There are a thousand ways service members can receive mild traumatic brain injuries during training and active duty. Ten years ago, basic concussion testing protocols didn’t account for the intense activities required of this population. UNC researcher Karen McCulloch has worked to change that.
Story by Alyssa LaFaro, UNC Research
The hum of engines lulls the plane’s passengers. It’s midnight, but the weight of their gear and adrenaline building in their bodies keeps them wide awake for the long morning of training exercises ahead of them. They wear green backpacks laced with yellow static lines, which unravel their T-11 parachutes as they head out into the darkness, one by one.
The summer air hits Caroline Cleveland’s face as she falls 1,250 feet toward Earth. Her chute carries her carefully but quickly. She propels toward an open field at Fort Benning and lands with a hard thud — her helmeted head smacks the turf.
“I just laid there on my back for a couple of seconds, looking up at the night sky, contemplating the cliché of why we jump out of perfectly good airplanes,” Cleveland says, chuckling.
Paratroopers in the U.S. Army make 10 to 15 jumps a year. It is a requirement of their training — and just one of many exercises that can lead to concussions. Jumps, blasts, and gunfire all have the potential to damage the brain.
At the time of her jump in 2008, Cleveland didn’t consider concussion as a possible injury amidst the more visible threat of broken bones and sprained ligaments taking center stage in landing zones. She recalls being asymptomatic — but, in hindsight, she also considers herself lucky for being at low risk of getting a compounding second concussion because she had a week of downtime to rest.
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