After a hit, memory rearranges itself. The play is fast, the minutes afterward are crowded, and by the time you sit down to write, the order may have shifted. A sequence entry is a short, numbered list of what happened, in the order it happened, written while you still remember it clearly. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not need clinical language. It needs times, places, and plain actions.
Start With the Moment Itself
Write down what the play was, where you were on the field, court, or track, and what your body was doing when contact or the fall happened. Use verbs you could act out: landed, turned, got hit from the left, went down on one knee. Record what you saw and felt, not what you think it means inside your body. 'I felt a pop in the knee' is a record. 'I tore something' is a guess, and guesses belong in a separate note.
Build the Timeline
Number each event after the impact. Did you keep playing? For how long? Did you walk off, get helped, or stay down? Who was near you? Give each line a clock time if you know it, and mark an estimate as an estimate if you do not. Clock times are easy to lose. A rough count of plays, laps, or minutes is still useful.
Include what changed and when. If something felt different ten minutes later, or the next morning, put it on its own line with its own time. Do not merge it into the first line. Separate lines show whether a symptom appeared right away or later, and that difference often matters to the person who examines you.
Write down what was still normal, too. Note whether you could walk to the bench, climb stairs, get into a car, or sleep through the night. These plain notes give a later reader a baseline to compare against, and they are easy to forget once the week gets busy.
Keep the Order Honest
Put the date and time you wrote each entry at the top of the line, then the date and time the event happened. If you are writing from memory, say so in the line itself. A day later, reread the sequence. If you now recall something differently, do not rewrite the old line. Add a new dated line beside it that explains the change. The old version stays visible, so anyone reading the log can see how your memory developed.
Keep the sequence separate from opinions about fault. 'The other player came in high' is something you observed. 'They did it on purpose' is a judgment. Write what you saw. If you have a view about why it happened, put that in its own note and mark it as your view.
What the Sequence Is For
A clear order helps whoever examines you understand what came before the first symptom and what followed it. It shows whether anything happened after a second contact, and whether your walking, sleeping, or concentration shifted over the following days. It also helps you catch details you would otherwise lose by the weekend.
For athletes in the St. Louis metro, this matters most in the first few days, when practices, games, and travel fill the calendar and the details fade quickly. Keep the sequence in a notebook, a phone note, or a shared document, and save a dated copy so it cannot be lost with a single phone.
When Not to Wait for the Log
Writing the sequence is never a reason to delay care. If you have a worsening headache, confusion, vomiting, trouble staying awake, weakness or numbness, slurred speech, or any symptom that frightens you, get emergency help now. Write the timeline afterward, or hand a rough version to the responders. Educational notes like this one do not replace a clinician who can examine you in person.
If your symptoms seem milder but you are still unsure, a visit with a qualified provider is the way to get an answer. Bring the sequence with you. If you are deciding whether to get examined this week, a written, dated timeline makes that conversation shorter and more specific, and it gives the person examining you something concrete to work from.
The goal is not a perfect record. It is a readable one: dated, in order, and kept where you can find it.