added post about depression and concussion
 

I have minor issues with depression and SAD. I am taking meds and for that reason they would not prescribe anything else to help these bouts of sadness. I take lamotrigine and cymbalta. I have taken propanalol for sudden stresses. These bouts ebb and flow-one minute fine, the next wanting to cry without reason or for something very trivial.

I've probably asked this before, but, why are you taking the lamotrigine? Do you have seizures? They are not listed in your signature list of symptoms.

They are using lamotrigine as a mood stablizer. I have been on it for quite a while.

I had minor depression prior to my concussion. After the concussion, it got MUCH worse. My moods were all over the place and I got very anxious. Some of it can of course be attributed to major change in life circumstances (I couldn't work, my family had sudden financial strain due to this) but several medical professionals have told me that "depression makes concussions worse and concussions make depression worse." Bad biochemistry on top of bad biochemistry, I guess.

Anyway, I had my pre-existing anti-depressants increased, which helped for a while. When things continued to get worse, I eventually consulted a psychiatrist and switched to a new anti-depressant. It has helped quite a bit. I was also having some physical pain issues preventing me from exercising. Now that I've had several weeks of PT and am able to exercise again, my depression is under much better control.

I'm about to head off to a 10-day holistic depression management program: http://www.drnedley.com/10-day-depre...y-program.html Feel free to message me if you'd like to know more about it, and I can update when I get back.

Wow, my depression story reads much like yours Eowyn. The only difference is that not only did I have to change my anti-depressant, but I then had to keep increasing it. I have to admit, I was rather resistant and my Dr. was not pushing me (which I appreciate). But now that I'm on a higher dose of Paxil (yes, a rather old med), I'm so much better. I now have the emotional stamina to take better care of myself.

X-Soccergal

New Intro: Post Concussion and Worsening Depression
 

Hi,

I'm new to this website and am in search of anything and anyone who may understand what I'm feeling and may have some insight, recommendations, or even just some words of hope.

Short summary:
*Treatment resistant depression since 2006 - just started Viibryd

*History of 2 head injuries (fell off couch as child, and fainted and fell straight back on tile floor)

*May 5, 2012 sustained head injury while tubing behind our boat - must have been going so fast that when I fell off, I felt like I skipped like a rock on the water which felt like cement
**Immediate symptoms: unsure if I lost consciousness, I didn't move for at least 5 minutes and just floated there in the water, lost both of my contact lenses, bruised both eyes and eye sockets, pounding headache, felt very light headed and weak.
**Symptoms 7 hours later: Random bouts of nausea and dizziness, randomly lose my footing while walking
**24 hours later: Just didn't feel welland saw spots in my vision of right eye
**Two days later (May 7): went to eye doctor - have vitrious floaters in right eye
**Since then: random but few severe right-sided headaches, right side of body "just feels different," random loss of coordination, frequent delay and slowing of reaction time (hitting curbs while driving, swerve into other lanes and catch myself at last minute, running my shopping cart into the aisle and objects), randomly and frequently forget train of thought in middle of conversation and have no recollection of what I was talking about, and extremely labile moodiness.
**Labile moodiness: I will wake up with goals and a list of what I need to do and within an instant will go downhill and end up sleeping most of the day. I'll have moments where have a great mood and then immediately followed by depressed mood, feeling of hopelessness, fatigue, anger, frustration.
*May 14: Went to eye doctor because woke up with a grey veil or film in my vision of right eye. Eye doctor cleared me and said eye was fine. However, I still felt really weak, severe headache on right side, and weird sensation on right side of body (not weakness or tingling, just felt different). So went to the emergency room for CT scan.

*CT scan: no hemorrhage or anything was seen. Only thing the report said was "DIFFUSE INVOLUTIONAL CHANGES SEEN THAT ARE BEYOND EXPECTED FOR PATIENT'S AGE"

Today:
Tried getting into neurologist office but no one can seem to get me in till mid June! I don't want to wait! The emergency room was USELESS and the ER doctor didn't really know what the "involutional changes" mean or are indicative of. REALLY!? Negative feelings are consuming most of my day. I will try to pull myself together and go out for the day, but will end up meandering through a store just staring off into space. Ended up driving across town this morning in hopes of going to the bookstore and maybe shopping for some summer outfits. I ended up just wandering through one store and just decided to go home and slept for another 4 hours till 5pm.

I am tired. I want to get better. There are so many things I want to do with my life, but healthcare is useless! There are so many people in it for the wrong reasons. The fact that I have to wait 3 weeks to get an appointment anywhere is infuriating. What sets me off the edge is the emergency room and how they didn't want to do any other tests other than a CT scan. The neuro exam done by the physician was a joke. After the CT scan I just wanted to get out of there. However today I just want to find a better hospital and check myself in. I want a thorough workup. I want people to do their job and care about how I am feeling.

After 6 years of treatment resistant depression, I'm now exhausted more than ever and just want one thing to go right with my health. But it just seems to be declining slowly, which for a 30 year old should not be happening. I don't want to go to work anymore. Being alone seems to make things worse. When my fiance is home with me, I want to be better so badly that I just try to be better...which actually works. But the minute he leaves for out of town, it is a slow decline to what I feel today. I'm now taking Viibryd and have tried a number of stimulants like Adderall and Nuvigil to help with my chronic fatigue. I have to stop those due to the palpitations. So, if anyone is going through anything similar I'd love to hear from you.

If I can come up with some money, I was thinking of making an appointment with the Amen Clinic in Reston Virginia. I have read Dr Amen's books on SPECT imaging and don't know if maybe this would be worth a shot.

Anyways, it was nice to get all this out. Hope to hear from someone.
Cristina

Reposted for readability.
 

Hi,

I'm new to this website and am in search of anything and anyone who may understand what I'm feeling and may have some insight, recommendations, or even just some words of hope.

Short summary:
*Treatment resistant depression since 2006 - just started Viibryd

*History of 2 head injuries (fell off couch as child, and fainted and fell straight back on tile floor)

*May 5, 2012 sustained head injury while tubing behind our boat - must have been going so fast that when I fell off, I felt like I skipped like a rock on the water which felt like cement

**Immediate symptoms: unsure if I lost consciousness, I didn't move for at least 5 minutes and just floated there in the water, lost both of my contact lenses, bruised both eyes and eye sockets, pounding headache, felt very light headed and weak.

**Symptoms 7 hours later: Random bouts of nausea and dizziness, randomly lose my footing while walking
**24 hours later: Just didn't feel welland saw spots in my vision of right eye
**Two days later (May 7): went to eye doctor - have vitrious floaters in right eye

**Since then: random but few severe right-sided headaches, right side of body "just feels different," random loss of coordination, frequent delay and slowing of reaction time (hitting curbs while driving, swerve into other lanes and catch myself at last minute, running my shopping cart into the aisle and objects), randomly and frequently forget train of thought in middle of conversation and have no recollection of what I was talking about, and extremely labile moodiness.

**Labile moodiness: I will wake up with goals and a list of what I need to do and within an instant will go downhill and end up sleeping most of the day. I'll have moments where have a great mood and then immediately followed by depressed mood, feeling of hopelessness, fatigue, anger, frustration.

*May 14: Went to eye doctor because woke up with a grey veil or film in my vision of right eye. Eye doctor cleared me and said eye was fine. However, I still felt really weak, severe headache on right side, and weird sensation on right side of body (not weakness or tingling, just felt different). So went to the emergency room for CT scan.

*CT scan: no hemorrhage or anything was seen. Only thing the report said was "DIFFUSE INVOLUTIONAL CHANGES SEEN THAT ARE BEYOND EXPECTED FOR PATIENT'S AGE"

Today:
Tried getting into neurologist office but no one can seem to get me in till mid June! I don't want to wait! The emergency room was USELESS and the ER doctor didn't really know what the "involutional changes" mean or are indicative of. REALLY!? Negative feelings are consuming most of my day.

I will try to pull myself together and go out for the day, but will end up meandering through a store just staring off into space. Ended up driving across town this morning in hopes of going to the bookstore and maybe shopping for some summer outfits. I ended up just wandering through one store and just decided to go home and slept for another 4 hours till 5pm.

I am tired. I want to get better. There are so many things I want to do with my life, but healthcare is useless! There are so many people in it for the wrong reasons. The fact that I have to wait 3 weeks to get an appointment anywhere is infuriating. What sets me off the edge is the emergency room and how they didn't want to do any other tests other than a CT scan.

The neuro exam done by the physician was a joke. After the CT scan I just wanted to get out of there. However today I just want to find a better hospital and check myself in. I want a thorough workup. I want people to do their job and care about how I am feeling.

After 6 years of treatment resistant depression, I'm now exhausted more than ever and just want one thing to go right with my health. But it just seems to be declining slowly, which for a 30 year old should not be happening. I don't want to go to work anymore. Being alone seems to make things worse. When my fiance is home with me, I want to be better so badly that I just try to be better...which actually works.

But the minute he leaves for out of town, it is a slow decline to what I feel today. I'm now taking Viibryd and have tried a number of stimulants like Adderall and Nuvigil to help with my chronic fatigue. I have to stop those due to the palpitations. So, if anyone is going through anything similar I'd love to hear from you.

If I can come up with some money, I was thinking of making an appointment with the Amen Clinic in Reston Virginia. I have read Dr Amen's books on SPECT imaging and don't know if maybe this would be worth a shot.

Anyways, it was nice to get all this out. Hope to hear from someone.

Cristina


Reposted by

Cristina,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. Sorry to hear you are struggling so.

Your experience at the ER is par for the course. It has nothing to do with any normal standards of healthcare or lack thereof. Those of us dealing with PCS have seen this situation many times. The doctors just do not know much about concussion or post concussion syndrome. If you pass the basic neuro exam and don't have a bleed, they usually just pass you along.

Your first real question was my first real question so I googled it.

involitional is defined as:
2. a retrograde change of the body or of an organ, as the retrograde changes in size of the female genital organs after delivery.
3. the progressive degeneration occurring naturally with age, resulting in shriveling of organs or tissues.involu´tional

It sounds to me like you may have some wide spread shrinking of brain tissue that is more than would be expected for your age. This is probably similar to what would be called CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) if you were a football player and suffered lots of concussions and sub-concussive impacts.

This kind of a reading is a bit controversial because different radiologists will have different standards for making such a diagnosis.

The effect of such a change would usually be a slow progression of dementia. It may contribute to the cause of your intractable depression.

Regarding your concussion, You are still very early in your recovery. You suffered quite an impact.

And yes, water can feel like a cement surface when going fast enough. Think of what it is like when a barefoot skier falls at 40 mph. Ouch. I have a cousin who has barefooted at 90+. She is nuts.

What other head traumas have you suffered over your lifetime? Did you play sports, soccer, etc? Any high fevers? Other insults to your brain?

How old were you at your second concussion?

Have you had any cervical diagnostics done? You likely have suffered a myriad of vertebral injuries, especially upper cervical resulting in inflammation causing a myriad of issues, poor vertebral artery blood flow, nerve dysfunction, etc.

Add that on top of your other issues and you deserve to be a mess.

Has anybody done any hormone analysis? A good referral source is : https://www.womensinternational.com/..._referral.html Getting a specialist to balance your hormones can change your life. Most gyno's and endo's use a wide range to analyze and a shot gun to treat. Targeted analysis and treatment makes a big difference. And no, you are not too young to have hormone problems.

There are more things to consider but this is already a fire hose full.

We are here for you. We understand your struggles.

My best to you.

Hi Cristina,

Welcome to Neurotalk. I'm sorry to hear about your struggles too.

After reading your post, I can't help but think that you are trying to do too much. You are expecting too much of yourself given what your brain can handle right now.

You recently (May 5) sustained a head injury. That wasn't too long ago. The best thing you can do to heal as quickly as possible at this stage in the game is to rest it! If you get lost in a store, it's probably a sign that you shouldn't be heading into stores right now... whatever you're having trouble with might be a sign that your brain is overloaded and needs rest.

Rest doesn't have to mean laying down in a quiet, dark room. But it can mean not demanding that your brain operate the same that it did before this latest injury. It will take time to heal itself. You need to reduce the amount of stimulation that you surround yourself with so your brain can rest.

I sustained a head injury in an auto accident almost two years ago and I'm still not functioning as well as I was before the accident. My brain still requires a lot of rest. I'm significantly better now and I've been given an excellent prognosis. But it's still unwise for me to demand that my brain to do what it could before the accident I was in. Overdoing it like that can cause a setback and prolong my recovery.

If you feel like sleeping, that's probably your brain's way of telling you that it needs you to sleep so it can heal. I would recommend that you sleep as much as you can.

Of course this kind of trauma is going to cause you to feel depressed and probably anxious too. It's normal.


:hug:

Hi, Cristina,

I also suffered from depression before my concussion. It was mild and fairly well controlled, but the concussion made it get MUCH worse. I can really identify with not feeling like you can get anything done.

Probably, at this point, you SHOULDN'T be trying to get much done. Your brain needs time to heal from the most recent impact. You mention trying to drive, going into stores, having a big list of things to do. Is there any way that you can clear your schedule for the next few weeks and just take things easy?

I recently participated in a depression recovery program that focuses on brain health. It really helped me a lot with both my depression and my post-concussion symptoms. It uses natural remedies that help optimize your brain and a lot of them are simple things you can do at home like walking outdoors in the sun. You can find more info about the doctor who runs it at http://www.drnedley.com

Keep in touch here on the board. There is a lot of wisdom, and more importantly, we have been where you have and know how awful it feels. You can get through this, even though it might not feel like it sometimes.

:hug: