# Ever had a concussion?



## ruinexplorer (Feb 28, 2017)

This article seems to suggest that concussion are somewhat prevalent backstage. To top it off, we don't seem to care. Maybe due to being taller, I have learned spacial awareness, but I don't seem to hit my head much even in the dark. 
https://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/16-17/02/PURF-research-reveals-theater-concussions.cfm


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## SteveB (Feb 28, 2017)

We now require hard hats be worn for catwalk work. Ours are 50's design so lots of beams, HVAC, etc...


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## ruinexplorer (Feb 28, 2017)

I know of certain traveling shows that have their riggers wear the Petzl hard hats (strapped on) when doing high rigging. I have had to wear a bump cap in one venue's catwalks due to my boss cutting his head on a sprinkler. I just hadn't seen a lot of actual concussions. I hope that it actually isn't that common.


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## EdSavoie (Feb 28, 2017)

I thwack my head every now and then on the lighting bridge air duct, but not that hard...


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## josh88 (Feb 28, 2017)

I've had a few solid bell ringers but suppose I've been lucky. Only had one from high school when I knocked a girl out with my head playing mat ball in gym.


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## Colin Bishop (Feb 28, 2017)

Never had one, but eventually I'll hit my head on either the low beams entering my catwalk are the stupid large HVAC right in the middle of it. I want to know who thought it was a good idea to put HVAC 2.5 ft over the floor of my catwalk... It gets in the way so much.


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## Les (Mar 1, 2017)

I've had one; a result of an ATV accident. I was wearing safety gear, but I guess I still got whacked pretty hard. For about 30 minutes, it was like the entire day's activities had been wiped from my memory. Strangest feeling ever. 


Colin Bishop said:


> I want to know who thought it was a good idea to put HVAC 2.5 ft over the floor of my catwalk...



No one did, most likely. My money's on either poor communication/planning, mechanical contractors not grasping how extensively a catwalk is going to be utilized, or someone picking an unfortunate combination of "good, cheap, fast". My old high school (renovated facility) had the exact same situation and it once resulted in a 1" cut on my head (no concussion, thankfully).


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## Dionysus (Mar 1, 2017)

Ive never had one on the job. Rung my bell lightly a few times. Seen a couple people get pretty close to concussed. One stood up and connected with the bottom of a video wall, and another stood up while walking under a stageline and whacked his head pretty good.

I have had 3 concussions (none on job); Hit by a car and basically cracked my skull, whacked my head at the bottom of a wave pool (attacked by friends little brother), and in highschool someone shoved me into a cinderblock wall.
NOT FUN. 

Hardhats are my friend.


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## Van (Mar 1, 2017)

I really like the idea of Climbing helmets when working overhead. It's an issue that has always bugged me since I work in both Theatrical and Construction venues. In working on lights you are often called to stick your head in places where a hard hat is going to get caught, so you take it off, forget where it is, kick it off the catwalk. Yes, a safety officer would say that if you have to take your cover off to do it you shouldn't be doing it.

That being said I've only every had one real 'Bell ringer' that damn near knocked me out, in the theatre. Been K.O.'d twice in Martial Arts.


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## TheaterEd (Mar 1, 2017)

Never working in a theater. I did however give myself a mild-one while loading baggage under a greyhound bus. Still had to finish loading the bus, but I could't state with any level of certainty where that bus was going...


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## Calc (Mar 1, 2017)

Colin Bishop said:


> I want to know who thought it was a good idea to put HVAC 2.5 ft over the floor of my catwalk...



I'm not sure either, but they also do work here in Michigan, apparently 

The 3rd floor of our Recital Hall was built with 10-15ft wide access routes along both sides the entire length of the hall. To get to the actual catwalk, you take another set of alternating-tread stairs up another ~20ft. That gets you to a catwalk that also runs the length of the hall, with HVAC crossing for ~6ft sections in three places. To get to each of the three over-audience catwalk where the hang positions are, you go from the long catwalk BACK DOWN ~4ft of stairs. Not sure why they couldn't have just set the long catwalk a few feet lower, especially with all the HVAC being run above it.

Keep in mind, this is the same room where they designed the house lights just far enough off the catwalks (~6" down, 18" out) that we have to bring in riggers to rope rapel down just to change lamps.


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## egilson1 (Mar 1, 2017)

Nit picking here, but please don't call them climbing helmets. They're not. They are ANSI Z89.1 and CE approved hard hats (unless of course it really is just a climbing helmet). They just happen to have chin straps and look like climbing helmets. The reason I bring this up is it's a constant battle to convince general contractor safety officers that my hard hat is in fact approved for use on the job site. You only need to drop your hard hat on a job site forman once while terminating DMX ports on a box boom before people start liking the idea of strapping them on!

Ethan


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## Les (Mar 2, 2017)

Calc said:


> Not sure why they couldn't have just set the long catwalk a few feet lower, especially with all the HVAC being run above it.



I'm willing to put money on the fact that no one was looking at the others' drawings.


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## cbrandt (Mar 2, 2017)

I can't count the number of catwalks I've been on that require hands and knees crawling to access the entire space. Some that even require belly crawling. Being a short guy, I've had the good luck to have everyone hit their head before I do on site. Quite a few concussions as a kid. They can seriously mess up your life if you aren't lucky.

I'd love to see better designs on catwalks, but I'm concerned that it could quickly become something legislated out of any reasonable standard of practice. I know a lot of venues that if they required a 6' clearance in their catwalks, they just wouldn't have them. I'd rather see better practices about hard hats, and of course have architects hire reasonable theatrical consultants.


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## FMEng (Mar 2, 2017)

What the doctors are learning from studying football players is that you don't have to be knocked out or see stars for it to cause lasting effects. Brain injury is nothing to mess with, which is why hard hats should be worn while doing many activities on stage. I like the idea of using Petzl helmets in tighter places and around obstructions because they are brimless to preserve vision, and they are comfortable.


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## RonHebbard (Mar 2, 2017)

cbrandt said:


> I can't count the number of catwalks I've been on that require hands and knees crawling to access the entire space. Some that even require belly crawling. Being a short guy, I've had the good luck to have everyone hit their head before I do on site. Quite a few concussions as a kid. They can seriously mess up your life if you aren't lucky.
> 
> I'd love to see better designs on catwalks, but I'm concerned that it could quickly become something legislated out of any reasonable standard of practice. I know a lot of venues that if they required a 6' clearance in their catwalks, they just wouldn't have them. I'd rather see better practices about hard hats, and of course have architects hire reasonable theatrical consultants.


Therein is part of the problem: "Architects hiring theatrical consultants." When the architects hire (pay) the consultants, the consultants work to please the architects. If that also happens to please the clients / end users it's not necessarily by design. If/the end users pay for the consultants they have a far better chance of having their wishes and desires put forward by the consultants. Look at it from the consultants point of view: Many / most end users are only building one venue; if you make them happy that's nice, they'll speak well of you and give you good referrals but they won't be back to build another dozen spaces. If the consultant pleases the architect they're likely to receive far more work from that architect.
I've seen this personally from several sides. (And haven't necessarily enjoyed some of the sides I've seen it from.)
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.


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## themuzicman (Mar 2, 2017)

ruinexplorer said:


> I know of certain traveling shows that have their riggers wear the Petzl hard hats (strapped on) when doing high rigging. I have had to wear a bump cap in one venue's catwalks due to my boss cutting his head on a sprinkler. I just hadn't seen a lot of actual concussions. I hope that it actually isn't that common.



All the Networks tours now require hardhats on all crew on in/out. Not surprised, I concussed myself 3 separate times my first year touring - first time loading a truck and taking a box to the face, second time having a speaker drop out of a yoke onto my face, and a third time falling on an icy truck ramp loading in a storm. I've been lucky to not concuss myself in the 6 years since then, but I see one or two a year from coworkers on stage. There are a few theaters in NYC that I work at regularly that now have hardhat policies in effect for everyone in the venue when anyone is doing overhead work.


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## ruinexplorer (Mar 4, 2017)

themuzicman said:


> All the Networks tours now require hardhats on all crew on in/out. Not surprised, I concussed myself 3 separate times my first year touring - first time loading a truck and taking a box to the face, second time having a speaker drop out of a yoke onto my face, and a third time falling on an icy truck ramp loading in a storm. I've been lucky to not concuss myself in the 6 years since then, but I see one or two a year from coworkers on stage. There are a few theaters in NYC that I work at regularly that now have hardhat policies in effect for everyone in the venue when anyone is doing overhead work.



In those instances, were you treated by medical personnel and did they put a limit on your work?


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## themuzicman (Mar 4, 2017)

ruinexplorer said:


> In those instances, were you treated by medical personnel and did they put a limit on your work?



The first time I took a knock, it was on load-in. I didn't realize I had a concussion until I started forgetting lines to a show I had mixed 100 times and needed to grab my mix script at intermission to finish the show. The doctor at the hospital was less than helpful and essentially accused me of making up the story because I waited 12+ hours to see a doctor. 

After that, I didn't see a doctor for any of the other instances. One nighter touring isn't too kind, so the other instances I tried to lay back as much as I could and get the locals to do the bulk of the heavy lifting, and traded out tasks I could let the locals do with some of the electricians. Each of us on the crew got injured at least once, and every time we helped each other out without question and accommodated one another as much as we could just to get to our next stop on time. I didn't have an A2, so no one could sub for me on the mix. The name of the game was get through it, and stay as safe as possible.

The only other critical injury I should have seen a doctor for was a dislocated arm - an 8 hour drive we had to do in 6 meant that there was no way I could get to a doctor and still make it to the next city on time. A guy on the crew ended up re-setting my arm in the lobby, the part I didn't like was when he told me that it wasn't his first time doing that on a load out. I had shoulder pain for months after, and I definitely do regret not holding up the bus and demanding to head to a doctor, however I think at the time the thought of just ending the pain blinded me from proper decision making. 

The unspoken rule of one nighter touring Broadway is that you suffer silently, get through it, and don't complain. If a show is cancelled because of a person on the crew, there is a definite sense that your job could be in jeopardy. We always went to the hospital for injuries after the show was loaded in, but only if we'd be in the city the next day. There is a three-strike policy between the non-league producers and the IA, and it wasn't too hard for them to come up with strikes in order to send you home "for cause". I must say, this was *never *explicitly said by anyone that workplace injury could get you sent home, it was just the general feeling that if you were the cause of a show cancellation there was danger, especially with how easy it was to accrue strikes (my first official one was for kicking off my steel toed boots during a sound check after a load in...a house manager found it unprofessional and wrote my bosses, a coworker got one for wearing shorts during the same show, that house manager was quite the critic). I must say, each of these experiences taught me A LOT about workplace safety and how to respond to different circumstances. I valued that tour in particular for what I learned, and am glad to see that the tours are taking safety a lot more seriously.


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## Scarrgo (Mar 5, 2017)

On a tour bus coming out of Canada, the TD and I were goofing around, he was amazed that he could not pick me up(I only weighed in at 125 lbs at that time), well the bus hit a big dip in the road and it sent both of us flying in the air, as we came down I hit the back of my head on the Formica corner of the door jam, split my head open, it felt as if it went to the bone, but I couldnt see it as it was behind me(and no one wanted to look). It was about a 3" cut, and as most of you know, blood everywhere, I had a white tee on, well it was white...since we were about 30 min from the border, we stopped along the road and picked up some of that fine Canadian snow, and washed the back of my head clean, and got the blood stopped. Cleaned up the carpet, clean shirt, hair up under a hat, and passed border without issues.... the td wouldnt let me sleep, so I stayed up till we got to the next venue, I never went to see a doctor, a mistake, my head hurt for awhile...and if I cut my hair short enough, I have a pretty good scar...

so the moral to this story children, dont goof around on the bus....

Sean...
Have a great day...


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## Jay Ashworth (Mar 6, 2017)

I have shockingly good "you are about to run your head into something" reflexes, and have had a bunch of near misses, but nothing worse than a small bump, while working.

Now, backstairs at Annie Pfeiffer Chapel while on a visit/tour, yeah. But they knew better, and had permanent foam rubber padding gaffed up there.


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## hobbsies (Mar 30, 2017)

I actually had a concussion recently and was off from work for almost 3 months, receiving workers comp pay checks in lieu of my regular paycheck.

I threw a box of unused programs in a dumpster and when I turned around to pick up another box, apparently it had landed on a 2x4 just right to catapult it out of the dumpster and hit me in the back of the head, BELOW my hard hat. Right behind my ear. Mind you, I've walked into I-beams, stood up into lighting fixtures, had a multi cable dropped on my head, etc and never suffered any dizziness/nauseousness, but this light tap (really didn't hit me very hard) made me feel ill for months. I plan on buying a petzl hard hat to wear everywhere on load in sites, as I never want to put myself at risk again.The dumpster was a recycling dumpster and there shouldn't have been wood in there, but some carpenter threw some stick lumber in and we didn't realize it. 

The time off work was nice, for the first few weeks, but I got bored really fast. Fortunately didn't have any brain damage or internal bleeding. I'm glad my company insisted I take the time off to recover though.


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## RonHebbard (Mar 30, 2017)

hobbsies said:


> I actually had a concussion recently and was off from work for almost 3 months, receiving workers comp pay checks in lieu of my regular paycheck.
> 
> I threw a box of unused programs in a dumpster and when I turned around to pick up another box, apparently it had landed on a 2x4 just right to catapult it out of the dumpster and hit me in the back of the head, BELOW my hard hat. Right behind my ear. Mind you, I've walked into I-beams, stood up into lighting fixtures, had a multi cable dropped on my head, etc and never suffered any dizziness/nauseousness, but this light tap (really didn't hit me very hard) made me feel ill for months. I plan on buying a petzl hard hat to wear everywhere on load in sites, as I never want to put myself at risk again.The dumpster was a recycling dumpster and there shouldn't have been wood in there, but some carpenter threw some stick lumber in and we didn't realize it.
> 
> The time off work was nice, for the first few weeks, but I got bored really fast. Fortunately didn't have any brain damage or internal bleeding. I'm glad my company insisted I take the time off to recover though.


Tough lesson to learn. Be glad you've learned it, remember it, pass it on to others and BE THANKFUL you've escaped seemingly unscathed. THANK YOU for spreading your wisdom here.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.


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## kiwitechgirl (Jul 6, 2017)

I'm super late to this one, but...I've had two work concussions - first one was during a load out, I crawled out from under the false floor just as someone booted a piece of set to detach it, and it fell onto the back of my head. I don't remember much more about that load out except that the chief LX wouldn't let me climb ladders. Second was was also during a load out; we were bumping from an outdoor stage to a truck and as I was wheeling a roadcase of Source 4s down the ramp, the ramp slid off the stage edge, dumping me and the roadcase on the paving stones below. I landed on my hip, elbow and head.

Worst one I've ever seen was up in the roof of an arena - the catwalks are fine for a shorty like me, but taller people have to be careful. A young, tall and enthusiastic tech got a bit too enthusiastic when asked to go and get something from the other end of the catwalk, turned and ran full tilt into an I-beam. I don't recall how we got him down, but I took him off for medical attention and he was off work for about three months.


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## ruinexplorer (Oct 23, 2017)

Looks like this will be a discussion at USITT.


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## josh88 (Oct 24, 2017)

Oddly enough. I had a mild one just a week or so ago. Carrying 2 fixtures on a load out in the catwalk of a convention center exhibition hall. Ducked the first pipe, didn't duck the second one, knocked me flat onto my back. next thing I knew the girl I was working with was right next to me.... but she had been 75 feet away on the other end of the catwalk so I can only think I must have been out for a second or so. 
Decided it was finally time to get one of those petzl helmets to serve as a bump cap.


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## ruinexplorer (Oct 25, 2017)

"A stagehand walks into a bar...he got a concussion"


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## hobbsies (Oct 25, 2017)

I've been researching concussions a lot lately because mine flared back up shortly after going back to work earlier this year. I was out for another 4 months this time. I found most doctors would just tell me to go home and rest, but that wasn't cutting it for me. A lot of people suffer head injuries and the advice of "go home and rest" doesn't work for them, and they suffer for YEARS, or for the rest of their lives. 

New research shows that you can identify which part of the brain is injured by how your eyes/vestibular system behaves. You can then treat a brain injury by stimulating the part of the vestibular system that isn't working properly. I have been seeing a chiropractic neurologist for the last 3 months that have really helped me recover. Since being back at work the last 4 weeks, I've hit my head on things several more times and have not had a re-flare up, and I largely attribute that to the work I've done with him. 

Here's a youtube playlist of videos about recent brain injury research. I highly recommend watching them if you are suffering PCS or know someone who is. If nothing else, watch the first video (it's 7 minutes long).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYl5XSL2lzNhcAlvRWbQOYz4En8H7MFx1


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## Van (Oct 25, 2017)

hobbsies said:


> ..... Since being back at work the last 4 weeks, I've hit my head on things several more times and have not had a re-flare up, and I largely attribute that to the work I've done with him.....


Perhaps you should invest in a Hard hat.


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## hobbsies (Nov 3, 2017)

Van said:


> Perhaps you should invest in a Hard hat.


I have a Petzl, it's fantastic and has been great at minimizing damage from head knocks.


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## mikefellh (Jan 21, 2018)

Had two major ones, but not in staging.

One was when I was working for an electrician, I had forgotten that I left a hammer on top of an A-frame ladder when my boss wanted to talk to me and frazzled me so much, I went to fold up the ladder to move it, and the hammer got me in the head.

The other was when I worked for a store off-loading a truck, I went to jump off the back into the doorway and didn't take into consideration the height difference...my head hit the top of the brick doorway, and my feet kept going until I was lying horizontal in mid-air, and then fell flat (just like a cartoon).

I should have gone to the hospital for both of them, but instead just rubbed my head until it stopped hurting.


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## ruinexplorer (May 4, 2018)

I am glad that this is still being discussed. http://www.safetyandhealthmagazine....ormers-crew-members-dont-report-head-injuries


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## BillConnerFASTC (May 4, 2018)

RonHebbard said:


> When the architects hire (pay) the consultants, the consultants work to please the architects.



I'm up front and am clear I will take issues to the Owner if it's in their best interest. The architects I regularly work with and call me back are fine with the Owner making decisions. I do what I believe is in the Owners best interest, as I belive do a lot of my colleagues. Worse than and architect is the Owner's own designated representative, who will bypass and over rule the users on such issues.


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