Life Over Pain

It's hard to imagine a time when we didn't know how dangerous a blow to the head can be.  But it was just 20 years ago when Ethan O'Brian was playing youth hockey and started getting banged into the boards and ice and other players.  He kept playing.  No one told him to stop as they might have today.  There was little talk of concussion.  It's not just hockey and American football or rugby where kids get hit hard and enough times to cause damage to their brains - for boys and girls alike.  Thanks, sadly, to the NFL and military, stories about brain injury and CTE have been common over the last few years. Research is being done and parents and schools are waking up to the risks kids face.Unfortunately, that didn't exist for Ethan.  He had to learn how to help himself on his own.  He's an over-achiever - the kind of kid you wanted to hate but couldn't because he was so damn nice.  But as he suffered more and more concussions, he withdrew,  became a bit solitary.  While he was