Question for Mark in Idaho
 

You are very knowledgable, and after reading your symptoms in your signature, I am just wondering about your concussion history. How many? How'd you get them? Etc...Thanks.

My first concussion was in 1963 when I fell down a flight of stairs. No LOC but a good sized bump on my forehead. In 1965, at 10 years old, I had a serious bicycle accident. 30 minutes LOC. Three days slurred speech in the hospital. No follow up treatment.

Ever since then, I have been very sensitive to any head impacts. I have a history of 14 notable head impacts. One serious, four moderate and the rest mild to very mild. In 1996, I stood up under a low beam and had to lay down for 10 minutes before I could get back on my feet. In June, 2000, I was assaulted and slugged in the back of the head. January 2001, I took a bad step off a curb and jarred my back from pelvis to head. Everything changed after that simple jarring.

I can track academic struggles after each head impact by looking at the report cards my mom kept. I had to drop out of Pre-dental college due to my inability to tolerate the stresses of college life. I suffered two concussion like events my freshman year. One was a 105 degree fever and the other was a vertical jarring from jumping feet first into water that was shallower than I expected that resulted in a back injury.

I realized that I did not tolerate stress well so I tried to keep job stress to a minimum, eventually operating a solo business after the stress of having employees got to be too much.

I developed a seizure disorder in high school from heading the ball playing soccer. My grades plummeted a full grade point for a full year before recovering to straight A's. I had a similar grade point drop my second semester in college.

At present, I can give myself a concussion shaking my head "no." I have to be careful when riding in the car on a rough road.

I have followed concussion issues since college (1974). My serious research into concussion began after my injury on January 16, 2001. It was a work injury while temporarily employed by someone else. I unsuccessfully tried to get Work Comp benefits as this injury caused me to go on permanent disability due to my memory dysfunctions and other limitations.

I can still be very high functioning if I have time to pace my activities. If the pace of my activities are controlled by someone else, I will struggle under the hurry up time constraints. It will often take me twice as long as expected to get a task done.

It was not until about 2003 that my family and I began to understand my personality difficulties such as outbursts. My mother told my wife that my personality changed in 1965 after the bike accident, no longer her 'sweet little boy.' I now understand why I lost almost all of my school friends that year. I struggled with depression and suicide ideation for almost two decades before getting help with my nutritional regimen in 1982. My wife tells me I had a serious personality change after the assault in 2000.

I have no problem talking about my life. It helps people understand concussion and TBI/mTBI. They often will apply this knowledge to a friend or family member who has suffered an mTBI or TBI. Knowledge can drastically change how we look at each other and life.

So sorry to hear about all of this Mark. I had no idea you had so many impacts. I can only imagine the struggle...what types of memory problems do you have now?

Both of my Neuro-Psych Assessments (2002 and 2007) have diagnosed my short term and immediate auditory and visual memory in the bottom 5 to 12 % of the population. Fortunately, my WAIS-II scored IQ's are still in the top 10% with most in the top 2%. Using work-arounds, I can still do just about anything if I am given enough time to think through the task.

I know to not fight against my memory dysfunctions. Instead, I use work-arounds and other techniques to accomplish the memory required tasks. I had an almost photographic memory up until 2001.

My bigger problem is over-attending. That is when the brain is trying to process too much information at the same time. I have to isolate myself or my thoughts so I can focus on a single mental task.

I struggle with visual clutter and auditory clutter. The new MS Office 'ribbons' system has stopped me dead in my tracks. There is too much visual information for me to sort through to do any word processing or Excel tasks.

If I need to pay attention to an audio stimuli, I need to use ear phones and/or close my eyes to get the audio focus to actually hear and process the information. Foam ear plugs also help to reduce the volume of background/ambient noise.

I do my best communicating by computer. I use the text I have typed as my short term memory. I can reread what I just typed to remember the topic I am writing about.

I can talk about information that I have 'overlearned' but struggle to maintain my train of thought with new information or abstract information.

fyi, Overlearned skills or information are skills or information that were so deeply embedded in cognitive memory and muscle memory that they are highly functional even though short and immediate term memory skills may be serious deficient.

Even with many overlearned skills, I still have to stop to think from time to time to remember a skill, such as righty tighty, lefty loosey.

With stress, the brain can easily mix up skills or even reverse them. This is a problem for me when driving. I avoid driving in busy or congested traffic areas. The stress causes to many problems.

Long ago I learn an important axiom. People like us need to "Stop to think" to avoid the errors and screw-ups due to our brain malfunctioning.

You should look into getting employed for doing this. You are far more knowledgeable, and explain things far better, than any health professional I have so far been able to access. Thankyou for all the hours you clearly put in to giving advice on here.

I agree. Mark in Idaho knows a lot more about mTBI than my family doctor. He asked me what a mild traumatic brain injury was, I kid you not. I told him "it's like a concussion". That's a crying shame considering that Canadian medical schools are among the toughest to get accepted into. We should have the best doctors. smh

I concur. Thank you Mark! You are doing a world of good for all of us and I appreciate it more than I can say!! :)

I almost got off on a tangent about the current medical profession and decided to keep my mouth mostly shut; not that they are all bad. I agree everyone!!!! You have given me some very good pointers which I intend to use and numerous others have benifited. Keep it going. Thanks for giving some of us something to wrap our arms around. We don't get that with the doc's.
Mike