By Rae Pagliarulo

Right around my birthday this past January, as I was on my way to a friend’s house carrying a pizza for dinner, I slipped on a sheet of ice, flew into the air, and landed on my head. My first thought was not about the excruciating pain I was in. Nor was it about the pizza that was lying next to me, upside down and probably oozing cheese everywhere. My first thought was, “Please don’t let me have a concussion. I cannot lose my ability to read or write. I can’t.”

A day of willful ignorance later, I went to the doctor. While I didn’t have any apparent physical or neurological damage (a fact that I will be grateful for until the end of time), I did have a shaky, scrambled, and definitely concussed brain that needed tons of rest in order to heal. I gulped as…