Word: richardson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...details of Richardson's accident are sketchy, but what is known sounded benign - at first. She was taking a lesson on a beginner slope at the Mont Tremblant ski resort north of Montreal, with an instructor but without a helmet. She fell at the end of the lesson and struck her head, but was alert and conversational afterward and did not complain of any ill effects. An hour later, in her hotel room, she developed a severe headache. The next day, she was flown to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City in critical condition, where she died on Wednesday...
...Richardson's family and doctors had released no information regarding her condition, prior to her death. But it appears that Richardson was the victim of an unfortunate collision of biology and physics - a collision that is becoming scarily common in the worlds of athletics and organized sports. The human body is a sturdy one, but only up to a point, able to withstand collisions of about 15 m.p.h., which is about as fast as an average person can run. The skull is designed to be especially rugged - the permanent home and helmet for the brain - but even...
...continue moving, colliding with the inside of the skull. This leads to swelling or bruising or - much worse - bleeding. A brain-bleed is immediately life-threatening, but swelling is less so and may not even be evident for a little while, which is what appears to have happened in Richardson's case...
...become known as more concussion-prone than others. Worse, the danger is cumulative: later concussions may become not just more likely, but also more serious. "A sequence of mild events - even just two or more - can equal one big hit," Shealy says. That may have been what happened in Richardson's case, though no one has said publicly if she had any other head injuries in her past...
...fact that Richardson was not wearing a helmet may or may not have made a difference in the gravity of her injury. If skiers are moving slowly - say 10 m.p.h. or slower - and they fall on soft snow, they're probably not going to be hurt severely, whether they're wearing a helmet or not. If they're moving faster than 15 or 20 m.p.h. and strike ice, hard-packed snow or another solid object with the head, they're likely to suffer severe injury, and again the presence of a helmet may not make much difference...