I’m a 35 year old male in the US. As long as I can remember, I’ve been quite clumsy, often bumping my head of stuff. Usually it’s not too bad, but sometimes quite hard.

I’ve only had LOC from it twice (long ago, at age 6 and age 18), but since I lost consciousness 5-10 minutes after impact rather than right after the impact, I think it was just fainting from anxiety rather than the head impact (I’ve also fainted many other times with no head impact).

After a really nasty bang two years ago when I stood up into a shelf, I’ve been much more careful and aware of my surroundings.

It seems that even little impacts can leave me with headaches and mental haziness for days. My theory is that it’s anxiety + my head muscles are extra sensitive because of my bruxism (teeth grinding problem). My doctor supports this theory.

Anyway just introducing myself right now because I’m feeling scared. My gf was assembling one of those big ikea hanging lamps (that sit on the floor and hang with a huge arched arm), and she swung it around and the lampshade smacked me in the right side of the head really hard. The lampshade itself is kind of soft and it hardly hurt upon impact, but in the past hour as expected I’ve felt kind of hazy and there’s a headache on the right side that is just getting worse and worse (though it’s tolerable).

I’ve been through this enough times before that I know I don’t need to seek medical attention unless there’s extreme symptoms like worst headache ever, LOC, amnesia, vomiting, blown-out pupil, etc. So I guess I’m fine?

But still it’s unpleasant tolerating the soreness and the huge fear that maybe I might have gotten hit in just the wrong way that would have caused a brain bleed.

Anyway thanks for listening.

-Ryan