GUILFORD, Maine — Piscataquis Community Elementary School Principal Anita Wright was looking in another direction when a student hurriedly leaving a classroom to go on a field trip bumped into her.
“I bumped heads with a student and, this is the important thing to know, it wasn’t like some major hit,” Wright, 51, said recently in her office after the conclusion of the school day. “She looked back and said, ‘Sorry, Mrs. Wright,’ and she was on her way.”
To Wright’s surprise, the contact resulted in her being diagnosed with a concussion, causing her to miss time at work, be on a reduced schedule and still be recovering two months later. Wright agreed to share her story in the hope others suffering similar injuries will learn from her experience.
Wright, who is in her second year at PCES, said immediately after the incident on Wednesday, April 6, she felt as if her stomach did a somersault.
“It really hurt but I thought it’s just a hit to the head, it’s not anything,” she recalled.
Wright said soon after she was talking with the guidance counselor “and I realized then that I couldn’t concentrate because I felt nauseous.” She left and began to descend the stairs but stopped halfway because she felt terrible. Soon after, the office staff suggested that Wright, who was bumped in the temple area of her head, may have a concussion. “I said, ‘No that’s ridiculous, it’s just a little bump to the head,’” she said.
The principal said on her lunch break she checked a text message from her mother. “I read it and I just wanted to respond. It was really, really hard to make my fingers hit, so it was then I realized something may be wrong.”
Despite Wright’s belief that she just needed to briefly rest, the school nurse insisted she go to the emergency room. SAD 4 Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick then drove her to Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft.
“I did not take it as seriously as I should have,” Wright said.
She said she saw Mayo Regional Hospital Rehabilitation Department Leader Fran Moore.
“Right away he knew it sounded like a vestibular effect,” she said, noting she was diagnosed with a concussion affecting the part of the brain that provides a sense of balance and spatial orientation. “I was sensitive to noise and the riding made me somewhat nauseous.”
Wright went home and rested for the remainder of the day and the day after. She said she thought that after experiencing just a small bump she would be ready to return to work that Friday.
Wright said she felt fine until moving.
“In the shower there’s a lot of noise and there is movement and then of course there’s a blow dryer and by the time I’m really getting ready I’m exhausted,” she said with a chuckle, adding she thought “that’s what you get for laying in bed all day.”
Driving from her Pittsfield home, Wright said she reached Corinna when she questioned whether she should continue or turn around.
“It’s the same distance now, I might as well go and maybe I’ll feel better — not a good choice,” she said.
“Apparently when I walked in I didn’t walk straight, my eyes apparently looked bad,” Wright said. She said staff knew right away something was still not right and for the second time in three days she was taken to the hospital.
“The doctor said, ‘You need to stay home, you need to do nothing,’ so I went home and rested,” Wright said, saying she wore earplugs to stop headache-causing sounds.
After a week recuperating at home, she saw her primary care doctor for a check-up.
“I said I was fine and he gave me this test, I had to follow an H with my eyes,” Wright said, joking she has never failed a test so many times. “I couldn’t make my eyes follow that H. I couldn’t stand and close my eyes without falling over because I guess I had no, I guess, sense of … balance,” Wright said after a moment to find the word.
She said she wanted to come back to work, but after another week she failed the tests again.
“What was amazing to me was I could push my way through a lot of headaches and the previous year I had twisted my ankle,” Wright said. “With a concussion you really, no matter how much you want to, cannot fight your way through it. You will not be able to function.”
For six weeks Wright was unable to drive, but she was cleared to come back to work on a reduced four-hour daily schedule by late April, with her husband driving her to school and riding home with Kirkpatrick.
“Now I can work technically six hours,” she said.
“The paperwork says two to three months for a complete recovery for just a bump to the head,” Wright said.
She said she did not want the student to feel bad and told the child that it was explained to her the concussion was not caused by their heads bumping.
“It was that my brain bounced off my skull, it’s not so much the bump, and I think that’s what’s really deceptive. That bump, because your brain floats inside your skull, jarred it enough so it kind of — in layman’s terms — sort of bounced against my skull and that’s what caused the damage and not so much the hit as the bounce.”
Wright said she still has issues with immediate word retrieval.
“That part’s getting better but I still at times struggle to find a word I’m looking for,” she said.
Wright said after the three months, “It will be 100 percent, it just takes that long for everything to totally recover and I think that’s what I didn’t know.”
“I should never have come to school that Friday, but how do you know?” Wright said. “If I hit my head hard on a rock or ice, I would have expected something but not just a bump.
“You can’t fight your way through it. I still struggle with that because I would try to do things because I think I should be able to. At some point it’s not admirable that you try to fight through it. You have to have that patience with yourself. I can have patience with kids but not with myself.”
“I tried to find a silver lining — and I said this to the student — that I think I’ll be a better principal because of it because students struggle with noises and distractibility and perhaps word retrieval issues and I can really relate to how frustrating that is,” Wright said. “That’s what I’ve tried to be a little more aware of.”