Christopher Nowinski has learned a valuable but extremely frustrating lesson over the past few months: a Superstar with a concussion -- at least one as severe as his -- cannot rush back to the ring. He must give it time, plenty of time, to properly heal. WWE’s first and only Harvard graduate suffered a concussion, probably a relatively minor one at the time, during a tag team match against the Dudley Boyz at a June 21 non-televised event in Hartford, Conn.

“I just took a shot to the chin,” Nowinski said during a telephone interview this afternoon. “ ... I was actually running. It was as much the whiplash as it was the impact.”

Nowinski said he had a painful, throbbing headache for 30 minutes after the match and was having memory problems. But he felt better the next day and, as is often the case with WWE Superstars, he figured he’d “work through” the condition. So he wrestled again, this time in a Tables Match against the Dudleys in Albany, N.Y.

“I felt fine walking down the ramp,” he said, “but I took the lightest of shots (and) the headache came flooding back.”

Still, Nowinski wrestled the entire match, about 20 minutes in length, in a “cloudy, hazy” state and said he took 30 “bumps” (falls) on the bruised part of his brain. “What I learned is that all those shots turned that minor concussion into something major,” he said.

The next day was RAW at Madison Square Garden. Nowinski knew he was hurt, but he went ahead and wrestled Maven anyway.

By the next weekend, post-concussion syndrome had set in. Anything that Nowinski did that made his blood pressure rise, even a tad, would trigger severe headaches. “Carrying my bag up stairs trying to get into the arena, I had to stop every three steps,” he said. Thus, he was given a few weeks off.

He returned to WWE competition on Friday, July 11 in Omaha, Neb., feeling better. But the reason he improved during those few weeks, he now realizes, is because he rested. When he stepped back into the ring and pushed himself physically, it was right back to square one. After competing on July 11 and July 12, “(Agent) Jack Lanza took one look at me and said, ‘You’re not wrestling tonight.’”

The event on July 12, in Green Bay, Wisc., therefore, was the last time Nowinski has been a wrestling ring.

Nowinski has now consulted with three neurosurgeons -- a Pittsburgh-based physician who is the “concussion guy” for the entire NFL, a doctor who is based out of Emerson College in Boston, and another man who is the father of one of Nowinski’s Harvard football teammates. They’re three of the top neurosurgeons in the world, Nowinski said.

“I’ve gotten every test in the book,” he said. “I don’t have any major bleeding in the brain or anything.”

A month ago, he underwent tests to evaluate his reaction time and memory. “I was mostly recovered, or I thought I was,” he said, adding that he did fine on the speed portion of the test, but struggled with the memory test of shapes and designs. “I literally could not remember a single picture that they showed me, which is, for me, quite shocking.”

He added, “Basically, the doctors said that considering the problems that I’ve been having with the constant headaches, they want me to be headache free for two to four weeks before I even consider getting in the ring again.”

Nowinski said that doctors can’t really tell you how the concussion is healing because every concussion is different; they can merely encourage you to gradually exercise more are more -- in effect, to test yourself -- as you start feeling better. Nowinski has done just that, working out as much as he feels like he physically can each day, pushing himself, but not too much.

It’s been an extremely frustrating process in which he’ll have three good days, then two bad ones. “Last week, I was to the point where I was lifting heavily,” he said. “I was literally just doing a set of curls, just trying to get that last one up.” And then the headaches returned. He suffered through 100 consecutive hours with a headache, until it finally went away two days ago. “I finally got rid of it by basically sitting around doing absolutely nothing,” he said.

One doctor has suggested that Nowinski go to a brain injury rehabilitation center near his house in the Boston area to help accelerate the recovery.

On the plus side, doctors have told him that once he’s healed, he’s healed, and that he’s not any more prone to subsequent concussions. Nowinski said he’s been “dinged up” on the football field at Harvard, and in the ring, but he hadn’t had a major concussion or memory problems, “which is usually how you tell the severity of the concussion."

Furthermore, Nowinski is confident he’ll make a full recovery, even though some fans have pointed out that post-concussion syndrome ended the career of Bret Hart.

“There’s no doubt I’ll recover,” he said. “I make obvious progress. When I feel good, I feel like I can get back in the ring. I just know that the longer I take, the safer I am from getting another bad shot. People do have to retire from concussions, but they usually have more than I do. Bret might’ve taken one bad one at the end, but I’m sure that as long as he wrestled, he had a lot before then.”

Nowinski said he’d love to rejoin “Thuggin’ & Buggin’ Enterprises” when he returns to RAW, but it doesn’t matter. “I’d just love to get back in the ring,” he said. “Life without wrestling is pretty not fun.”

He’s hopeful and cautiously optimistic that he’s on the right track toward recovery.

“If I can stream together a few weeks here (without headaches), then I’ll go to (Ohio Valley Wrestling in) Louisville for a couple of weeks to get back in ring shape, and then hopefully back to TV. But I’ve been saying that same thing for six weeks now, so you just don’t know.”

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