My 13 year old son suffered a concussion on May 1 while playing soccer. He was dropped on his back and the momentum slammed his head back...whiplash. Noone picked up on the concussion for two weeks due to a severe, concurrent back injury. He was immobile and in severe pain from the back injury for the first week and a half before being hospitalized and treated with IV meds. At this point, we still don't know if he lost consciousness, but he has no recall of the entire second half of the game. It wasnt until the back pain was resolved that the symptoms from the concussion were revealed.

The neuro says that he has a level 3. The headaches started two weeks after the event. My son rates his headache on the pain scale as an 8 and it has not alleviated or gone away for one minute in the past two weeks. He literally moans all day...this from a kid with an unbelievable high pain tolerance. The neuro prescribed neurontin 300 mg./day which, after 4 days, is not even touching the pain!

He suffers from constant spinning and tipping of the room and cannot walk at all unassisted. Thus, he has been lying in a recliner all day long for four weeks.

He has blurred vision and letters are scrambled when he tries to read words. He has some cognitive issues.

I am terrified and frustrated! To see a strong, athletics, straight A student in this position is heartbreaking!

Does anyone have any advice/suggestions regarding treatment or outcomes?

I am very sorry to hear about your sons concussion. Unfortunately, concussions are very common in soccer. One study by Dr. Delaney - McGill University, found that 62.7% of college players likely suffer one or more concussions per season. The same author also published a study in the July 07 British Journal of Sports Medicine titled The Effectiveness of Protective Headgear in Reducing Head Injuries in Adolescent Soccer Players that found that players NOT wearing protective headgear were 2.65 times more likely to have suffered a concussion.

The issue is,like the NFL denying there is a problem in football with concussions, the soccer governing bodies are avoiding addressing the issue and not informing the players.

Injuries like your son's are happing all to often. My daughter suffered many concussions while playing soccer. The last one resulted in post concussion syndrome for more than 6 years!

Dear t97tab,

I am very sorry to hear about your son's concussion. It is a terrible thing, so I will start with as much good news as I can:
Apparently, most people with this sort of syndrome recover in under a year (although sadly a significant minority do not). Thankfully for your son, two things that seem to increase the likelihood of a good outcome are being young and being male. So you have got to see that there might come a day when you can put all this behind you.

However, it is a really horrible condition. I have suffered from post concussion symptoms for over two years and I can really understand exactly the pain that he is in that makes him moan all day. I have experienced that constant pain and it would be very hard for anyone to tolerate. The main difference from other types of pain, such as broken bones for instance, is that it doesn't ease off. I have broken several bones in my body and the sharp pain that you first experience seems to ease off in 30 minutes or an hour. That isn't so with the post-concussion pain; it doesn't ease off: it's there all the time. I can tell you though that the pain does become less if you monitor it on a long time-scale, such as weeks, months or, in some cases, years.

So advice/suggestions on treatment/outcomes:

1. Do not push him to do anything. I think that in the first few weeks or months you should do as little as possible. Anything seems to aggravate the condition and by doing anything I mean having conversations, doing any work, PLAYING SOCCER ! Whatever you do don't let him get in any situtation where he could have a secondary injury. That could be really serious. Literally anything that he does involves his brain working, so that could tire his brain out and that isn't a good thing for its recovery.

2. Don't worry about him losing abilities by not practicing things. The problem isn't that his brain doesn't know how to work. The problem is that it is completely exhausted and needs every scrap of energy to try to keep going on life support and eventually heal. Don't let him waste energy on other less important things, such as anything else that is going on in his life. The most important thing for him is to heal his brain.

3. It might be an idea to keep some sort of symptoms diary. I did this and it was incredibly boring because every day was exactly the same: headache, nausea, exhausted, dizzy etc. However, if you take note over the long term you might see improvements and that will give you the confidence that you are going in the right direction. At first I noticed improvements every day, then every month, then every six months. The better I got the slower were the improvements but I keep going in the right direction, so that might happen for you also.

4. Regarding treatments: time and rest are the two best healers so don't let anything get in the way of those. Other things that helped me were :
(a) diet - eat lots of protein in the first year, also omega3 fatty acids (oily fish, also a supplement would be good), magnesium. I also take a couple of supplements for the brain CoQ10. You can get supplements for brain nutrition.
(b) manipulation of the neck and back - I had the reverse problem of your son in a way, in that the doctors could only see the concussion and therefore ignored the fact that I had injuries to my neck and upper spine. Some of the headaches may be due to problems in the spine rather than the head. I am having some manipulative physiotherapy and I also tried cranio-sacral massage, which turned out to be light massage and manipulation, although is sounded nothing like that in the brochure.
(c) Amitriptyline - 10 mg nightly has a good effect on my headaches. It needs to be prescribed, but I found that it worked whereas the NSAIDs did not have any effect. The dose needs to be worked out. 10 mg is a low dose but that can be raised as necessary, if it doesn't cause unwanted sleepiness, which it did in my case. It is a tricyclic drug which can be described as an antidepressant. However, it is only an antidepressant at high dosage (above 75 mg), not the lower doses that you would take it at for headache.

My guess is that he will be just fine in the end, although it is a horrible thing to go through. I had a concussion when I was 8 and within a few months, I had completely recovered. My guess is that his youth is going to get him through and he will get back to normal just from the healing power of being a 13 year old.

Best of luck,
CS

Hi Nancy F, I can seem to relate to your son and his condition ALOT! I won't waste your time with my whole story, but basically last january I got a concussion and I had to be homeschooled for second semester of my freshman year, which last until mid summer when I got cleared and went right back to cheerleading end of july and then school in august.

Since school started I have gone down hill. My fatigue is so extreme I have already missed about 10 days of school from being so tired. Like your son im taking melatonin and that helps me fall asleep. My school hasn't been as supportive as yours has. I was wondering what kind of accomadations you have for him or special plans. My school has "504 plans" and while it helps a little its not enough. I have short term memory loss and before i could barely memorize 5 words for english and now i can about 20 and at least a little information for another class. I wanted to be able to have open book tests but my school told me it would be "un fair" but personally, i think it's unfair im going through this and can't remember simple things like conversations! My fatigue is so extreme i've asked my parents if there was a way could have one morning a week to just sleep an extra hour!

So nancy, if you could please let me know what you were able to get for son with school work and everything that would really help and hopefully I could take it to my school and be able to get some more acomadations that way I can fully recover and be able to feel good again, and be myself.

Thanks for your time! Your help is REALLY needed! And I hope you and your family is doing better, and especially your son. Trust me, i know what your all going through.

Hello everyone this is a great thread and I want to share my story of post concussion syndrome

I have been diagnosed with 7 concussions in my life (I just turned 21) ranging from mild to severe. When I was younger the concussions didnt affect me as much as the ones I got when I was a teenager. I have had 4 in four years and I had three in one year. My junior year of highschool I was struck in the head three times while playing baseball and suffered bad concussions. I got two in one week that year. I missed half of the semester that year as well. So after having these concussions I experienced chronic headaches and major memory loss and depression and anxiety. A year passed before I started to re gain some of my memory problems, but as luck would have it I suffered another one playing football. So now it has been 4 years and I still have terrible short term memory loss, chronic headaches, and anxiety. I went through a phase of severe depression getting to the point of thinking about suicide (I am currently doing a lot better with depression and no longer feel depressed). This syndrome has seriously affected my life and well being. It is unfortunate that this syndrome is not studied more to provide us with answers.

If anyone knows what I can do to try and stop these symptoms I would love to hear it. This diseases has made me who I am today and although I wish I didnt suffer from this I hope to one day be able to get the word out. Thank you for listening.

God Bless

I'm so sorry to hear about all of your stories. My family is dealing with a similar one. My 11 yo son has gotten a possibility of 3 concussions since Sept, with 2 of them within two weeks of each other. He just went back to school 1/2 days last Thursday after being out of school for a month. His post concussive symptoms are definitely getting better.....the violent headaches are gone, he's having some more milder ones, but the most concerning are the behavioral ones. He is very quick to anger and has had a number of aggressive/violent outbursts. Those have also less with time, but he's so afraid that it's going to happen in school and he can't control himself. He's never had these types of outbursts before the concussion. The neurologist has said that things should lessen over time as the concussion completely heals, but it's so frustrating and scary in the meantime.

Have any of you seen these types of behavioral issues? I keep getting that they are "A-typical."

Thanks for any help.

I can honestly tell you that I used to get super angry and very irritable. With the help of therapy and time I have able to get over these pretty successfully. I had to miss about 8 weeks of school and only went half days when I did. Please tell your son that the best way I had felt to get over this is to be with people that care about him. Friends and family are the best way to not let yourself feel alone and different. I will pray for your family and let him know that their are people out there for him. Thank you.

msangsland,
Thank you for responding. It's nice to hear that someone has gone through something similar and has been able to deal with the anger. My son is now in therapy, but I don't know if it's really helping. Did it take a long time for it to help with you? He goes into the therapist for about 20 minutes and then I'm called in (on my own or with my son). The therapist talks to him about "counting backwards" when he gets angry, but when I've reminded him to do it when he's at home, he says "thats stupid and it doesn't work."

I went to go see my dr, they went up on my pills now which by the way they still think i am depressed and think theres nothing wrong with me,my eeg test turned out normal again so , the next day my head start hurting my speech mess up the whole day .which they say nothing wrong with me. But after my appt the next day my speech messes up on me.so my question is to u guys have anyone had this problem where they say u ok then u turn around u really isnt come to find out, i still black out as well.and shakes and balance messes up on me .

lachiche

I would find a neurologist, that knows about seizures. This is what it sounds like you are having. And its very possible to have a normal EEG.

I would like to know what kind of medicines you are on. You need to start a diary of the things that are happening.

And also the lengthy of time it happens, and whether you miss a dosage
of medicine.

Donna