safe.
Michael S. Allard
Deerlodge
