Hi Rainman,

Well, you totally screwed up in your drinking but you were kind of unlucky in where you landed. Here are my thoughts.

You have multiple problems so one thing is not going to fix all of them. The neck issues are probably real and having that sorted out is a start but I don't think that it will do anything for some of the other issues, your vision for instance.

You have sustained what would be classified as a "minor" brain injury. The fact that it is called minor is based merely on the length of time that you were unconscious. It can still give you awful symptoms. I have sustained something similar. Incidentally, my current symptoms do not include vision problems. However, I did have a concussion as a child and had a weird sort of vision thing happen. Your description of the vision weirdness does sound familiar to me. My problems went away. I was seven. I think that the younger you are the better chances you have of making a complete recovery. Now I am in my fifties and I do not expect to make a complete recovery from my most recent concussion. I will just have to live with it and learn to cope with residual symptoms. However, you are only 20 and you had the concussion only a few months ago. There is still plenty of time for you to make a good recovery. If you do please come on this forum and tell us all that you have got better. It is nice for us to hear when that happens to someone.

Many people using this forum have sustained similar injuries. There is a lot of information available for you to read about other people's experiences and how they cope. The stickies would be a good place to start. As for what you should do:

1. Immediately give up doing anything that is making your condition worse. You have got to make sure that you don't bump your head again or that will make any recovery take a lot longer and it is bad enough as it is. So, definitely don't get into a situation e.g. through drinking, that will put you at risk of bumping your head again. Probably you should give up drinking altogether for the time being. Also, basketball involves jerking your head to some extent so I wouldn't be doing that for now either. Maybe when you have recovered a bit.

2. Find yourself a good neurologist, that means a specialist in mTBI/PCS headaches or vision. If you go to see a general neurologist the chances are that they will not be very good at treating concussions and not know much about it. However, even a general neurologist should check for life threatening problems such as pressure on the brain. My guess is that you don't have these issues or your would be dead by now, but perhaps a qualified doctor should check. Do some research on specialist neurologists in your area. It isn't easy to find a good one. Be prepared to go once to a few of them and don't return if it seems that they don't understand your specific problems and aren't going to test you or give you any treatment. Most neurologists will just hope that the problem goes away and, to be fair, it does in the majority of cases within a year. However, if you are not one of the luck majority then you will need some sort of treatment. There are various drugs that might help, pregabalin, gabapentin, amitriptyline, topiramate. You could look these up and see what results fellow sufferers have had with them.

3. You will probably need other treatments. The neck stuff sounds good. I tried it for a C2/3 prolapsed disc but I didn't feel that it helped a great deal in the end. However, I was taught some manipulation that I could do at home. I did it twice a day. Ask your chiro if there is anything that you can do at home that might help to keep the vertibrae in place. I found that they slipped back out of position from one week to the next.

4. Rest is good. You mentioned family troubles, but if you can find family members or friends who can give you a hand to research things and help to organise things then this would take some of the stress off you and give you time to rest. Rest is probably the most important thing that you can do for yourself right now. However, it is hard. The fact that you have your eyes open means that that part of the brain is working, but you could at least avoid the things that you think are giving your brain problems and try to do less of that. If in doubt about an activity, just don't do it.

5. You need to feed yourself well. Make sure that you are having enough protein in your diet for the first year and take note of lots of advice about vitamins, omega3 fatty acids etc. that you will find on this site.

6. Some people with vision issues swear by using specialist eyewear. I don't have that problem so I'm not the best person to ask but I think that blue-tinted glasses are sometime helpful for vision problems. Find out about that.

7. Try writing down your symptoms etc. on a particular day or days and then compare a month later, three months later, a year later. That way you will get some indication that you are going in the right direction and that will give you some hope. I found that even when it seemed like I was making no progress at all, I could still notice that I was better than I was at the same time the previous year.

8. There are other treatments that you can try such as HBOT, but in the first instance: avoid things that could make you worse, rest, eat well, get your sleep, find a specialist neurologist, try the glasses, and be patient because recovery can be slow and might not be complete, but hopefully things will be better than they are now. It's tough.

Good luck with your recovery.
Concussed Scientist