My name is Melissa Riitano, I currently call Salt Lake City, UT home. I grew up in a small town in Montana. I was a kid who could never sit still so my parents threw me in gymnastics at a young age. It was such a great outlet to channel energy into, but eventually my interests changed and I let that part of my life go. Shortly after, I found a love for snowboarding at the age of 13. It was an immediate love.
I graduated high school a semester early and immediately set out on the road to Lake Tahoe, California to chase the snow. For a few years I bounced around from ski town to ski town with not too much direction but just a fierce love of snowboarding. It was my escape, my form of art and self expression, and pure freedom and joy. That passion evolved into a career and I feel so grateful for that. I met Kelsey through that whole process when I was living in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Being a professional snowboarder, you see and sustain a lot of really serious injuries. Broken bones, torn ligaments, but always the worst are head injuries. I've seen friends have seizures right after hitting their heads, getting knocked out cold from falling too hard on their butts, repeating them selves and being disorientated after hitting their heads. Every time it's a terrifying and confusing experience. Admittedly, I was pretty in the dark to what a concussion really does to a person. Me and my peers always thought just rest for a couple weeks everything will be ok. Seeing the journey Kelsey, myself, and other friends have gone through from hitting our heads snowboarding has been extremely eye opening.
I have had my fair share of times I have hit my head snowboarding. There was one about a couple years ago that really effected me. It was a concussion from landing on my head and whipping my head forward. I thought everything I was feeling was from hurting my neck in the same injury. I had gone to multiple appointments and physical therapy to fix my neck. Still realized I still felt so off. I had a headache from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep. But the worst part was my vision was off. It seemed like the brightness and contrast was turned up on everything. Everything seemed like a blur, like everything was moving too fast around me. I felt like an emotional wreck a lot of times but put a good face forward. I ended up going to a vision specialist and found out that, my vision was actually messed up from that hit to the head. In a way i was relieved to know I wasn't just going crazy, and that what I was feeling could be fixed. I went through a few months of retraining my eyes to not see double and get my depth perception back. That all in turn really helped my emotional struggles. I want others to know their options when they are feeling something similar.
Kelsey and this whole team of women I have the pleasure of working with are inspiring in so many ways. I am honored to be apart of the Save A Brain family.
