sorry about the block text, it didnt occur to me to leave spaces when i was writing it. thanks scott, its nice to know that there are other people who can understand what im going through. part of what has made this experience so hard for me is the lack of competent treatment by my doctors and general lack of understanding about the effects of head injury among my peers.

when i first received my injury, no one recognized that i had a concussion including myself until after the rugby match in which i was participating was concluded. even when i told my mother that i suspected that i had suffered a concussion, she told me not to self diagnose and scheduled me an appointment with my gp for the following Wednesday (four days after the fact).

to make matters worse, i had standardized testing for all of the three days of meantime between the injury and being seen by my gp, which was horribly stressful considering it was a test which i was required to pass in order to graduate highschool (i still managed to pass). when i finally went to the doctor, i ended up seeing his physicians assistant who clearly had very little experience in dealing with mtbi.

i was given very few tests and no restrictions and told that my symptoms should clear in about a week; they didn't. when i returned i was also seen by the physicians assistant who told me that what i was experiencing was not unusual and that i should be 100% better withing six weeks (still no restrictions).

four weeks on and i was still miserable, i would have good days and bad days but my recovery seemed stalled. my mother became tired of my complaints as the compounded her stress from work and caused any concerns of mine to be met with hostility.

due to my head injury, the removal of my wisdom teeth which had been scheduled for a few weeks after the match in march had been postponed for another month. although i only felt marginally better i allowed my mothers pressure and my own desire to be my own self fool me into saying that i felt that i was back to normal. i had my wisdom teeth removed and relapsed completely.

when my symptoms refused to resolve, i began to do research on the effects of concussion on the brain ( attempting to understand being my first line of defense against uncertainty). naturally what i found scared me senseless, however through this research i became acquainted with the phenomenon of pcs.

when i revealed to my mother that i was still having symptoms and that i was afraid that i had post concussive syndrome, she claimed that i was self diagnosing, eventually deciding that i was making the whole thing up to get attention. by the time internet to the doctor i had almost begun to believe that i was suffering from some form of hypochondria and that there was nothing physically wrong with me; my doctor had other ideas.

upon returning to my gp, the physicians assistant (seeing me for the fourth time in a row) decided that my headaches, insomnia, foggy memory and difficulty thinking/ concentrating, were unrelated to my head injury and were in fact the result of migraines. she then loaded me up with physicians samples if a migraine medication which had absolutely no effect.

durring my final visit to the gp, i was finally allowed to see my doctor, not because he wanted to see me or because i had asked, but because the physicians assistant had finally been stumped by my condition. my doctor came in, and within fifteen minutes decided that i was suffering from pcs.

this is the point at which i began doing what should've been done ( and what i wanted to do) in march; i went to a neurologist. he told me that everything my physicians had done leading up to my visit to him had been wrong, and i was finally put on restrictions and given accommodations at my school.

i have since had neropsychological testing and have been unable to do much symptom free, however despite my condition, i am probably going to spend most of my summer vacation traveling ( with mixed feelings). i am currently on the island of malta which would be a dream come true had it not been for my head injury, which has ruined my vacation and further strained my relationship with my mother.

again i am sorry for the long bio, but i wanted to put as much information out there as possible about what im going through in the hopes that anyone will have some suggestions for me on how to better manage given my current state of affairs.

right now i just looking for a was to stay in shape and some way of distracting myself from the injury itself.

i am also curious as to the portability of my suffering from an injury to the upper cervical spine considering the way in which i first received the concussion ( head on collision of shoulder with the side of my skull about half an inch in front of my right ear while running.

if anyone has any question comments or suggestions for me i would be very grateful

thanks allot

headcasey.