Hello to all, this is a long post:

Update (with some positive developments):

Just a little update, so its been 2.5 months since my initial concussion (slipping on icy surface and hitting the back of my head February 10), after which I recovered around 90%, and started to quickly getting back to my normal life. Please note that I do not play any contact sports, I do however typically spend my winters snowboarding and wakeboarding during the summer. I have an office job, so the probability of getting another head trauma post my initial concussion was very low. But I did forget to mention that I am doing major renovation at my house DIY, using construction materials and various power tools.

Two weeks after my initial concussion, I got back to working on my house and while coming down from the roof the ladder slipped under my feet and I ended up falling on the deck which at the time had snow, though it was pretty hard and icy after the freezing rain. I should mention this, because I find it very interesting, that in the spear of that moment of falling down the 7 foot ladder all I could think about is "I can't land on my head or hit it" so in that moment I used my limbs as much as possible to absorb the impact, though unfortunately, hit that icy snowbank with a side of my head. Although I thought the impact wasn’t that bad, the icy snow did give me few scratches on my face where I hit it. Anyhow, I did not think much of it, but the next day I started noticing the same symptoms I had after my initial concussion in particular, dizziness, disorientation, fatigue, some depersonalization, subtle headache, and difficulties concentrating and thought processing. Unfortunately, two days after my 2nd fall, I had a week long career development training, which I had to endure since it's already been paid for. In retrospect I feel that if I took another week off to rest, I wouldn’t have been stuck with PCS for this long.

After 2 weeks of my second fall, my girlfriend and I traveled to Colombia for the first time. I was very hesitant at first given the fact that I had most of the symptoms present at that point, but I sucked it up and still went on one week intense trip, where we did tons of walking, hiking, and swimming. Btw I highly suggest visiting Colombia, it’s a very intriguing country. To my surprise, I was feeling pretty well there, or at least I was so focused on exploring and enjoying the trip that I forgot about most of my symptoms, I even had few beers, and went to few loud restaurants with loud music and tons of people, which wasn’t too bad for my sensitive brain.

When we returned to Canada, I was pretty tired as I slept very little on the overnight flight. The following 2-3 weeks, I went back to work and was somewhat ok, but I had several symptoms flare up, brain fog, disorientation, subtle dizziness, trouble focusing for too long, some depersonalization, some headaches, and reminiscing about my "old" self. But then over about a week or so I started to see some improvements, my mood improved, I was less symptomatic, and more hopeful that I will soon recover. Things were getting much better and my girlfriend also noticed that.

Fast forward to Easter Weekend, my friend was celebrating her 30th bday, big croud of people, restaurants, then out to a loud club. I had 4 or 5 drinks that night, smoked a cigar and in general kind of forgot that I had a concussion. After that night I sort of slipped back to feeling "off" again with the typical symptoms. It has been 2 weeks since that relapse and I haven’t seen any positive progress in how I am feeling. I also start to feel depression creeping in, and my general outlook on life is very bleak.

Question:

I am at the point now where I want to explore some alternative options, as my GP, like most, has very limited knowledge on TBI. I am just a bit sceptical of all these "alternative medical practitioners" but maybe it doesn’t hurt to try. I am thinking of trying either chiropractor or physiotherapy, anyone has any suggestions as to which one of these could provide some relief to certain aspects of my PCS. What about osteopathy? A close friend of mine claims that 2 visits to an osteopath, completely cleared her months-long migraines as a result of whiplash that she sustained from a car accident, and she definitely wouldn’t lie, I know her very well.

Thanks for your input!