vestibular therapy not helping anymore?
 

After the first couple weeks of my vestibular therapy I was very excited because I was noticing a difference in my dizziness and my headaches were almost gone! But since then I've been having a marked increase in my anxiety/emotions/chest pains and my eyes, that used to only be blurry with movement, are now blurry pretty much all the time.

I've also noticed an increase in confusion and brain "buzzing" that is very distressing. It's so hard to tell what's causing what because I don't live in a perfect world where the only change in the past 5 weeks has been added vestibular therapy! The headaches are still pretty much gone which is great and the actual vestibular exercises are getting much easier so must be helping for that.

For now I'm going to continue the vestibular therapy but we've stopped the walking exercise and are sticking to the seated head movements and standing still balance moves. I've stopped doing lumosity online sessions because I think they might be the cause of the further eye problems although I was noticing mental improvement with doing them.

My therapist says that if the increased symptoms don't settle down we will do a trial of stopping the treatment altogether for a few weeks to see if there's improvement. Next week I see the neurologist (sports concussion clinic) in Toronto who might have a different view on therapy or what I should be doing so we'll see.

Has anyone else had an increase in symptoms a few weeks in but then they get better? Anybody had increase in eye symptoms? I had the expected increase in certain symptoms for the first few days after each session but this is lasting too long.

I hope you are all having a good day!
CC

Therapies in Ottawa & Beyond
 

Hi CC,

I am in Ottawa too. I had a concussion in Jan. 2012 and still have PCS. I have tried quite a few therapies with little to no success. I have gotten back to being able to do some exercise and social events but have had quite a few setbacks. It has been a very slow recovery trend with lots of physical and emotional ups and downs. Perhaps we should talk/e-mail about our various treatments. I still think I have missed something. I have 3 more professionals on the horizon to work with in the Ottawa area (a chiropractic neurologist, an upper cervical chiropractor and an interesting MD/naturopath).
A current setback last weekend has my brain not liking screen time again. must keep this short.

TommyB ; )

Sorry to hear things are not going well. It really sounds to me like some vision related deficiencies. It was such an important diagnosis for me...and finally getting prisms has allowed me to read, use the computer, and do better with my vestibuoar rehab.
I have put a link to some general info in case you don't have it.

If I recall correctly :)??, you are still waiting for the neuro-opthamologist. I would suggest going to an optometrist who does similar testing ( for binocularity post brain injury!) and who is into the behavioural side of vision. I had asked mine to give me names in Ottawa...she did...and I lost them! I will try again and send you those names.


http://www.braininjuries.org/

Good luck!

I Had to Put on Hold
 

I had to put on hold because of I needed a new vestibular therapist and because I have my jaw thing going on that is first priority now.Since I stopped vestibular therapy I seem to be running into things again and just have to be more careful because I'm feeling my balance off again....

I stopped 2weeks now and I still get the motion sickness & nausea but not as bad as with therapy and still getting vertigo more now.I start back with a new therapist in March.

Hope you get to feeling better

I have been seeing a neuro-opthalmologist for vision therapy. I have prism glasses which has helped with reading and watching video, but I am still slow with processing and memory issues (i.e. I can't remember what I just read!).

Although they identified some vestibular issues, the opthalmologists recommended stabilizing my vision first before starting vestibular therapy.

Perhaps vision issues are at play as well?

Best of luck!

Here is a lnk for vision stuff which also has a directory. There are Ottawa listings.
http://www.covd.org/

Thank you for all of the information! I am not in Ottawa, in fact I am about 6+ hours from Ottawa. Closer to the Toronto area. I totally agree that I have eye issues and I have seen my optometrist 3 times. I've been trying to get a referral to a neuro ophthalmologist and was told I have to see an optometrist first. Soooo Optometrist appointment isn't until the end of May and then he has to refer me to neuro.

I've heard that it can be up to a year to see a neuro ophthalmologist so I'm very frustrated. I feel like my healing is on hold until I can get these eyes taken care of. I don't think they're as bad as some of you though because I am able to read it just causes strain and I can focus on things if I try and am not moving. I think it's my right eye in particular that's off.

I see a new neurologist next Tuesday and I'm hoping she will refer me to the neuro ophthalmologist so I can skip the step in May. I have my hopes up too much on this appointment next week but don't we all when we go see new doctors! I know there's no magic pill but I'd like some relief/hope for the eye symptoms. I just want to be able to walk again without everything getting worse!

I'm going to check out the links posted and see if there's a closer doctor. Money's really tight right now and spending $1000 to see an eye doctor that might not even know what he's talking about doesn't appeal to me much. I'm still trying to decide on whether to have the neuro psych testing or not so trying to save where I can.

Thanks again for the help!

CC

May have found one!!
 

Mokey this link you sent has a doctor that's only 15 minutes from me!!! I've been looking at the NORA website and had not seen this link before. Thank you so much for posting it! I'm going to call and see if I can get an appointment. (probably need a referral and it'll be 6 months to see him but at least it's something!) I've looked everywhere (I thought) to find someone so this is great! Kind of ticks me off that my optometrist wasn't aware this guy was just down the block from him... hmmm...

Thanks again!
CC

great! good luck!