Joke no laughing matter
A Great Britain hockey star who won a gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games had her world flipped upside down after banging her head against a wall laughing.
But there was nothing funny about the incident which has had lifechanging repercussions for Alex Danson, who has spent the past year isolated from family and friends and is yet to return to the sport she played for 18 years.
Danson suffered a brain injury when the 34-year-old was on vacation with her boyfriend Alex Bennett in Kenya and she simply laughed at one of his jokes.
‘‘I threw my head back and just banged it on a wall. It was about the height of my shoulders and so my head hit the top of it flush. Not a car crash, not a fall, not unconscious. I just hit my head on a wall,’’ Danson told the Daily Mail.
‘‘The next morning I made a mistake. I suppose it’s a habit of sports people to shrug off an injury, so Alex and I went running. I felt good so I was thinking ‘great, no concussion’. Then the second we got back to the hotel room everything spun. And that really was the start.’’
That laugh changed her life. After knocking her noggin, Danson required assistance going to the bathroom, was unable to watch TV, and could not go as long as one minute without a headache. She had to wear sunglasses inside and slept for 15 hours every day.
‘‘I couldn’t believe what was happening – a couple of months after leading my country at a World Cup, I couldn’t go to the bathroom alone and I was in hospital after a seizure,’’ Danson said.
‘‘Light and noise have been particularly bad,’’ she says. ‘‘In the first few months the sound of putting down a coffee cup made me physically unwell. My brother won’t mind me saying, his voice is deep and quite loud and so is his laugh, and I remember begging him to stop talking because it made the headaches worse.
‘‘Light has been very hard, especially indoors. It is why I sit facing away from the direct light coming from the window. Screens are also bad. I realised that straight away and even now I can’t do long stretches with a phone, TV or tablet without a major headache.’’
Nearly one year on from the incident, the most severe symptoms have stopped, providing Danson with a glimmer of hope that she may finally get a chance to return to the hockey turf, possibly even in time for next year’s Olympic Games.
‘‘I will play again,’’ she told the
Daily Mail. For Britain? ‘‘I think so.’’ Tokyo? ‘‘That has to be the aim.’’
But for now she is just happy to be pain free after 11 months of torment.
‘‘I’m up to 20 minutes continuous jogging and it just feels so amazing to do it again.’’