PCES principal finds silver lining in brain injury

Minor ‘bump’ in the hallway forces school leader to take concussions more seriously

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

GUILFORD — What was at first thought to have been “just a bump” between the heads of Piscataquis Community Elementary School Principal Anita Wright and a student turned out to be much more for the administrator. To her surprise, the contact resulted in Wright being diagnosed with a concussion and still be recovering two months later.

“I bumped heads with a student and, this is the important thing to know, it wasn’t like some major hit,” Wright, 51, said Friday in her office after the conclusion of the school day. Wright said, with her own head turned, the girl accidently walked into her on the way to leaving for a field trip when their heads made contact. “She looked back and said ‘sorry Mrs. Wright’ and she was on her way.”

Wright, who is in her second year at PCES, said immediately after the April 6 incident, she felt as if her stomach did a somersault. “It really hurt but I thought it’s just a hit to the head, a banging of heads, it’s not anything. I remember going to talk about a student who was struggling with the guidance counselor and I realized then that I couldn’t concentrate because I felt nauseous.

“So I said I needed to go and I walked halfway down the stairs and stopped and realized I felt terrible,” Wright said. She said on the way back to her desk the office staff suggested that Wright may have a concussion “and I said no that’s ridiculous, it’s just a little bump to the head.”

Wright would end up making a return trip to the hospital two days later to fully realize the extent of the concussion she suffered, which would require several weeks to fully recover from.

The principal said that she then had a chance on her lunch break, within a half hour of bumping heads, to check a text message from her mother saying her father was ill. “I read it and I just wanted to respond and my fingers I couldn’t coordinate them. It was really, really hard to make my fingers hit so it was then I realized something may be wrong.”

Wright said a suggestion was made to go to the emergency room. “I thought no I just need to rest for a few minutes and I don’t need to go and the nurse was kind of insistent.” Wright said SAD 4 Superintendent Ann Kirkpatrick drove her the eight miles 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 as 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.”

After the visit to the hospital, Wright went home and rested for the remainder of the day and the day after, believing that she was ready to head back to school. “I thought this is ridiculous so up I got,” Wright said.

“That’s the problem with this, you are good until you move because the vestibular is the movement and the noise,” she said. “I hadn’t realized it that morning but 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,” Wright said with a chuckle, adding she thought “that’s what you get for laying in bed all day.”

Driving to the school from her home in Pittsfield Wright said she reached Corinna when “I thought wow, should I turn around and go home or should I keep going and I thought it’s the same distance now I might as well go and maybe I’ll feel better — not a good choice.

“So I landed here but apparently when I walked in I didn’t walk straight, my eyes apparently looked bad,” Wright said. She said school staff knew right away something was not right with the principal 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, explaining she wore earplugs to stop headache-causing sounds.

At the end of the following week she saw her primary care doctor for a checkup. “I said I was fine and he gave me this test and I still remember this test because I’ve taken it 100 times, I had to follow an H with my eyes,” Wright said, joking she has never failed a test so many times in her life. “I just couldn’t do it, 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 of trying to find the word she was looking for.

She said she wanted to come back to work, but waited another week to try to pass the tests. Again Wright failed, despite practicing as much as she could.

“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,” but the principal continued to do her job. “With a concussion you really, no matter how much you want to, you cannot fight your way through it. You will not be able to function.”

For six weeks Wright was unable to drive, but she was permitted to come back to work on a reduced schedule by the end of April. Eventually doctors allowed Wright to get behind the wheel again.

“The paperwork says two to three months for a complete recovery for just a bump to the head,” Wright said, repeating “it was just a bump” several times for emphasis.

Since returning to school, Wright said she’s had issues with word retrieval. “That part’s getting better but I still, at times, struggle to find a word I’m looking for,” she said, mentioning how during the interview she spent several moments trying to recall the word balance. “I can’t come up with the details very quickly, I can over time.”

She said her doctor has assured her in two to 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. “I still don’t know if I would know. If I hit my head hard on a rock or ice I would have expected something but not just a bump. I guess that’s the thing people are learning about concussions. It doesn’t have to be something drastic.”

“You can’t fight your way through it … you have to have that patience with yourself. I guess that’s not my virtue, I can have patience with kids but not with myself.”

“I tried to find a silver lining … 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.”