SPOKANE — Bobby Clark still loves football, especially the Seahawks.
His enthusiasm spills over even when telling his own story: He was a senior football player — No. 52 — for the Priest River Lamanna High School Spartans at the Sept. 30, 2011, homecoming game.
But he doesn’t remember much else about that game 12 years ago.
Two separate concussions from hard hits — minutes apart — changed the trajectory of his life.
“He was initially injured, came off the field, and he told the coach, ‘I don’t feel good; something’s wrong,’ “ said Julie Clark, his mother. “The coach sent him to the trainer down the line. On his way to the trainer, the second coach sent him back into the game. And then he got hit again.”
The successive blows caused a severe traumatic brain injury that still affects him — cognitively, physically, emotionally. His body has right-side weakness. He walks with a cane. His speech is slower and sounds a bit slurred. His eyes didn’t coordinate together, requiring recent surgery. He still has some vision impairment, headaches and back pain.
“I’ve come to terms. This is me. This is my life,” said Clark, who is now 29.
“His emotions are like a roller coaster,” his mom added. “There are no filters, or the filters are not what they used to be. He is very open, social and friendly. Bobby was all those things before, but everything like multiplied by 20.”
The Clarks recently shared his story in a public service video, teaming with Providence St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Medical Center brain injury experts. They hope the clip is shared with athletes to take concussions seriously, versus dismissing symptoms to stay in games.
“I hope that all kids, any athlete out there who needs some hope and inspiration, to know that it’s OK to have struggles,” Bobby Clark said. “Don’t worry about trying to impress everyone and get everything they dream for. Life is more precious than $100,000.”
A concussion is caused by a blow or motion to the head or body that causes the brain to move rapidly inside the skull.
Bobby Clark’s football team had protocols for concussion testing, Julie Clark said, but he hadn’t yet made it over to the trainer. She’s unsure if her son was too stunned to speak up about returning to the game.
“He was put in before he made it to the trainer, who would have checked all of that, because the second coach wasn’t aware that the first coach had sent him,” she said.
After the second hit, Bobby Clark returned to the sideline, then collapsed and stood three times before going unconscious, she said. Airlifted to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, he had emergency surgery to remove part of his skull to relieve severe brain swelling.
Bobby Clark’s injury came amid a rash of concussions to teammates that season, and the growing awareness and worry about what was happening to high school football players and to NFL professionals.
He spent 14 days in a coma. About a third of his skull was removed, then reattached Jan. 9, 2012. Julie Clark didn’t hear her son’s voice until weeks after his injury.
Released from Sacred Heart, he first went to North Idaho Advanced Care Hospital in Post Falls. There, he could communicate with gestures, like by nodding or shaking his head. Later, waking up one day from a couch in his room, Julie Clark heard a soft voice: “He’s over there in his bed; it was very quiet, but he was waving at me, saying, ‘I love you, Mom.’ “
After rehabilitation at St. Luke’s, he did outpatient physical, speech and occupational therapies up to four times weekly for about six years. Bobby Clark gets emotional talking about his mother’s constant care.
“That whole time I was in a coma, my parents were scared they were going to lose me,” he said. “I had to relearn how to talk, walk, sit up, everything.”
Dr. Frank Jackson, St. Luke’s brain injury program medical director, wasn’t Bobby Clark’s doctor. But he’s studied his case. The second concussion did long-term, serious damage.
“That phenomenon is called second-hit syndrome,” Jackson said. “In taking that first stunning, it impairs the brain to be able to compensate for a second hit to happen, so it actually causes a significant swelling of the brain. If he wouldn’t have had the first concussion, the second concussion wouldn’t be as severe.”
The skull is a closed space, he added.
“If you start having swelling of the brain, the only real place for it to go out is down on the bottom where your spinal cord emerges.”
That also can cause death. Normally, the brain moves blood and fluid around in a coordinated way. If that gets impaired — and then a second blow happens — the brain can’t compensate.
“Instead of trying to get rid of blood and get rid of fluid, it can’t do that, so all it can do is swell.”
A concussion and the term mild traumatic brain injury are the same, Jackson said. Traumatic brain injuries can be mild, moderate and severe. Repeated hard blows can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disorder.
Symptoms of a concussion can be headache or head pressure, confusion, balance issues, trouble focusing, blurry vision, memory difficulty, nausea or vomiting and sometimes lost consciousness. But symptoms can vary.
Subsequent concussions can have a cumulative effect.
“I often tell patients it’s a one-plus-one equals three kind of phenomenon,” Jackson said.
Dr. Alicia Hegie, a St. Luke’s clinical neuropsychologist, also knows Bobby Clark because her mother, a neighbor, often plays cards with him.
She said it’s not uncommon for severe brain injury patients to deal with emotional changes that shift quickly and seem stronger. Those highs and lows can be disorienting and hard to process, she said, and they can feel out of place to the people talking to him.
Hegie asked the Clarks about doing the video, to share an experience relatable to youth in sports.
She said one concern is that young athletes, who might feel invincible, go on to get multiple blows to the head without recovery. While most people do recover from a concussion, some feel effects longer.
“It’s where you start having multiple mild injuries where the implications can be different,” she said. “Most people do get better. Who we are worried about are the people who are at elevated risk because they’re being exposed to more of these events.”
A concussed player might be unable to advocate for themselves, she said. Teammates should speak up if they notice something.
“I’d say look out for each other. If I see a team member get hit, speak up and say something. It’s worth protecting your friend’s well-being, even if the game is lost.”
Today, Bobby Clark enjoys helping with the garden and animals on the family’s Priest River property. He also is a fan of card games like UNO. To visitors, he’ll show autographs he got at a 2016 Seahawks practice, where he met players and coach Pete Carroll.
He doesn’t remember what position he was playing in the game when he got hurt, but he recalls being a linebacker, right guard and on special teams.
“I didn’t come off the field until I was hurt.”
But he does remember his June 2012 graduation. Emotions well up about his classmates’ response.
“They all made hearts with their hands like this when I got my diploma,” Bobby Clark said, demonstrating. “It was so exciting because I didn’t think that I could do that. I got up from my wheelchair and said, ‘I’m walking,’ and I got it done with a 4.0.”
He’s looking forward to finding a job where people might understand him, he said. Bobby Clark also has a friend who has Down syndrome. They met through therapies, and he helped her learn to talk.
He still deals with “silent symptoms,” similar to veterans with combat-related brain injuries, Jackson said. Those can be emotional fluctuations, memory issues, difficulty concentrating and with more complicated cognitive functions, such as reading another person’s emotions and knowing when to speak or to listen.
It’s a reminder of why rules exist for athletes and concussions, and protocols to let recovery follow, Jackson said.
“The reality of it is, they need to take care of the brain, so they don’t have any long-term implications.”
Julie Clark doesn’t hesitate about what she’d tell an athlete who might shrug off a concussion.
“It’s just not worth it. What you might consider five minutes of glory isn’t worth a lifetime of difficulty, of struggle, and all that hard work to get back to just functioning.
“I would just say, take your time and go feel better. The game is going to be there, a different game, but the game’s going to be there when you come back.”
