Boston Globe : Latest on Koskie's health Koskie's goal: a normal life Effects of concussions plague third baseman By Nick Cafardo, Boston Globe | January 27, 2008 Two weeks ago, he was able to walk through a crowded mall in the Minneapolis area for three or four hours without experiencing the excruciating symptoms he's endured for about a year and half. Doesn't sound like much, does it? But for Corey Koskie, once a very good third baseman for the Twins, Blue Jays, and Brewers, this was a sign that he's on the road to living a normal life and may someday soon resume his baseball career. Koskie has suffered from postconcussion syndrome since he was hurt on July 5, 2006, while backpedaling to catch a popup. Koskie said he never banged his head. He fell on his back and shoulder. But his life would never be the same. All the medical tests indicated Koskie should be OK. Except he wasn't OK. He had constant headaches, severe neck pain, nausea. He felt his head was swimming and his thought process was cloudy. The symptoms lasted for months, and the Milwaukee medical staff thought he was experiencing anxiety or that the problem was in part mental. Once he sought the expertise of Dr. Robert C. Cantu of Emerson Hospital in Concord and Dr. Michael W. Collins of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Sports Medicine's Concussion Center, he was assured he wasn't going crazy, but that he had classic symptoms of the injury. He heard the postconcussion stories of former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson and pro wrestler Chris Nowitzki and realized the scope of what he was enduring. "Before I saw Dr. Cantu and Dr. Collins, I kept being told that my brain had healed and what I felt was mental," Koskie said. "I felt I had to justify or explain how I was feeling to the trainers, and until recently, when I hired a personal trainer who understands concussions and postconcussion syndrome, nobody quite understood what I was feeling. "Until someone says to you, 'You feel like your head is swimming or like the Earth is coming up from under you,' until you hear those descriptions that others understand and feel, all you think is that people think you're nuts." Koskie, who estimates he'd had anywhere from 8-15 mild concussions in his professional career, remembers feeling so tired for so long. "I would start feeling tired around noon and sleep until 3 p.m., and then by 7 p.m., I'd be so tired I'd sleep right through until the next morning," he said. "This had never happened to me. Doctors kept telling me, 'Well, it's because you're not doing anything. You're getting lazy.' "All I knew was I was so tired. I couldn't even play with my kids and it got to the point where they knew that I wouldn't be able to take part in whatever activity they were planning that day." He said he felt intense pressure all over his head. Little by little, the pressure localized to the side, and now it's just in certain spots in his head. Before he received the experts' advice, he'd try to work out but he'd feel so awful during and after that "it just reached the point where I couldn't do it anymore. As it turns out, the doctors told me that I shouldn't have been working out while I felt the symptoms, that it hurt me even more." He tried to come back in spring training of '07. He showed up to Brewers camp early in the morning, but when the Arizona sun beat down on him, it made him feel worse. It reached the point where his teammates noticed he was different, and Koskie had no way to explain to them in terms they could understand what he was going through. He never felt the Brewers grasped the magnitude of things because the X-rays and MRIs were clear. One day Koskie met with general manager Doug Melvin and told him he just couldn't do it anymore. He left the team. Looking back, he said, he made a series of strange decisions in his personal life because his cognitive skills were so diminished. "I look back and say to myself, 'I decided to do that?' " he said. "I wasn't thinking properly. You think at the time you're OK, but then when you get tested and your cognitive skills are so poor, you realize in what kind of shape you're in. "I think now I'm back to normal with all of my testing. For the longest time, I'm thinking, 'I just want to live a normal life again.' I wasn't even thinking about baseball because that was so far off. I just wanted to be able to play with my kids again. "In the last couple of weeks, I've started to feel well. I haven't worked out since Christmas because I was having some problems while trying to work out then. But now, I've got a program in place and I'm going to see what I can do. If I can get through it without feeling badly, then maybe I can try to play again. "I know I've got a long way to go. I would certainly not want to lead any team on at this point. I've got to see if I can do it and see if I can play in a game and go through the everyday stuff that a major league ballplayer has to go through. "I'm also 34 going on 35. There are a lot of players out there looking for jobs. I have no idea what I'd be like if I came back. I think I can still play. I think I can still hit. The last two weeks have been so encouraging that it's started to make me feel like I'd like to give this a go again."