AFLW's Kirsten McLeod wants to raise awareness about the ongoing symptoms of concussion

Kirsten McLeod was on her way home from a VFLW game at Morwell, approximately 150 kilometres south-east of Melbourne.

Driving on the highway at 110 kilometres per hour, the onset of symptoms was sudden.

«I just lost all my vision,» she tells ABC Sport.

With cars hurtling past her, McLeod did her best to blindly navigate her way from the right-hand lane to the emergency lane on the left.

«I was like, I've just got to try and wing it,» McLeod recalls.

«It was honestly the weirdest, scariest thing.

»I've only experienced that once and hopefully never again."

Earlier, in the game against Collingwood, McLeod had landed on her head and neck.

Despite the feeling that something wasn't right, she managed to get through the rest of the game.

«It wasn't until I was driving home that my symptoms really started,» she says.

Drafted by the Western Bulldogs at pick number 28 in the inaugural AFLW draft, McLeod is one of the league's most durable players.

An AFLW premiership player in 2018, she has played consecutive seasons of football for the past 17 years.

She is also a club favourite. In the year her team clinched the premiership, she won the coaches' award, while in 2020 she was the Bulldogs' most improved.

But 2021 was a difficult season for the forward, sustaining what she describes as «four or five head knocks» in the preseason.

«I [often] had to go and sit on the sidelines at training, because I was dizzy, had a headache, was feeling nauseous and all that stuff.»

Despite the severity of her symptoms, however, McLeod was reluctant to report them to the club's medical team.

This includes the day she lost all vision on the freeway from Gippsland to Melbourne.

«Me being me, I didn't tell the doctors. I didn't tell anyone,» she says now.

«I think [I