Blair Hennessey: The Comeback is Greater than the Setback
In 2009, Blair joined the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as a reservist with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment before eventually joining the regular force with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton. In 2015, Blair sustained a string of concussions which eventually led to his medical release from the CAF. Currently, Blair coaches hockey and is in the process of achieving a Master’s degree in Physical Therapy. Blair recently completed the Calgary Half-Ironman and has been utilizing triathlon to help his own recovery while spreading awareness of concussions and their effects.
My name is Blair Hennessey. I grew up in Mount Pearl, Newfoundland and Labrador. I played a lot of sports growing up. I started playing hockey when I was four years old. I struggled with concussions from a younger age. I remember the first one that I had was pretty substantial and that set me back quite a bit. I moved on from that, and had multiple concussions throughout my hockey career as a kid. When I was 16, I faced the realization that I wasn't going to make the NHL- maybe Junior B - because that's as good as it would get. So I ended up joining the reserves, part time, in the Canadian Armed Forces. I advanced through the ranks in my training, and really enjoyed it. When I was in university (around 19 or 20 years old), I decided to uproot and move to Edmonton, Alberta to join the 1PPCLI (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry). I was a regular force, mechanized infantry soldier for a few years until I sustained my three, life changing concussions in 2015. Those were what led to my medical release from the military in 2018.
My first concussion while in the military occurred during our battalion hockey tournament. The tournament was supposed to be friendly, just an intramural game against another battalion - no body checking. However, I was slew footed, and landed directly on top of my head. I lost consciousness for around 10 seconds. I thought I was okay though - I brushed it off and went home feeling fine. When I woke up the next day I could hardly open my eyes as I was in so much pain and felt dizzy and nauseous. My nose was bleeding. My girlfriend at the time took me into the base hospital but I don't have any memories from that period of time. They evaluated me and I was diagnosed with a concussion. I wasn't given very clear instructions on what to do next. I was told "dark room, low stimulus, and it'll be okay in a couple of weeks." A couple of weeks went by and I wasn't okay and I still couldn’t return to work. That happened two or three times. On the outside, I looked functioning. The only thing you could tell that was different about me was that I had to wear a hat all the time because the light was so bright on my eyes. I had a doctor’s note that I would present to my warrant officer, indicating I was not able to go back to work yet. But he could not wrap his head around this injury because to him, I looked normal and healthy. I felt pressured to return to work. Regardless of the fact that I couldn't really drive, couldn't really see straight, or think straight. After the fourth time I brought that note in, I eventually gave in and went back to work.
For anyone reading this finding themselves in a similar situation: don’t let your boss and fear of falling behind in your career or life progress be a deterrent to reaching out for help. I believe that the reason why I'm still having a lot of my issues and symptoms is because they were left unresolved for so long that they just became patterns. You need to focus on your health first, before work or anything else. You have one brain, that is your one opportunity to keep your head on straight. And if you don't have your head screwed on straight, you're not really going to be able to do anything else, so that should be your priority.
A week after returning to work, we were training in Wainwright. I was going to the kitchen for breakfast, slipped on ice and smacked my head. I lay passed out in the parking lot for an unknown period of time until one of the cooks found me. But I was too scared to tell anyone or do anything because I didn’t want to miss work again. Two weeks later, we were doing a simulation exercise. We were traveling in the backseat of a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) at a relatively high speed. We hit a divot, and the front end went down and we went up in the back. My head compressed against the ceiling, and I have very minimal recollection of the rest of the event or after it.
After the age of 16, all I ever wanted was to be an infantry soldier. As a very high functioning person, wanted to be the best infantry soldier. That's all I wanted. So after this string of head injuries, I was at the point where I was too scared to seek medical care. I refused to reach out for help. I started dwindling - I was off and on. My warrant officer and master corporal would ask me to do things and I wouldn't remember anything after the first five seconds of the conversation. My brain wasn't processing information properly. That led to some issues: my girlfriend ended up leaving because I was very angry all the time. I was angry because I was confused. I couldn’t perform the basic skills required of me as an infantry soldier - my navigation was backwards. I couldn't relay information properly. My word finding skills were gone, I was getting angry at everything. I'd get frustrated because I didn't know what was happening.
I really wish people would spend a bit of time educating themselves on persistent concussion symptoms and what those might look like. I suspect that a lot of head injuries occur in the military, and for people to not have any awareness of what a concussion might look like is appalling. It bothers me that I was pressured to return back to work before I was ready. Better education and awareness of head injuries could help these situations. For example, in the infantry, you shoot some pretty impressive weaponry. Like the 84 - the blast that occurs when an 84 is fired affects anyone in the vicinity. And nobody tells us that, or how a lot of those blasts can affect your brain. I think there's a lot more to it than firing a round and walking away.
This education and awareness needs to be a bottom-up approach. It has to come from people sharing their personal concussion experiences. You have to speak up and share it. With more awareness, people may feel more empowered to step up and say “I'm not okay. This concussion has affected me.” That way your boss, peers, and the people around you will know about it and can support you. It can be normalized to take a step back and work on yourself, your health, first.
When I returned home, I found myself in a situation where I was in a room at the base and the company sergeant major came in to use the computer. He didn't want me in there at the time and asked me to leave. I lashed out. I yelled, and got aggressive - not physically aggressive, but verbally aggressive. But instead of yelling at me and putting me up for charges, which normally happens, he told me: "you got something going on. And you need to go get help. Because you're not you."
I give a lot of credit to that sergeant major because there's not very many in the military who are like that. Thanks to him, I reached out for help. And that's why I'm here now, about to begin studying Physical Therapy. It wasn't until I was medically released from the military that I began seeing a physiotherapist. And I started to make some improvements on my day to day skills and abilities. I want to give back and help people in similar situations, so I have been inspired to become a physiotherapist ever since.
When I started seeing a physiotherapist in 2019, she started me on sub-symptom threshold training. In the beginning, I started achieving little goals like riding the bike at 120 beats per minute for 10 minutes without symptoms. Then I improved from there - I lifted weights because I found an interval style of lifting weights, where I could rest for a period and I wouldn't hit 125-130 beats per minute until about 40 seconds in, worked well for me. It was methodical and gave me something to work towards. I always kind of maintained an exercise program before my concussions, so getting back to this routine has been the cornerstone of my recovery because it helps with my symptom management.
Final Thoughts
Another thing that I feel is important, is the whole identity loss surrounding a concussion. Don’t let your injury define who you are at that moment in time, Because things might not look good at that current time, but they will look better. It's really hard to see yourself as anything other than an infantry soldier or anything other than a hockey player. I struggled with that a lot in the beginning. But there's a lot more you can be, and the skills that you have as an athlete, or even as a soldier - they transfer to other aspects of life. Like in school, my teachers have a lot of respect for the way that I communicate and the way I interact with them on a daily basis. Don't think your life is over because that's not who you are anymore. There is someone else you can be.