Published: March 28, 2014
Aches and pains
West’s Lemminger gets through rough 2-year period
Senior kept head injury a secret for almost a week
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
If you don’t know West Bend West’s Sam Lemminger, she is
quick-witted, with a dry sense of humor. Her jokes tend to come off as a bit
sarcastic.
“She has a killer sense of humor,” said Debbe Lemminger,
Sam’s mother.
That’s only after you know Sam Lemminger.
Otherwise, she’ll be soft-spoken and shy.
So when she spoke up, her words may have saved her life
because she kept her head injury a secret.
In 2012, Lemminger, who is a three-sport athlete at West,
fell off the balance beam during a meet and hit her head on the beam.
She shrugged it off, got back on the beam and finished the
routine. Everything seemed normal.
That was until she was resting comfortably at a friends
house watching TV.
“I didn’t feel good,” Lemminger recalled. “... It was a
scary feeling.”
She had a headache and was beginning to be more sensitive to
things like light and sound.
She shrugged it off.
“I just pushed through it because we had a really important
dual meet the next week,” Lemminger said, adding she didn’t want to let her
team down by not being able to compete.
Debbe Lemminger never noticed anything out of the ordinary
with her daughter.
“Where I noticed something, was at Watertown (the next meet)
where she was so incredibly wobbly,” Lemminger said. “I was impressed she
stayed on the beam.
“I said to Sam, ‘What’s going on?’ I was really surprised
with how she hung on. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary when
she said wasn’t feeling well.”
Lemminger just thought it was the tension of an important
meet.
Sam Lemminger told her gymnastics coach she wasn’t feeling
well and might have a concussion. The coach brushed it off.
Just to be sure, the Lemmingers went to the doctor and
learned Sam Lemminger had suffered a severe concussion.
“It was a huge wake-up call,” Debbe Lemminger said. “I never
really thought about concussions and how serious there were.”
The discovery may have saved Sam Lemminger’s life.
If untreated, according to postconcussionsyndrome.net, a
head injury can lead to rapid and fatal brain swelling. Epilepsy or permanent
brain damage can also develop.
A change in personality is another possible outcome of an
untreated head injury. But nothing was different, or at least that’s how Sam
Lemminger acted. She gave little to no indication something was out of the
ordinary.
Two years later, she is grateful she said something.
“I’ve learned they’re definitely something you shouldn’t
take lightly,” she said of concussions. “Your brain is the most important thing
you have.”
“I couldn’t focus on anything and I had no balance,” she
added. “I had a constant headache all the time. I didn’t feel right. I felt
dizzy and my head hurt. Everything was brighter.”
Those are signs of a potential head injury.
Once discovered, Lemminger then went on a two-year whirlwind
of emotions.
After the diagnosis, Lemminger, a National Honor Society
student, was held out of school for almost a month and wasn’t allowed to do
much.
For most of the three weeks she was at home, she laid at
home, sleeping. If not sleeping, she was secluded to her bedroom, laying in the
dark. The goal was to avoid as much brain stimulation as possible because any
brain activity could trigger a headache.
It was like she was a prisoner in her own bedroom.
“I just wanted to do something,” Lemminger said. “When my
mom told me I couldn’t go to school, I was really mad. I kept thinking I wished
I had broken both of my legs so that way I could do something.”
Sitting at home frustrated her, which triggered a headache.
“Basically everything gave me a headache,” Lemminger said.
“Except for sleeping.”
As time passed, she was allowed to watch TV or even color
pictures. But once a headache came around, she had to stop.
A month passed. She was finally allowed to pick up her
activity, but in baby steps.
Her first physical activity lasted just five minutes on an
elliptical machine.
In the summer leading up to her senior year, after a
disappointing junior year in all of her sports, she stepped up her workout
routines, starting with cross-country in the fall. She reaped the benefits
almost immediately, seemingly dropping time each time out.
“After her junior year track season, she was humiliated,”
Debbe Lemminger said. “All of a sudden she got a spark. (West girls
cross-country coach) Boyd Janto was huge in helping her getting back. She
wasn’t going to let him down.”
She didn’t and Janto thanked her for it, announcing at the
team’s awards banquet after the season she was the Most Improved Runner.
“That was really, really special because I didn’t tell
anybody how I was working out over the summer,” Sam Lemminger said. “It was
just something I did for myself. ... It was really nice.”
She carried that momentum over to gymnastics, qualifying for
her first state individual competition.
“It was really special,” Lemminger said. “It was just fun to
compete. ... It was a nice way to end my gymnastics career.”
Gymnastics is Lemminger’s first love, having done it since
she was 8 years old.
“I couldn’t have been more thrilled for her, because there
were times she wanted to give up,” Debbe Lemminger said.
“She had to understand what happened to her,” she added.
“This past year was a huge fight for her to come to terms with it, socially,
academically and athletically.”
Sam Lemminger is still a bit soft spoken and shy, but her
mom isn’t, especially when it comes to the severity of head injuries.
“I wish all of the sports out there would be really pushing
(for baseline testing),” Debbe Lemminger said. “Now I can’t keep quiet about
it. It’s really scary.”
“You really can’t let it go,” she added about the severity
of head injuries. “They’re really scary. Until Sam had one, I didn’t pay any
attention to them.”
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