March 2009 2nd Semester of Freshman year of College earning a Bachelor’s of Liberal Arts. I fell off a horse blacked out for 5 seconds, and had permanent amnesia for 10 hours (meaning I still don't remember what happened during that time). I am told that every 5 minutes I would ask the same questions over and over again. After about 5 hours my friends took me to the ER where I had a CT scan that came back negative. Three weeks later I was sitting watching a volleyball game from forty feet away. I looked down for a second and someone kicked the volleyball right at my head. 9 months later I was feeling much better, meaning I had learned to cope with my symptoms and they weren’t as bad. I went sledding and got way worse with nausea being a new constant companion. It is now 17 months since the horse accident.

2 weeks ago I was beside myself with fear and depression. I barely passed some of my classes in college, I was in constant pain, I was a constant grump and ready to jump down anyone’s throat for nothing, and the nausea/dizziness/lightheadedness/exhaustion/focus-issues did not help.

I saw a neurologist and he suggested that I take Fioricet as often as I liked up to 6 pills a day before the headache begins and now I have no pain!!!!! Everything else is still there but I still haven’t felt this good in over a year...I had forgotten what it felt like to have no pain.

See a Neurologist who can make sure that there is nothing REALLY wrong and then you can try medications. Right now the only thing that docs know about concussions is how to treat the symptoms not actually fix the problem unless it is really bad (like bleeding in the brain or something.

As far as concentration, he also said that I should read for at least 15min per day and as long as I remembered anything when I was finished he would be happy. He wanted me to try to remember something new every day and something more important each day.

Good Luck!
Margarite