#i can't stress enough how much of a migraine haze i was in

[luckystarchild]

Today I was the Ambassador

I had a migraine and sat in my workplace's storage warehouse for a bit to rest, away from noise and in the dark. Glasses off, phone away, just sitting in a chair with my eyes closed in the quiet. I had taken medication that makes me quite loopy, and it had kicked in a little while prior.

Soon a dude I didn't recognize wandered into the warehouse to take a phone call. Loudly. And when he was done, he called out to me from like 50 feet away, "Sorry, I didn't see you there! Hope I'm not disturbing you!"

And I, politely, because I wasn't sure which of my colleagues this might be, and because I'm generally a friendly person who doesn't shy away from social interaction, replied, "It's all good. I have a migraine and am just resting in a quiet place."

To which he replied, "A migraine? What's that like?"

[Long post below the cut, sorry]

For the next ten minutes he stood over me asking questions. What's it feel like? How do you treat it? What causes it? Why do you get them? How bad does it hurt on a scale of 1-10? I reiterated several times I needed quiet, but the hint went untaken, and he kept asking questions. I still didn't recognize him, but I had my glasses off, so I thought perhaps this was someone new, and I felt I needed to be polite just in case.

Eventually, curiosity assuaged, he said, "You never know what a person's going through. For instance, you told me you had a migraine, and I could've walked away. But I didn't, and I came over here, and now I know all about migraines and how bad they are!"

Me: "Yep, that you do. That's empathy for you."

Him: "Yeah! I could've just told you to shake it off. Like I could've told you it's just a headache. But I didn't!"

I was pretty doped up on my migraine meds and therefore not feeling belligerent, nor particularly sharp, but even through that haze I recognized the multiple points of irony studding the conversation. Alas, I was too doped up to think clearly about how to end the interaction, and I just said something like, "People say that a lot to me, to be honest, and I'm glad you didn't."

Him: "People say that a lot? What do you mean?"

Me: "Well, pain is invisible. Some people don't believe me when I say I have a migraine and need to sit somewhere quiet and dark." (No reaction; nuts.) "Some people don't take a minute to empathize. They just tell me it can't be that bad."

Him: "That's terrible. People really say that to you?"

Me: "Yeah. My mother does every time I tell her I have one."

Him: "Oh wow. Do you have a good relationship with your mother?"

Me: "Oh. Uh. No."

Him: "Wow, really?"

Me: "Really. But I came out as queer a few years back though, so the migraines aren't the reason why."

Him: "What's that mean?"

Me: "Which part?"

Him: "That you came out as queer. What does 'queer' mean? How are you queer? Can you explain it?"

This is where I kind of came back to myself through the medication fog. That was a deeply personal question. Many of the questions had been. I only belatedly realized the level of prying happening (see again: medication) and it occurred to me I still wasn't sure who this person actually was. Did I even want to share this with this person? Blearily I put my glasses back on and looked at him. Really looked.

He was wearing a Trump hat. Blue. "Take America Back," it said. Not being the instantly recognizable red to which I am accustomed, and without the aid of my glasses, I hadn't recognized it for what it was.

I also realized I didn't know this guy. He was not a coworker. But my addlepated brain slowly pieced together that there were contractors in the building working on [some maintenance project or another], and this must be one of them.

Normally I would not reveal anything about my queer identity to a stranger in a Trump hat. People wearing them have chased me shouting threats and obscenities based on presumptions they made based on the cut of my hair and my style of clothing alone. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead revealing anything about my gender or sexuality to a stranger in a Trump hat. But here I was, already deep in it, and in an isolated place, and suffering from pain, and being stared at expectantly by someone whose nature and temperament were yet a mystery to me.

But.

Generally speaking, I can tell when someone is asking a genuinely curious question. It feels markedly different from someone asking a shit-heel question that will lead to eventual antagonism. And this guy was not acting like the latter. He looked at me frankly, and his body language was neutral, and while his questions were blunt, he hadn't raised his voice. So far, he hadn't actually been antagonistic. Just blunt, and insistent, and maybe a little tone-deaf.

So, perhaps against my better judgement, I said: "Well, in my case, both my gender and my sexuality inform my choice of the word 'queer' as a personal label. I'm bisexual and nonbinary. 'Queer' covers both gender and sexuality, and for me it feels comfortable to use as an umbrella term." Realizing I did not want to arm this person with a word he shouldn't have carte blanche to use, I added: "But some people in the LGBTQIA community don't like the word 'queer,' so I wouldn't use it to describe a person unless you know that's the term they prefer. The word was once used as a slur, but some of us have reclaimed it, and I'm one of those people."

Him: "OK." A beat. "What's 'nonbinary' mean?"

So I explained. And it took a long time, because (as I soon learned, and expected from the outset) he did not know the difference between sex and gender, nor that male/female are used to describe sex, and that man/woman and male/female are not actually interchangeable terms when discussing gender and sex. He didn't not know there was something called a gender binary, nor that anyone could exist outside it. He didn't know what 'cisgender' meant (he had never heard the term). He didn't know that your sexuality and you gender exist independently of each other. He didn't know the words he could use to describe himself, if he were so inclined.

There was... a lot to cover.

Me: "So, I'm to assume you are a cisgender man."

Him: "I don't know what that means."

Me: "It means you were assigned male at birth and told you were a boy by a doctor/your family, and as an adult, you identity as a man. The identity you were assigned and the one you feel fits you best is the same. It's never changed."

Him: "Yeah! That's right!"

Me: "May I assume you're heterosexual?"

Him: "What does that mean?"

Like I said: There was a lot to cover.

And cover it I did. I was patient. He had some trouble with the lingo, of course, since it was all so new. He got words mixed up, and I fear there were parts I didn't explain properly. I wasn't exactly prepared to have the discussion that day, and I was in pain besides. I spent the entire time on tenterhooks, carefully waiting for any hints of antagonism or mockery in case I needed to fish or cut bait.

No mockery came. He got a little frustrated, I think, when he messed up some words, but he never snapped, or argued, or tried to tell me I was wrong about any of it. He just seemed curious.

"But what does nonbinary feel like?" he wanted to know. "Does it feel weird? Do you walk around feeling weird all the time?"

Me: "Kind of, yeah! Ever since I was a little kid, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I didn't feel comfortable around girls, or around boys. Neither label fit me."

And he listened as I relayed a few anecdotes illustrating how that felt. And when I mentioned that my parents never really understood me as a kid, his brow furrowed.

Him: "They didn't get it?"

Me: "No. My parents were cattle ranchers."

Wide eyes. WIDE eyes. And that reaction cemented a hunch that had been growing in me since we started talking.

I live in Texas. I grew up here. I know how people think, even the ones I disagree with. To me, this guy seemed the type who might vote a certain way due to the influence of those around him, but one who doesn't know much about politics or anything outside his family or in-group. The one whose family "always votes Republican" but has never actually bothered to look up how a tariff works—and I know the type. I know how to work with someone like that. You have to find in-roads to empathy with these folks. Speak their language. If no one has actually fed them damaging misinformation (and it did not appear that anyone had!), there's an opportunity there to do some good.

Thus, sensing we were at the point of terminology overload anyway, I changed tactics. It was time for emotion, and personal experience, and giving him a touch-point for empathy. He was from this state, and the reaction to my folks being cattle ranchers was telling. So I leaned into that, hard.

Me: "We lived in the middle of nowhere, and my folks don't get it at all. There was nothing in my upbringing to really influence this. We were Baptists, on a ranch, in Texas. I didn't know a single gay or transgender person, but here I am."

Him: "So your parents didn't know anything about it at all."

Me: "Nope."

Him: "It was all you, and from when you were a kid!"

Me: "Yeah! They were absolutely baffled when I started telling them I didn't feel like a boy or a girl. It was just how I felt, and they didn't understand for a second."

Him: "Wow. WOW. It really was just a part of you, huh?"

Me: "Yup."

Him: "It's just how you felt inside. Wow!"

I realize these transcriptions, if read looking for sarcasm, could seem disingenuous. But he sounded sincere. He sounded utterly, painfully sincere. He looked surprised, and baffled, but also rather excited. Like he'd learned something new and was happy about that.

We chatted about a few more subjects after that: he wanted to know what transgender means, and why transgender people feel the way they do, sometimes without having the language to accurately convey his questions. But I listened, and I tried my best to educate. I stressed that gender is something people feel, and it can be hard to understand, but that it's up to an individual to know who they are best. And he nodded along, and never once argued, and asked questions frequently along the way.

We get tired, though, all of us. I was tired, and even though he was still asking questions, I think he was reaching information fatigue as well. So eventually I walked back to something we'd discussed before that I thought he could feel good about. End on a happy note. That feeling would hopefully stick once we parted ways, and color the memory thereafter.

"Y'know, you mentioned empathy earlier," I said. "Walking in another person's shoes."

Him: "Yeah!"

Me: "I think it's OK to admit we don't always understand exactly what a person feels, or why they feel it. It's OK to say you don't really get it. But if someone is living their best life, and they're not hurting anyone, it seems like we should just let them live it. That's what we'd want for ourselves, right?

Him: "Yeah, I agree with that!"

Me: "Transgender people are less than 1% of the world's population, too. So when you see people getting really mad over transgender people, it's like...why are they so mad? We're just living our lives. Don't they have bigger issues to worry about?"

Him: "Oh yeah. Much bigger. You're right!"

The conversation ended after that; maybe a few more light remarks, but nothing worth noting. I invited him to ask more questions if he had them and if he saw me in the building again. He said he would, and he thanked me, and we parted ways.

I relayed the conversation to a friend not long later. They stared at me for a second before asking, "Why in the world didn't you just walk away?"

And the honest answer, at first, was that my migraine made thinking clearly too difficult! But once I focused up, I made the decision to continue the conversation.

My reason for staying will probably resonate with folks from various groups: I stayed because in that moment, I had become the Ambassador.

When encountering a person who seems to have never met anyone from your group, and they realize you are a part of that fabled minority, you are placed (whether consciously or unconsciously ) atop a pedestal. In that moment, you are not an individual. Like it or not, you have become the spokesperson, the mouthpiece, the Ambassador of your entire social group. Anything you say can and will be used against your entire social group by whoever has elected you the Ambassador. If you react poorly, or yell, or scream, that person may leave the interaction thinking everyone in your group will yell, or scream, or react poorly to them. If they deem you, the Ambassador, unreasonable or rude, they may think everyone in your group is unreasonable and rude. And they may carry that opinion with them into the world, and they may inflict that opinion onto someone else.

This is unfair, of course. It's awful. Because these questions are invasive, and personal, and uncomfortable. Reacting poorly would be totally reasonable when asked something so deeply personal. Boundaries are healthy, and if you don't feel safe enough to discuss your gender/sexuality with a stranger in a Trump hat, you should absolutely walk away. Your feelings come first.

I'm lucky, though. I have an accepting workplace, and people who love me exactly as I am, and a support system. My state is a terrible place for queer folks, but given the above, I have some insulation from the worst of it. I'm also gregarious, and I've had some training talking to people off the cuff. If there's anyone who can manage playing the role of Ambassador for the afternoon, it's me. I have the spoons, so to speak. I can be the Lorax for half an hour, and I can try (try!) to give the random dude in the warehouse a quick education on my community.

He's just one guy. But he may know others. And if you can get through to even one unlikely person, why not make the time to take that chance?

So that's what I did today. He might not remember the terms we discussed, or the finer details on gender expression, nor the difference between sex and gender. But I hope the man in the Trump hat remembers the queer person who spoke calmly, and treated him kindly, and didn't get upset when asked invasive personal questions. And maybe (just maybe), I hope in my optimistic little heart that if someone else in a Trump hat tells him transgender people are a scourge, he might remember me, the queer kid who wasn't indoctrinated and came from the same Texas roots he did, and say, "I dunno. They're just out there living their best lives. That's what we want for ourselves, right?"

I can only hope I read him right. I can only hope he was truly listening. But even if I was wrong in that, I'm still glad I took that chance. Big things have small beginnings, as they say, and it never hurts to be kind.

(The only lesson I didn't teach him was to be careful asking such invasive questions, but given this all started over a migraine, I don't think I would've had much luck on that front, anyway. Haha!)

[just-stop]

From AFLW to roller derby, experts say its time to take concussion in women's sport seriously

When the Crows chase their third AFLW premiership on Saturday, captain Chelsea Randall will be watching from the sidelines.

A concussion from a collision during last week's preliminary final left her ruled out of the match.

It's a bitter sweet way to end a season — but as Sarah McCarthy knows, a concussion can have much longer consequences

In 2016, Sarah was the jammer for her Sydney roller derby team, skating at high speed in the league's Grand Final, aiming to get past the opposition and score points.

Risks of contact sport

Sarah McCarthy received a knock to the head during a roller derby match.

"I was a few feet in front of the pack, looking over my shoulder," she tells ABC RN's Sporty.

As she skated, a competitor's elbow hit Sarah's neck and jaw hard and she crashed to the ground.

She doesn't remember if she passed out or not, but recalls feeling briefly sick.

She got up, sat out for awhile, but later re-joined the bout, feeling reasonably ok.

It was Sarah's second concussion that week, having had an earlier blow at training.

The next few months passed in a blur of sickness, dizziness and ringing ears.

"I could barely make it past lunch time without falling asleep. My head felt like it was in a vice 24 hours a day," she says.

What was worse, says Sarah, was the memory loss, heightened emotions, and constant haze in her mind as she struggled to manage a big work project.

Sarah's experience is not out of the ordinary. Experts say sportswomen are at higher risk of concussion than male athletes, and the effects of concussion in women tend to be more severe.

Sarah still lives with the ongoing after effects of her concussion even today.

Almost five years on, Sarah continues to live with the implications of Post Concussion Syndrome.

"I struggled verbally, and I still do now if I have a poor night's sleep," Sarah says.

"It's almost like I'm sitting on a chair in a room with a curtain around me and all of my vocabulary is just beyond the curtain. And I can't reach it or I use the wrong words. I forget people's name all the time," she says.

"I'm fatigued every day. I still can't exercise. I can't handle stress, I can't handle light, I can't handle sounds."

What happens when you're concussed?

Dr Adrian Cohen, an emergency and trauma physician who researches concussion prevention, says concussion is not as simple as was once thought.

He says concussion results in less blood flow to the brain.

This means brain cells, called neurons, don't get enough oxygen and glucose. They also suffer a "structural deformity".

Basically, Dr Cohen says, the brain has a "metabolic crisis" and neurons stop working properly.

Why is concussion more common in women?

We don't have enough data on the size of the problem, Dr Cohen says.

But research and scrutiny of concussion in women in sport is growing — largely in the wake of developments in elite men's sport such as the AFL and NFL.

"Doctors like myself who work in this area are definitely seeing it more often and we're seeing it with more severity," Dr Cohen says.

He says women sustain more concussions than men in high-impact sports such as rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules football. Women also take longer to recover.

One possibility is that women may be more likely to report concussion.

But Dr Cohen says there are complex physiological factors at play.

"There are structural differences between men and women's brains," he says.

"They actually have a slightly faster metabolism than male brains, and they have slightly greater oxygen flow to the head.

"The cells themselves can be thought of as being slightly hungrier. So in the context of an injury that disrupts the supply of glucose and oxygen, it can help explain why they suffer more damage."

He also says women are joining high impact sports without years of tackle training and have had less opportunity to build up the strong neck muscles crucial in protecting against impact.

Dr Cohen says these factors are not an argument for reducing women's participation in contact sport — the benefits, he says, far outweigh the risks — but he is urging for new ways to minimise those risks.

"We have to outlaw illegal play that causes damage, we have to get people off the field when they have an injury, we have to recognise concussion," he says.

He is part of a team developing a new device which he says can quickly and accurately assess a player for concussion.

"Instead of just asking somebody whether they're okay, and putting [them] through a 10 minute test, which seems fundamentally flawed at the moment, we have got to put this in the field of objectivity."

Concussion and migranes

Dr Rowena Mobbs, a Macquarie University neurologist who researches and treats the effects of concussion in sportspeople, says there is truth to suggestions that women experience concussion symptoms more severely.

"But there is this really important overlap of chronic migraine after trauma, and the term for this is post-traumatic headache," she says.

"When we talk about migraine ... they're the same multitude of symptoms that can occur in concussion.

"So you can be dizzy and clouded in your thinking, lethargic and have double vision. And we know that women are at three times the risk of chronic migraine than men."

A woman on roller skates playing roller derby can be seen flying up the court.

Experts say more research is needed into concussion in sportswomen.(Liam Mitchell Photography )

She suggests there could be an association between chronic migraine syndrome and concussion, a kind of double whammy for women.

"It's really a complex area," Dr Mobbs says.

"It's fairly new to research because, unfortunately, there's been so much preferred research in men in sport, and we're only just now approaching female concussion."

In Australia, the Sports Brain Bank works on diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and other brain disorders associated with previous concussions or head impacts.

Dr Cohen says there are several Australian sports women who've pledged to donate their brain to the Sports Brain Bank.

"But in general terms, these women won't have been playing the games for as long, and at as high a level," he says.

He says concussion and its long-term consequences "are a numbers game".

"The more impacts to the head you have, the more likely you are to suffer short, medium and long-term consequences. Therefore, the more likely it is to show up as CTE. But we're going to be seeing it in women unfortunately, in the not too distant future."

Invisible injuries

Concussion rules are changing in Australian football codes — the rules that mandated Randall miss the AFLW grand final were brought in earlier this year.

Dr Mobbs welcomes these new rules, but hopes the conversation in elite sport will extend to how concussion is managed at training and in community sport.

In 2019, the Australian Institute of Sport released an updated set of concussion guidelines to improve player safety and address rising concerns in the community around the links between concussion and CTE, which has been linked to dementia and behavioural problems.

Dr Mobbs wants measures like restricting heading the ball in soccer training to be considered.

"We must look after people's brains," she says.

"We can preserve what we love about the sports, they can still be played hard, but it just means that we've got to all get together and think of ways we can preserve brain health for these players."

Sarah McCarthy wishes she'd been stopped from returning to play in the 2016 grand final, and regrets not taking time to immediately rest after the injuries.

She has advice for other people who experience concussion.

"First and foremost, stop everything - stop," she says.

"If you can, stay in a dark room, don't do anything that's too mentally taxing. Don't exercise.

"If I had taken that four to six weeks to rest [and] not have too much mental and emotional stimulation, I think my recovery would have been a lot quicker."