Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho

Yes, your brain is OK. But, you need to find a way to resolve your anxiety. And stop googling every little thing that comes to mind. I'll guaranty you that unless you can get your anxiety under control, college will be a miserable experience. The first step is for you to believe that your brain is OK.

The brain has a high tolerance for short duration impacts in many cases. That would be why you did not experience any symptoms when you hit the door and frame. The carabiner incident also does not sound like a concussion. More like a point of contact contusion to your skin and maybe a bone bruise. A carabiner does not have enough mass to impart any dangerous impact force to the whole head/brain. A short intense pain can cause the symptoms you experienced without it being a concussion.

Did you ever turn in a Work Comp claim for when the co-workers did this to you ? Work Comp covers it even if it was from messing around. A WC claim might cause your boss to put a stop to such activity.

btw, Stay away from that co-worker. He sounds like an idiot and a dangerous person.

So, get on with your life. Stay away from irresponsible people. And, stop googling everything. No cyber-self-diagnosis. You'll end up a total mess with nothing truly wrong with you.

There is a book called 'Three Felonies a Day.' It is about how people often commit crimes without knowing it. Nit picking laws make it so people can be charged with crimes for doing things they thought were legal.

The same goes for health issues. If every little strange feeling and symptoms was truly a sign of disease, we would all be terminally ill or close to it.

The human body is very resilient. If we do not focus on every little issue and just move on with our lives, we will be able to look back and say, That was just life. The bumps of life are just life telling us to take a break. There is no 110% effort. That is anxiety talking. Usually, it means you are working harder at a task than you need to to get the task done. You get tired from the stress of pushing too hard. You are working at 100% and added 10% anxiety to the mix. So, slow down. Focus on living with purpose rather than like a pin ball bouncing around.

I learned a lot about life when my watch broke. Before I had a chance to replace it, I realized that it only made me anxious about time. It did not improve my productivity or ability to be on-time. I realized that there are enough clocks in the world that I did not need to be looking at my watch so often. Checking a clock a few times a day and getting a sense how time flows during the day allowed me to be on time to my customers and not be all wound up.

The same holds true for our bodies. Looking at the bigger picture is much better. There will be better days and worse days. No need to be concerned about the worse days until they become the standard. 'I woke up this morning feeling lousy.' does not mean there is something wrong. You just felt lousy. Maybe due to poor sleep. You will likely get over it. Just slow down while you feel lousy. Follow your routine and move on with the day.

I bet a lot of the anxiety experienced by people on this forum would go away or be reduced if smart phones were turned off and computers were just used for productive work. We don't need to discuss every little symptom. It's like everybody has an emoticon floating over their head that they need to keep updating as the days goes on.

Until the past decade, if there was a strange symptom, one would wait to see if it lasted. Maybe a week later, if it was still a problem, one would call the doctors' office. They might say, Come it to be checked. or Wait another week or two. If it persists, call back. My health plan in California was Kaiser. We had a saying, The wait to be seen by a doctor was part of the health plan because it was just a way for the illness to go away or the injury to heal.

They actually studied this issue. If they took away instant and cheap access to the doctors, especially Emergency Rooms and Urgent Care, most of those patients would not show in the regular clinics. All they did was create a triage system that caused some to have to wait to be seen and they made the instant access cost a bit more (copay increase of $10 or so). When people were diverted from the ER to Urgent Care by the triage nurse, they often did not want to wait an hour or longer to be seen in Urgent Care. They found that very few of these people scheduled an appointment in the regular doctors' clinics.

I think the same would be true with internet based health. Sure, it is good to get community support but are we enabling people to get better and go on with their lives or enabling them to get focused on the minor ups and down of personal health and stop living their lives ?

There is a saying, "Just because we can does not mean we should." Just because we have instant access to health information does not mean that should take control of our lives.

So, get on with your lives. Tell us how well you are doing if you want to. Tell us how, when you stopped focusing on the little issues, they seemed to fade away. This is the kind of support people who come to this forum need.

My best to you all.