Hi all - I've read quite a bit on this forum and already want to thank everyone for sharing their stories and tips. I've taken advantage of many of the resources that people have already provided and I thank you very much! Yet, I haven't come across specific advice for a particular symptom I'm having, and would appreciate any and all guidance/tips.

Here's the history:

I suffered what seems like a minor concussion in September 2013. I play rugby, and got hit around my right eye area by the crown of a teammate's head. I 'saw stars', and a friend came out and had me follow her finger, and said that my right eye wouldn't focus when she got to that side. That was it - no nausea, no blacking out, not even a bruise. I went to the doctor 2 days later because a headache persisted and I noticed that I felt pressure inside my head if I was shouting or talking loudly.

I passed all of the standard cognitive and balance tests with flying colors, and he told me I could go back to normal but to avoid contact until the headaches were gone. Luckily, I relayed this advice to a friend who worked as an athletic trainer, who very firmly told me that it was bad/inconsistent with return to play guidelines. I did everything I could think of - stopped working out, cut out caffeine, cut out alcohol, stopped watching tv, and took breaks from work whenever I could. Being at the end of a PhD program, I couldn't otherwise have complete cognitive rest.

My main symptoms were occasional trouble word-finding, making a lot of typos (well beyond the norm for me), occasional mood swings, headaches, difficulty concentrating, ringing in ears, sensitivity in loud environments, and pressure in my head. I saw a different doctor who ordered a CT, which was clean, and she essentially told me to wait it out. I've also been to a neurologist who didn't find any neurological issues and prescribed nortriptyline.

Fast forward to today: most of the cognitive issues are gone, though concentration and organization are still challenging. I've been working out a lot since January (still no contact), because I felt that being sedentary was worse for my mental health, and the doctors have approved of that though advised me to do more low impact things like biking and swimming when I'm able.

I still suffer, almost daily, from some physical symptoms. The main one of these is a feeling of pressure in my head after concentration/screen time/workouts/loud environments (especially if I have to talk loudly in the environment). The best way I can think to describe it is that when you're a kid hanging upside down on the monkey bars, you eventually feel pressure from the blood rushing to your head. Or, when you're on an airplane and have to pop your ears to equalize the pressure - that's what I feel regularly, especially after long hours at the computer, a hard running workout with lots of pounding, or generally if I just bend over to tie my shoes. When I have this and lie down to sleep, I can feel the pulse in my head very strongly. Basically, I'm wondering if anyone else experiences this and what you have been able to do to relieve it. Doctors seem to brush it off or ignore it whenever I've told them, preferring to keep trying to treat 'headaches' despite the fact that what I experience is not like a normal headache.

Often, when it's bad, my face also gets very red across my cheeks and nose. I really just don't know what to do for this because as I've said the doctors don't seem to have a vocabulary for it and ignore it. I know that I'm lucky to have only been suffering since September and that my symptoms are mild compared to some of what I've read from other posters, but it definitely impacts my life (making my work more challenging and slowing my progress, going out with friends to anywhere that plays loud music is really hard, and obviously playing the sport that I love is off limits) and I can't shake the feeling that it will never go away, which is not good for my general well-being. At first I was optimistic that if I just did everything right, it would heal in a few weeks, but in the past few months I've more or less lost hope. Pain-free concentration is pretty crucial to the academic career, and I would love to return to rugby but it seems like I shouldn't until the PCS is gone. I would love advice on anything that I can do to try to relieve this lingering symptom, especially from anyone who has used alternative medicine with success, because it's increasingly apparent that modern medicine is failing me.