Hi, everyone! I have been reading this site for awhile but just now joined.

My daughter received a concussion on August 3, 2009. Prior to the concussion she was a three-sport athlete in high school (volleyball, basketball and track), a wakeboarder and snowboarder.

Her worst symptoms really didn't show up for 7-10 days. Thankfully her coaches and the athletic director were alert and noticed that things weren't right with her even as her father and I were thinking it was no big deal. They administered an impact test and would not let her participate until she could pass. Without impact test we would have allowed her to play and I can't even imagine what might have happened. She had 7 days symptom-free in early October and was ready to go back to practice on a slow, regulated basis. Stubborn, anxious, competitive young lady that she is ran sprints instead and ended up with gigantic set back. She has missed both volleyball and basketball seasons. She is still hoping to participate in track this spring, but I don't know if that's going to happen.

Symptoms: Headaches (still daily but lessening now in severity, frequency, and duration), nausea (lasted for about 4 months), inability to read (3 months), lightheadedness (continues occassionally), neck strain (resolved), eye twitches (resolved), ear popping/pressure (resolved); concentration/memory (improving gradually); light/sound sensitivity (resolved).

Medication: Amitriptalyne 20 mg. daily. She reduced from 30 mg about ten days ago and experienced five days of worsening symptoms then sprang back. The medicine was causing some heart palpitations, so she had to choose between "toughing out" some symptoms or dealing with heart palpitations. Those seem to have disappeared on 20 mg.

Tests: MRI (showed "changes consistant with injury" but no bleeds thank God); EKG (abnormal, but follow-up echo showed no abnormalities or malfunctions); visual evoked response (um...something like that...it's a test that measures communication between eyes and brain...showed a slower response than expected but only in the thousandths of a second).

Postives: She is slowly increasing her exercise (up to 13 minutes on eliptical as opposed to 2 minutes when she started) and is starting a yoga class tonight. She has learned a lot about having balance in her life through this experience (i.e. there is life outside of sports). She has also learned who her real friends are.

Negatives: Major stress with medical tests (docs had to rule out MS and heart problems). Boredom!!! Holy cow...what do you do when you're 15, can't read, can't be on computer, can't watch too much TV, have light and sound sensitivity, etc???

Highest Recommendation: I realize we are not through this yet, and we are probably in no way qualified to give a recommendation, but the best person we talked to was a psychologist. By pure accident we met a psychologist who treats college athletes who have had concussions. She was fantastic in doing a depression assessment (negative, thank God again), in helping us to get accommodations at school, and in helping my daughter deal with the loss of her athletics, at least for now.

Glad to be here, welcome any advice, willing to comiserate with any other mom's out there struggling with trying to figure it all out.