I agree with the advice to keep your appointment with the internist. If they are compassionate and understand brain injury at all you will have a sort of central clearinghouse for any further medical tests, visits etc.

I also agree with Mark that you need to be somewhat careful. That's another good reason to have your internist make referrals. In our case when docs would say,"no, this is fine" I would say, "well what would you suspect?" There started to be some very specific patterns in their responses (i.e. "looks like optic nerve to me") that were documented in her records.

You might get to the point that your gut tells you its one thing or another and your internist won't make a referral. Then you might have to make your own appointment regardless of insurance repercussions, etc. Tell people your mom is making you do this so she looks like the hypochondriac, not you. I'm willing to shoulder that burden for my kids for sure.