Hi everyone. I just found this forum and a lot of interesting posts and discussions. I thought I would post my experience and see if I could get some advice. I am a 21 year old male and had a snowboarding accident without a helmet (all my fault ) almost 2 years ago (Jan 2016). I rolled over on my neck multiple times. I didn’t feel anything bad after that, and I just kept snowboarding and must have had minor falls here and there after that.

10 days later, I had the most severe headache of my life and I usually never get headaches. Ever since then, I’ve had chronic headaches, literally all day. Sometimes they would be like my brain was moving inside my head. I didn’t understand what was going on for over a month. I was in another country, and I kept calling my mom and telling her I had crazy headaches that were making it hard for me to study. All of a sudden after three weeks she suggested it might be a concussion and made me fly back home to Canada to see my GP. My GP just shrugged it off and told me it would get better. Saw him after another week, and asked him for a neuro referral. He gave me one who I ended up getting an apt with for a year and a half later. In the meantime, I went to a headache clinic where they put me on a vitamin regimen but it didn’t really help.

I survived all of mid 2016 – mid 2017 on feverfew. It was a random herb I found, but it was a miracle. It just stopped the headaches as long as I took it twice daily. But if I missed a dose or took it too late, I would get terrible headaches. Summer 2017, I finally saw a neuro, he told me I had PCD, put me on Propranolol and told me that he can only treat the symptoms. Propranolol worked fine for a while, with me having no side-effects and all the headaches gone.

Now, three weeks ago (after ~4 months on propranolol), I worked out my shoulders (just started working out in the gym). Using 15kg weights, I did a whole shoulder workout. I don’t know if it was that, or just the winter starting, but the propranolol stopped working and the headaches came back. I know my neck was always a little sore after my injury, but I never felt it to be so sore when the propranolol was working. Now it’s sore again. I have an appointment with my neuro this Tuesday to discuss what happened. I started taking feverfew again, but I still have light headaches.

The headaches are always weird. Sometimes they can be one sided, sometimes they can be 2 sided. Sometimes they can be all over the place, sometimes it’s like my brain is moving in my head. I do take Tylenol occasionally but I am afraid of taking too much too often and getting rebound headaches which I think I got a few times back 1.5 years ago when I first started using pain killers and naproxen.

I have a few questions. 1. Apart from treating the symptoms, does anyone know if it is possible to actually get rid of the headaches once and for all? This is perhaps the most depressing factor in my life, because even with the feverfew I have light headaches and I’m really worried that even the feverfew may stop working. I’m starting CompSci next year at UofT and I am so worried that I won’t be able to cut it because of these headaches. 2. Does anyone have any ideas on whether my neck could be related to the equation? Is it worth looking into Physio, Chiro and all that? I’m really skeptical of Chiro (I’m sorry I am a skeptic at heart, but I am willing to try it, currently doing homeopathy on my parents orders). 3. Are there people who managed to heal from their concussion and headaches after such long periods of time (e.g. 2 years in my case)…I feel really hopeless a lot of the time and I feel like I won’t be able to support and help my parents if I don’t manage to keep these headaches at bay or finally get rid of them. (They are really nice and tell me that they would never expect that from me and are really supportive)

If anyone could please reach out to me I would really appreciate it. It’s been a very long 2 years, and I was really excited and pleased to find this community. I often feel lost when looking for solutions to my problem because every clinic I look into seems to be claiming that they can fix me but I can’t tell what’s good and what’s bad. There are so many pent up feelings I can’t express in my writing here, but suffice it to say there are a lot of tears that I have to fight back in order to keep a brave face for my family and little brother. I know this accident was all my fault, but my dad always tells me that we all make mistakes, it is how we deal with them that makes us who we are.