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“I woke up and I could feel it coming on,” he said. “I had a headache and my vision was a little off. I was telling the trainers and doctors that I was fine, but I was hiding the symptoms.”

MacArthur passed the concussion test, but his normal one-hour afternoon naps had turned into five-hour sleeps. He occasionally woke up in “a fog.” He made it through the opening three games of the season, knowing something was off.

“I would get a couple of passes and think a guy was on me and I would try to move it, but I had, like, 10 feet of room,” MacArthur said. “I was stumbling around and I think my balance got tweaked a little bit. How do I bring it up that I’m not good now? I already told them that I was. I had to figure it out before everyone catches on that I can’t even play.”

Then came the Oct. 14 game in Columbus. MacArthur says he was ready to come clean, “feeling off and on” after taking a solid first-period hit. “I was going to let them know after the game.”

He didn’t last that long. In the second period, he tripped over a Columbus player, banged his head on the ice and has no memory of being helped to the dressing room. The next thing he remembers is a doctor giving him an eye exam.

“I puked in the trash can five minutes afterwards and I’m thinking, ‘what did I do?’”

THE LONG RECOVERY

MacArthur’s condition went from bad to almost intolerable.

“I needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open for the next two weeks,” he said. “The headaches. I can’t even describe the feelings. It was awful.”