adshansel,

Sorry to here of your daughter's struggles. I suffered my first concussion at 8 then a bad one at 10 years old. This is a hard time for her to understand what is going on in her head. I can look back and understand the weird feeling I experienced but did not know how to define for others.

Dr Glen Johnson has a TBI survival guide at www.TBIGuide.com that is worth downloading and printing. It explains her condition very well.

As hockey said, a neuropsych assessment might be helpful. If this may end up with litigation issues, you need to be very careful about any medical or neuro=psych assessments. False negatives can be very difficult to over come.

Gordon Johnson has the best legal site regarding brain injury. It is at http://www.gordonjohnson.com/ and www.tbilaw.com
http://www.tbilaw.com/NeuropsychologyPage.html is a valuable read.

There are a few others, too.

Regarding the head aches, a natural remedy some have used is Vitamin B-2 (400 mg per day), magnesium (400 mg per day), Co-enzyme Q (200 to 300 mg per day). The drugs used are amitriptyline and sometimes nortriptyline in small doses. These are anti-depressants but some find them helpful with concussion headache.

I treat my frequent concussion headaches with Tylenol, sometimes adding enteric aspirin if it is really bad. You can take both together and get a very strong pain relief without risks. My doctor taught me to combine them.

You probably need to get her some foam ear plugs and see if she does better with less sound stimulation. Visual and auditory overload are very common complications of concussion. I need a hat or sunglasses too. I am too sensitive to bright lights. I can tolerate them but they make it difficult to think straight and sometimes cause a headache.

The yellow foam earplugs are the best. Twist them tight and insert them. They will unwind and expand to block up to 30db of sound. The primary value of ear plugs is blocking background noise that can be overwhelming. Ballet is probably quiet and rhythmic. Smooth quiet rhythms can be soothing.

Her headache from school was probably due to the chaotic sounds and visual over-stimulation. If you can help her understand the things that trigger her headaches and over-stimulation, she can start learning to avoid them while she gets better.

I read a report recently that suggests a serious need to avoid over-stimulation and even slight head bumps based on the theory that they cause minor relapses and undo the previous gains. Think of her as a hard boiled egg with a cracked shell. Just as you have to be very careful to not crack the shell further, she needs to be very cautious until she see some improvement that lasts.

I have posted on another tread about nutrition to help an injured brain heal. Click on my screen name and it will allow you to see all of my recent posts.

I will be traveling until Sunday but will try to watch and see how she is doing. There are some very helpful people on this forum. You can bet that they are as concerned as you are. We've been there and done that.

My best to you,