Rachel Griffin took a photo of herself just after finishing her final appointment with Michael “Micky” Collins, PhD, the clinical and executive director of the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program.
The New York Times and USA Today best-selling novelist describes it as a “bittersweet moment” because of what Dr. Collins meant to her.
Eleven months after suffering a devastating concussion, Rachel visited Dr. Collins and the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program team. They developed a plan to help Rachel overcome the symptoms that had upended her life.
“It was so emotional for me because Dr. Collins completely gave me my life back when I had lost all hope,” says Rachel, 40, of Seattle. “I just wanted him to know what he had meant to me, what this team had meant to me. Because UPMC gave me my life back.”
A Concussion Without Hitting Her Head
Rachel had been playing tennis in December 2023 when she fell.
“I had this very, very severe pain that ricocheted through my head,” Rachel says. “I remember thinking I’d done something really, really bad. When I stood up, I was very disoriented and confused, which probably just added to things.”
However, Rachel’s coach told her she hadn’t hit her head. Rachel didn’t realize at the time that concussions could occur even without a hit to the head, so she assumed she was OK.
Over the next several days, she developed what she calls “an entire onslaught of debilitating symptoms.”
She had severe headaches, sensitivity to light and noise, balance problems, memory problems, and mood changes. She developed a stutter, couldn’t sleep through the night, and couldn’t read, write, or look at a computer.
Soon after, Rachel saw her sister, who’d had a concussion before. Her sister told Rachel to call her doctor.
“They got me in that day and immediately diagnosed me with a concussion,” Rachel says. “(They) told me to go home and rest and hang out in a quiet, dark room until I felt better. I assumed that I would be back to normal within a week or two.”
Instead, the debilitating symptoms continued for months. Rachel started to feel helpless and hopeless.
“The thing about a brain injury is that your brain is who you are as a person,” she says. “In my case, when I injured it, I no longer felt like myself. I didn’t recognize myself. I felt farther away from myself than I ever have before.
“It’s a very lonely, vulnerable injury to sustain. And that’s on top of all the other symptoms.”
Rachel visited specialist after specialist, looking for answers and relief. She was put on “a whole host of brutal medications, with horrifying side effects.” But nothing helped her concussion symptoms.
“It was months of feeling absolutely hopeless,” she says. “And it’s a roller coaster. You see a new provider, and you feel this hope, like, ‘Maybe this is the person who is going to help me.’ And then it crashes and burns.”
A Journey to UPMC
While battling her concussion symptoms, Rachel talked to a friend who had struggled with a concussion for years. Her friend mentioned that she had seen Dr. Collins at UPMC and had good results.
Rachel had seen Dr. Collins’ name surface in her own concussion research. Despite the 2,500-mile journey from Seattle to Pittsburgh, Rachel booked an appointment.
“He had just come up a lot in my research as a world-renowned expert on concussion,” Rachel says. “But also, it’s all he does. It is a concussion program, which was so different from seeing other neurologists, where they don’t have that kind of specialty or expertise.”
Rachel also heard an interview with Dr. Collins in which he said concussions are treatable.
“He was so confident, and at that point, I needed someone who felt that confident,” she says. “Because so many of the providers I had seen did not have that, and it starts to feel very helpless when the doctors you’re seeing don’t believe that they can get you better.”
Rachel came to Pittsburgh in November 2024, nearly a year after the fall that had caused her concussion.
“He was just fantastic,” she says of Dr. Collins. “I felt like I clicked with him instantly. He came across so confident.”
Rachel says Dr. Collins also understood all her symptoms — even the stutter, which had stumped other providers.
“I told Dr. Collins, ‘I’m having speech problems,’ and he said, ‘A stutter?’” Rachel says. “Because he sees it all the time. It honestly feels like he’s in a league of his own.
“Within five minutes of talking to him, I could tell that he thought that he could get me better.”
Dr. Collins ran tests and diagnosed Rachel with a vestibular concussion, which affects the balance center of the brain.
That day, Rachel also met with vestibular therapist Anne Mucha, DPT, and exertion therapist Sarah Ostop, DPT. Together, they developed a plan for Rachel’s recovery.
“That’s what I love about UPMC — it’s a team,” Rachel says. “I met with Dr. Collins, then I met with Sarah, then I met with Anne. They all do their own exercises, their own assessments. They all meet together, come up with a plan for you, and send you home with that plan.
“It was so thorough and very personalized to me and the problems I was having.”
The Road to Recovery
Rachel flew back home to Seattle feeling much more confident than she had when she arrived in Pittsburgh.
The recovery program that Dr. Collins, Anne, and Sarah developed was far different from sitting in a dark room. It involved cardio, balance, and vision exercises, as well as activities like going outdoors and visiting busy environments. Rachel had avoided those environments while dealing with her concussion symptoms.
It also involved a strict sleep schedule that only allowed for seven hours in bed per night, far less than what Rachel was used to.
“They sent me home with all of these exercises that were basically meant to aggravate my symptoms so that my brain could reacclimate to them,” Rachel says.
Rachel says that the program seemed overwhelming at first, but she turned recovery into her full-time job. She and her husband had recently converted one of their rooms into a home gym — ideal timing.
The first few weeks of recovery were difficult, Rachel says. But then the symptoms began to go away.
“I never had those big a-ha moments of, ‘I feel like I don’t have a concussion anymore,’” she says. “It was basically one by one, my symptoms started falling away.
“Like, I would realize, ‘Oh, my head doesn’t hurt as much as it normally does.’ Or, ‘I haven’t been nauseous for several days now.’ Or, ‘I feel like I can be outside, and the sun isn’t bothering me as much as it normally would.’”
She also noticed that she could do the balance exercises her team had given her. Early on, the same exercises had caused her to fall over.
Rachel came back to Pittsburgh for a follow-up with Dr. Collins about two months after her initial appointment. Her team increased the intensity of her regimen to continue her recovery.
Feeling Like Herself
After suffering her concussion, Rachel says she stopped feeling like herself. She started avoiding activities she usually enjoyed and social gatherings with the people she loved. She lost confidence and hope.
Working with Dr. Collins, Anne, and Sarah helped restore that confidence and hope. The recovery program helped her regain the elements of her life that she’d been missing.
“Starting to move my body and seeing my progress and symptoms, I felt like I started coming alive again,” she says. “I was excited to see the people that I love. I felt like I was strong enough to do these things I was avoiding.
“I just feel like I slowly started coming back to myself and recognizing myself again.”
Rachel still has lingering headaches, but they’re not as severe or frequent as before. Dr. Collins discharged her from the concussion program in July 2025.
“Dr. Collins felt like, ‘You’re getting better — you need to go out there and feel you’re getting better and have the confidence to live your life,’” she says. “That ended up being true for me. The moment he discharged me, I do feel like I have even more of this confidence that, ‘Oh, I’m better. I’m back to normal.’”
Rachel’s fourth novel, The Sun and the Starmaker, is scheduled for release in February. She’s thankful to Dr. Collins and the rest of her team for helping her recover.
She says she would tell other people struggling with a concussion not to lose hope.
“Dr. Collins told me, point blank: ‘Concussion is treatable,’” Rachel says. “If you are being told to rest in your quiet, dark room and that isn’t giving you the results you want, there are other options. There are other treatment options. You don’t have to accept this as your new normal.”