Hi, all:

(Be warned, this is a very, very long post. But I'd really appreciate if you gave it a look. I've tried to break it up a bit in order to make it easier to read .)

This is my first time posting on NeuroTalk, but I've been roaming through the TBI/PCS forum for the past several months. It all started on June 18th, around sixth months ago, surely a day that I'll never forget.

I'm seventeen years old and currently a senior in high school. Throughout my life I've always loved to play sports, and even though I played two contact sports at the varsity level (football and lacrosse), I'd never sustained a major injury to any part of my body besides the normal bruises and scrapes. This all changed on that fateful day in June. For those who don't know, football practices in high school, college, and NFL start early in the summer, so we were already into daily practices. I was playing slot receiver, running a drag route (a super dangerous route where you essentially run the width of the field at a depth of five yards, right through the linebackers.)

I was running like always, alternating between looking at the quarterback and the point I was running to. Then all of a sudden: BAM! I hear a loud thud, crisp thud as I collide with the linebacker. He was my teammate; he wasn't trying to hurt me, but we were both running without looking and we collided head-to-head. I remember being super dizzy for around 5-10 seconds, dizzier than I'd ever felt before. I mean the world was literally shaking before me; I could barely keep my balance as I somehow found my way back to the huddle.

I'd felt dizzy before after getting hit (as sad as it is, this is a pretty common occurrence in football), but never like this. Normally the dizziness or headache was incredibly mild and went away after about 1-2 seconds, but this time it was extreme and lasted up to 10 seconds. But eventually, the headache and dizziness subsided, and I continued to practice. In hindsight this was a terrible decision, but what did I know? I was symptom free, and I thought I would be fine if I just ran it off.

When I got home after practice, I had a very mild headache, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. I'd never had a concussion before and I didn't know any better. I got a little more worried when it was still there when I woke up the following morning, but I decided to go to football nevertheless. By the time practice rolled around, my symptoms hadn't gotten worse at all; in fact, I thought I was improving. But while we were bench-pressing before practice, I started to feel a little bit "off." It's hard to describe, but I guess it felt like a mixture of fogginess, fatigue, lightheadedness, and dizziness.

I told my head coach about the hit I'd taken the day before and how I was feeling, and he told me to sit out from practice, which I did. When I got home, I talked to my father, who is a neurologist, about how I was feeling and he suggested that I had a concussion. He told me all the things he should of, that I needed physical and cognitive rest. My father emailed the coaches and I took the following week off of practice. Again, I knew nothing about concussions and everyday I expected to wake up symptom free ready to go, but for the first roughly four days I actually felt worse and worse each new day.

At its worst, about halfway through my week of rest, even walking around the house made me feel dizzy and nauseous. But eventually, things improved, and I got up to about 98% symptom free. At this point I went back to practice. Things went smoothly for the next month and a half. I felt fine at practice and had no trouble doing vigorous exercise or doing summer school homework and assignments.

Everything changed again on August 11th. We were doing a one-on-one hitting drill at practice. It's a barbaric kind of drill; the whole team is crowded around watching and screaming, and you're face to face with someone who wants nothing more than to put you on the ground as hard as he can. I used to love those drills. You do the drill four times, and on the last hit I remember us hitting completely head on. After the drill was over I even remember a few teammates jokingly asking me if I had a concussion after that hit. But I was so hyped on adrenaline that I wasn't really feeling anything.

In the days that followed, I concussion symptoms began to appear, but I kept them to myself for around three days hoping they would go away. They didn't. In fact, every day they seemed to get much worse. Eventually I could barely function as a football player, and I had to tell the my father and the football staff. It seems stupid that I kept the symptoms to myself for so long, but I knew what the implications of getting another concussion were. I knew that I'd have to put serious thought to giving up the sport I loved with all my heart. But eventually I had no choice but to speak up.

I began to sit out from practice, hoping that my symptoms would go away in a week like they had the first time. But a week went by, and I hadn't seen any improvement. Then another week went by. Then another. These three weeks were some of the hardest I've ever been through in my life. I was in constant pain, I couldn't think straight, tolerate electronics, read, go outside without sunglasses, or any of the other things I took for granted throughout my seventeen years of consciousness.

After three weeks of no major improvement, I knew it was over. I knew that I'd have to give up the thing I loved most in life because of an unfortunate injury. I'd had encouragement from my father and my doctor to quit football, but in the end the decision was mine alone. Quitting football may seem like an easy decision to make after such a severe concussion, but you have to see it from my perspective. It sounds shallow, but football was what I loved most in life. It's where I could hang out with my best friends, where I could be part of something great, where I could challenge myself. It gave purpose and excitement to my incredibly mundane existence.

But I knew I had to quit, for my future's sake. That sentence I just wrote is incredibly depressing, one I'd never hope that anyone would ever have to write. But it happened. The coaches were really understanding, and they even gave me the opportunity to still be part of the team as a team manager, which I was thankful for. Roughly a month and a half went by. I'd been improving gradually. On October 9th, I had my third concussion. This one was something totally out of my control. I was just walking around school during lunch. Some kids were kicking around a soccer ball on the quad. Unfortunately I happened to be walking by them at the time, and the ball struck me in the head.

It wasn't an extremely hard kick, but I knew I'd had a concussion as soon as I got hit. I just knew. Had I not already had PCS symptoms by that point, it probably wouldn't of given me a third concussion, but I did and it did nevertheless. I had very bad symptoms for about a week. I took the week off of school and rested completely.

Since that point (two and a half months ago), I haven't had any major hits to the head, which I'm INCREDIBLY thankful for. Part of this is because I've been extremely careful in all aspects of life. I mean, I don't hang out with friends, I rarely drive, I don't walk more than I need to, I don't play video games or watch TV, all I do is go to school and then go home and rest.

And yet I've still been dealing with PCS all the while. I have a constant headache which I take painkillers for, and I almost always have ringing in the ears, which varies in severity based on what activities I'm doing. I also have minor dizziness, lightheadedness, and blurry vision. I see a concussion specialist at the local children's hospital every few weeks. But my worst symptoms are mental. I constantly feel in a fog, I have trouble remembering basic things or words, and I get terrible anxiety. I mean some days I don't even want to go to school, just because I'm afraid I'll somehow get a concussion. And my mind constantly feels muddled.

This all brings me to what I came here to ask: what keeps you guys going? I'm afraid of the future. I know that at any moment, anything could happen to me. I'm afraid that I'll wake up one day, whether it be tomorrow, in a month, or in 30 years, and not remember who I am. Or that I'll wake up with a totally different personality. Because if I don't have myself, I don't have anything.

Another major concern of mine is that like I said I'm a senior in high school, so I'm going to college next year. But part of me wonders, what's the point? My dream throughout my childhood has always been to be a writer when I grow up, but now I don't know if I have the mental capacity to even handle college, let alone use my brain for a living. I'm already sort of struggling in high school, so how am I going to be able to handle college life or a job? And what's worse, what if I begin to deteriorate neurologically at like age 30? How can I start to build my life with all this weighing on me??

It’s not that I’m suicidal or anything; I love my life, and I’m incredibly thankful to be alive and to have food to eat and roof over my head. Sometimes I just question how can I truly meet my goals if continue to deteriorate. Who am I?

It's the uncertainty of tomorrow, that's what scares me so bad. Help.