New post concussion sufferer
 

hey guys

i need help , about 2 -3 weeks ago i was at the gym and a rubber (but heavy) weight fell on my head , it didnt knock me out but about 20 mins later i felt strange and drousey and had to be rushed to hospital by my family , they did a CT scan and everything was fine. The next day i felt ok and returned to work the day after , but i noticed i started feeling strange , 3-4 days after my injury i was at work and just felt terrible all of a sudden everything became super bright and noisy , i felt so overwhelmed i called my manager and said someone needs to cover for me and was crying. i felt like i was going CRAZY!!

for the whole of that week i felt DRAINED , i had a very weird heavy feeling on my left side , it was teriible i literally could not do anything my brain just felt fried. During that week i had a consultation booked (i have cosmetic surgery booked) i just felt still really low and heavy , the surgeon advised for an ambulance to be called , they took me there and i was told i had post concussion and i need to rest and time off work.

i must say i feel like ive improved since my first week but i still feel so terrible. im still sensitive to light and loud sounds , i have a weird kind off numbing feeling on the left side of my head and kid of in my ear , i feel so " not on earth" its like im dreaming , i just feel so down and stressed , my home dont feel like my home anymore , i feel so alone , i used to love watching youtube videos and movies and i just cant anymore because i cant concentrate , time just dont feel like it use to be , i go to sleep like this , wake up like this and its so overwhelming to deal with

i had soooooooooo much planned , surgery , a trip booked to america with my friends , i just cant see it all happening now , this has effected my life so much!!! im only 20 , i just need as much support as possible

Sorry you are going through this... sounds familiar though... you are in good company.. .read the vitamin thread above... that will help too!

thanks so much for replying sarah
i was wondering if its ok to go under general Anastasia with post concussion

pierre,

I suggest you stay away for any general anesthesia until you are symptoms free for a few months. Some PCS sufferers also struggle with long airline flights, likely due to the altitude issues, even in a pressurized cabin.

As Sarah said, read the Vitamins sticky at the top. 20 sounds awful young for cosmetic surgery.

Fortunately, you are very early in your recovery. Most will spontaneously recover within 6 weeks. It will be a big help to get good rest, good nutrition and avoid emotional, physical and chemical stressors. You may also have a neck injury that is making your symptoms much worse. Icing the upper neck is important to help reduce inflammation caused by these subtle upper neck injuries and strains.

i had a breast augmentation booked for april 15th i guess il have to push it to may or later , if i got the all clear by a neurologist that i could go ahead that would be fine right?

I am with Mark... I have been told NO anesthesia unless absolutely necessary until symptom free for 3-6 months... anesthesia puts stress on the body and your head and healing is putting a stress on your system already... better to be safe than sorry!

Often, surgery that involves the chest uses deep anesthesia to suppress breath movements to a minimum. I suggest you talk with the anesthesiologist about the depth of anesthesia and any options available to reduce the risk of anesthesia "chemo brain." If the anesthesiologist tries to discount any risk, shop around for another anesthesiologist for advice. I took months to recover from general anesthesia when I had minimal but full sedation for knee and ankle surgery. Two surgeries 12 months apart left me struggling for quite some time.

I suggest you get on a brain nutrition regimen like the one I list in the Vitamins sticky at the top long before the surgery. You want your brain to be as healthy as possible before undergoing anesthesia. B's, folic acid, D3, Omega 3 DHA, etc will strengthen your brain and the blood brain barrier.

I would not consider a neuro's 'all clear' opinion to be worth much. Very few accept the subtle but very real struggles we have.

Sarah would you say you felt at least a lil like your self after the first month or 2?

Although some may have similar experiences, the comparison is random and beyond any understanding. As the saying goes, If you have seen one mTBI, you have seen ONE mTBI.

It does not mean one should lose hope but one should avoid scheduling based on the compared experience of others.

My best to you.

I know how you feel being young, I am 25, trying to keep up with everyone around you but having health problems that forces you to take it slow. I have been "missing out" since I was 23 and I got sick with mutliple chemical sensitivities and now since october last year when my first concussion happened and later in january of this year when my second concussion happened.

My best tip for you is to try to think of you life in the long term sence instead of just the short term. What I mean is try to somehow accept your current health status (I know it is hard but it can be done) and do your best to improve your health, but don't get obsessive about it, it will just lengthen your ill health, and know that there will be a day when you will be able to get back to your regular life, and it may be sooner or later, no one can tell. Fun trips and your surgery and parties and other stuff will still be around when you get better, just put your health first and you will find your way back, at least this is how it has been for me. It is hard to accept that you can't do whatever you want like before the accident, but I think it is an important part of recovery to know that there are good things that come out of shitty situations aswell, like slowing down ones life and rediscovering what really is important for you. It is hard to see the blessing in a bad situation, trust me I know. And as stated above, you are early in recovery so maybe you will be over this before you know it, I really hope so! :)

And I want to add that recovery for me has been like 2 steps forward 1 step back the whole time, when I think I am feeling all good, I am, but I can't push myself too hard or I will feel worse again for a few days or a week. It is a fine balance between doing a little more than say last week, and doing too much, which takes some time to get the hang of.

Be kind to yourself, you have injured your brain, which is, as you know, very important to you, and your body needs this time to heal. If I were you I would put the surgery on ice for now, if you schedule a new appointment you may feel stressed and pressured to get well by then, and that stress will just make you worse! If you push yourself into doing your operation you might just end up getting worse after your surgery and if you feel like crap you won't care about your chest size anyways... I don't want to tell you what to do, you do what feels best, just try not to push yourself too much, it will pay off in the long run taking it slow! :)

I'm sorry you're going through this. It is quite a scary thing to be feeling all that. All of us on here can totally relate.

You said "i feel so " not on earth" its like im dreaming" and I totally relate to that. I felt like that too until I saw an osteopath who was able to get me grounded again and feeling like myself in the first visit. She is also able to help with other injuries to my jaw and face that happened when I fell. With the osteopath I really have been making such great progress. I continue to see a chiro, massage therapist and a concussion Dr because all my symptoms are not gone . . . but finally, after 5 months (didn't see the osteopath until 4 months post concussion) I am driving again and have soo much more energy. It sounds like I see a lot of different people but don't see them all at once . . . I think our bodies are made so complex that it takes many different specialties to help heal them. Each one contributes something beneficial.

Just rest a lot too, take the pressure off yourself that you need to be healed by a certain time. It's hard to do, but once I submitted to this and took everything off my schedule (hard to do with my own photography business, being a wife and mom of two boys) I think that is when I started healing more too . . . make sure you can sleep at night . . . I found that
L-Theanine and Melatonin (both natural supplements) were great for relaxing my mind and getting the sleep I needed at night so the brain can heal.

All the best to you!

Mark is right.. and today is a horrible day... head is killing me... woke up not knowing what day it was... So better... well yes and no... some days are GREAT! some days are really bad! but not every day is bad... and since my accident I have not done much of anything... I have been out to dinner for date night with my husband 3 times since 1-12... I have worked a total of 5 days since then, not all in a row... I have seen countless doctors and have been on more meds than I know what to do with... everyone has a different treatment plan and a different head... so take this with a grain of salt...

Thank you sooooooo much for replying :) , it's been 18-19 days since the injury , I hope I feel better within at least 2 weeks , the one symptom that really scares me is the brain fog , it is soooo scary , also my memory and concentration :( , I wake up hoping it will go but it's still there !!! :'( my GP put me on anti depressants but I only took 1 and decided to stop because i want to see if the symptoms clear up on there own , is there anyway that i could talk to you guys privately ? Like email?

Thanks for replying Sarah :) I'm happy to know you have great days ! My light sensitivity has improved drastically since a week ago :D in the first week I literally could not text because my eyes would hurt so bad I'd have to look away , now my eyes are ok , I'm still dealing with the scary brain fog :( and weird head pressure it's not painful just uncomfortable and neck pain

Thanks for your reply :D I have put my surgery on hold for now , until my symptoms have improved il think about the surgery ;)

peirre93,

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Anti-depressants do not cure any PCS symptoms. Often, they are prescribed to help with the anxiety, insomnia, and head aches. Amitriptyline and nortriptyline the most common to be prescribed for PCS head aches and insomnia, but in a low dose.

What antidepressant did he prescribe ?

Keep in mind that you are still very early in your recovery. By standard definition of PCS, you do not qualify yet. PCS is usually a term for concussion symptoms that persist beyond 6 weeks or so. You still stand a good chance of a spontaneous recovery in the next few weeks. The most important thing for you is to keep your stress and anxiety levels low. Failing to reduce stress and anxiety can cause a recovery to take much longer.

My best to you.

Talk to your doctor about your neck pain... they may be able to send you to PT to help with that... I have neck pain as well.. no relief yet though... however, I am 18 years older than you... you will heal faster based on how young you are...

What Sarah said re: neck pain. A good physio, chiropractor, and/or massage therapist can help you a lot with that, even if it doesn't relieve other symptoms. Massage really helped me with whiplash after a car accident.

Sorry to hear you joined this exclusive club, but now that you are here, welcome!
I am 24, and my first concussion was when I was 19, but I had more concussions than you have fingers. The most important rule is DO NOT GET A 2ND CONCUSSION! With every concussion your likelihood of serious long term effects gets worse. I graduated from college only through the grace of God and the help of my close friends, but since that time I have taken 2 years off to just work an easy job and veg at home. I am still dealing with a lot of issues such as extreme light and sound sensitivity and the most recent development is sensitivity to scents (very odd). I have been trying to get the courage up to go back to school for nursing. I want to be a neuro nurse to help people like us. I am scared of putting myself through all the stress and pressure of an accelerated nursing program, but I think that once I graduate I will be very happy that I did. The brain fog is scary, but you learn how to live with it and how to push it to the back of your mind.
You are still on concussion #1 and still within the 3 month time window in which most people recover. So, keep your hopes high, but know that if it goes longer do not despair you aren't alone, and you can learn to live with this, but it is an extremely hard road. My best advice is to find a couple friends or family members who you can spill your guts to. Who you can text or write or call and tell exactly how lousy your day is. My closest friend is a person who also suffers from daily migraines and we each picked our own emoji to express our pain. I text her a couple or a lot of my particular face to express the extent of my pain. Or I'll text her that today the pain isn't that bad, but the nausea is bad. She has pain only on one side of her head and my whole head hurts and on the random days when her whole head hurts she texts that she doesn't know how I cope, but then on the days when only one side of my head hurts I text her that I don't know how she does it.
She is the reason I am able to smile and laugh, and the reason that I am not in an asylum. Her fiancé cannot quite understand her pain, but he understands that I do, and he is happy that we have each other. We aren't sure how we will be as wives or as mothers, but we just take each day at a time and hope that when the time comes we will have the strength for what we have to do.

Sorry, I only meant to write a couple sentences, but I got carried away :)
Live Long and Prosper!
In Christ,
Margarite

Hey mark

My dr prescribed me fluoxetine anti depressants , I naturally suffer from anxiety problems. I also wanted to ask is short term memory issues common with PCS? For example il read a paragraph and not grasp what I read I can remember things that happened a while back but my short term memory is completely off , also I've experienced nausea and I have been sleeping A LOT !! I'm scared that I have a brain clot or something :( . I hope I these problems pass over the next couple weeks , thanks x

Great to hear that you reconsidered your surgery for now..I think it will help you relax a bit more! :) Some days I have been very scared about my symptoms aswell, like days when I have felt kind of confused or my memory has been really bad or I just feel completely weird and crappy. I just try to distract myself the best I can and do things that makes me laugh. Since I have been able to watch movies again the past few weeks that has been really helpful in the distraction part (maybe not the best for healing my brain but I figured if I have tons of anxiety that will probably be worse than watching movies), I watch funny movies and they make me feel better. I also try to get outside everyday, even if it is just for 10 minutes some days, cause I easily get into this anxiety bubble where I start obsessing about my symptoms and feel even worse so just getting some perspective on my situation helps me a great deal. If you want to talk more you can message me! (not sure how or if it works though^^) :)

Thanks for your reply margarite

I promise to be extra careful with my head haha lets hope and pray I recover quick , I thank you all so much for helping me through this :D I just have to accept what has happened and I am still really early in recovery so fingers crossed