MacArthur opens up about concussions
Senators forward pondered retirement as ‘stinging’ headaches almost drove him from game
OTTAWA — Clarke MacArthur’s season is over, but his career isn’t.
That’s MacArthur’s big-picture takeaway from a lost year that has included months of helplessness, thoughts of retirement, vertigo, late-season hope and ultimately, a failed push to show he was all the way back following a devastating concussion in the second week of the season.
Following a Saturday meeting between MacArthur, Senators general manager Bryan Murray and the club’s medical staff, it’s expected the club will officially announce Monday he won’t return for the club’s final six games.
Yet MacArthur’ s current mood pa les in comparison to the frustration, fog and futility of the previous five months. For months, he endured “stinging” headaches. He couldn’t watch TV. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t focus on anything — including his wife, Jessica, three-year-old daughter, Emery, and now 10-mont holds on, Gus —for more than five minutes at a time.
The initial estimates of being out for only 10 weeks came and went with little improvement.
MacArthur says he created his own nightmare, ignoring telltale concussion symptoms at the end of training camp. “I feel like if I had just went with my gut instinct from Day 1, I would have missed 10 games and I would have played the rest of the year,” MacArthur said in an exclusive interview with Post media .“It would have been a different situation. It could have been a completely different year.”
The big hits
Any concerns about the February 2015 concussion he suffered following a collision with goaltender Robin Lehner were history by the time he scored two goals in six playoff games against Montreal in the spring.
Everything changed in the final game of the pre-season. MacArthur was backchecking, aiming to stop Montreal’s Alex Galchenyuk, as Senators minor-league defenceman Mark Fraser stepped up to “strong arm” the Montreal forward. Galchenyuk dodged the hit. MacArthur didn’t.
“It stunned me, it was like the (concussion) before and I was thinking ‘oh, no,’ ” MacArthur said. “I went to the bench, trying to hide it almost, but the trainers saw it.”
The following day he made his first big mistake, thinking the five-day lag until the regular-season opener would allow him enough time to recover.
“I woke up and I could feel it coming on ,” he said .“I had a headache and my vision was a little off. I was telling the trainers and doctors that I was fine, but I was hiding the symptoms.”
MacArthur passed the concussion test, but his normal one-hour afternoon naps had turned into five-hour sleeps. He occasionally woke up in “a fog.” He made it through the opening three games of the season, knowing something was off. Then came the Oct. 14 game in Columbus. MacArthur says he was ready to come clean, “feeling off and on” after taking a solid first-period hit.
In the second period, he tripped over a Columbus player, banged his head on the ice and has no memory of being helped to the dressing room. The next thing here members is a doctor giving him an eye exam.
“I puked in the trash can five minutes afterwards and I’m thinking, ‘What did I do?’ ”
MacArthur’s condition went from bad to almost intolerable.
“I needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open for the next two weeks,” he said. “The headaches. I can’t even describe the feelings. It was awful.”
Weeks turned to months with no improvement. MacArthur couldn’t ride a stationary bike, couldn’t do anything that raised his heart rate, without the headaches returning. He felt useless around the house.
At 30, the 10-year NHL veteran, who has scored 133 goals and 171 assists in 548 career games, thought about retirement.
“At one point in late November, early December, I was thinking I was done, maybe this is it,” he said. “I had to get out of there. Every day you’re coming to the rink and you want to go on the ice. It’s like going to Disneyland. Everyone else goes on the rides and you’re outside the doors, watching.”
When he stepped back on the ice for the first time on Jan. 7, he let the world know about his excitement, posting a picture on Twitter. Not so fast. “I did a couple of laps, it felt all right, but that’s when we found out I had vertigo,” he said. “It was like a whole new start again. I had no balance. When I went backwards, it was like I was floating around. I didn’t have a clue where I was, so I battled with that for (more than) a month.”
The end game
Finally, by mid-February, MacArthur could see the light at the end of his inner struggle. He was back practising, and laughing, with his teammates.
MacArthur confident ly predicted he would return either March 1 or March 3. All that was left was to check off in his five-month rehabilitation was passing the concussion baseline test. He didn’t pass.
An additional three weeks were required before re-taking the test, which brought us to last week. MacArthur finally did pass the test on Wednesday, but by then all hopes of making the playoffs were gone.
At the same time, MacArthur is a long way from where he once was, now full of confidence that he will be back playing next season.