Molly O’Sullivan knew what it was like to experience a head injury before she got to college. She knew, once she was at school, that she’d occasionally missed snippets of lectures or conversations, and that it might not be because she was sleepy or distracted.
But this was different.
“I got up, but I don’t remember getting up, exactly,” said O’Sullivan, a Duxbury native. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hallway, with my toothpaste and toothbrush. My roommates think I was going to brush my teeth.
“It took me a while to figure out what was going on, what had happened to me.”
A trip to the emergency room, several tests, and subsequent visits to doctors in Newport, R.I., and Boston, gave O’Sullivan her answer. She’s epileptic.
The 20-year-old sophomore is still a college hockey player, though, and something of an activist, too. Salve Regina’s men’s and women’s hockey teams are playing “Purple Games” tonight and Friday, respectively, and it’s the result of an idea O’Sullivan, a sophomore center, hatched over the summer. (November is Epilepsy Awareness Month and purple the designated color.)
