Looking for Answers and Hope, New Here
 

Hi everyone. I just found this forum and a lot of interesting posts and discussions. I thought I would post my experience and see if I could get some advice. I am a 21 year old male and had a snowboarding accident without a helmet (all my fault :() almost 2 years ago (Jan 2016). I rolled over on my neck multiple times. I didn’t feel anything bad after that, and I just kept snowboarding and must have had minor falls here and there after that.

10 days later, I had the most severe headache of my life and I usually never get headaches. Ever since then, I’ve had chronic headaches, literally all day. Sometimes they would be like my brain was moving inside my head. I didn’t understand what was going on for over a month. I was in another country, and I kept calling my mom and telling her I had crazy headaches that were making it hard for me to study. All of a sudden after three weeks she suggested it might be a concussion and made me fly back home to Canada to see my GP. My GP just shrugged it off and told me it would get better. Saw him after another week, and asked him for a neuro referral. He gave me one who I ended up getting an apt with for a year and a half later. In the meantime, I went to a headache clinic where they put me on a vitamin regimen but it didn’t really help.

I survived all of mid 2016 – mid 2017 on feverfew. It was a random herb I found, but it was a miracle. It just stopped the headaches as long as I took it twice daily. But if I missed a dose or took it too late, I would get terrible headaches. Summer 2017, I finally saw a neuro, he told me I had PCD, put me on Propranolol and told me that he can only treat the symptoms. Propranolol worked fine for a while, with me having no side-effects and all the headaches gone.

Now, three weeks ago (after ~4 months on propranolol), I worked out my shoulders (just started working out in the gym). Using 15kg weights, I did a whole shoulder workout. I don’t know if it was that, or just the winter starting, but the propranolol stopped working and the headaches came back. I know my neck was always a little sore after my injury, but I never felt it to be so sore when the propranolol was working. Now it’s sore again. I have an appointment with my neuro this Tuesday to discuss what happened. I started taking feverfew again, but I still have light headaches.

The headaches are always weird. Sometimes they can be one sided, sometimes they can be 2 sided. Sometimes they can be all over the place, sometimes it’s like my brain is moving in my head. I do take Tylenol occasionally but I am afraid of taking too much too often and getting rebound headaches which I think I got a few times back 1.5 years ago when I first started using pain killers and naproxen.

I have a few questions. 1. Apart from treating the symptoms, does anyone know if it is possible to actually get rid of the headaches once and for all? This is perhaps the most depressing factor in my life, because even with the feverfew I have light headaches and I’m really worried that even the feverfew may stop working. I’m starting CompSci next year at UofT and I am so worried that I won’t be able to cut it because of these headaches. 2. Does anyone have any ideas on whether my neck could be related to the equation? Is it worth looking into Physio, Chiro and all that? I’m really skeptical of Chiro (I’m sorry I am a skeptic at heart, but I am willing to try it, currently doing homeopathy on my parents orders). 3. Are there people who managed to heal from their concussion and headaches after such long periods of time (e.g. 2 years in my case)…I feel really hopeless a lot of the time and I feel like I won’t be able to support and help my parents if I don’t manage to keep these headaches at bay or finally get rid of them. (They are really nice and tell me that they would never expect that from me and are really supportive)

If anyone could please reach out to me I would really appreciate it. It’s been a very long 2 years, and I was really excited and pleased to find this community. I often feel lost when looking for solutions to my problem because every clinic I look into seems to be claiming that they can fix me but I can’t tell what’s good and what’s bad. There are so many pent up feelings I can’t express in my writing here, but suffice it to say there are a lot of tears that I have to fight back in order to keep a brave face for my family and little brother. I know this accident was all my fault, but my dad always tells me that we all make mistakes, it is how we deal with them that makes us who we are.

Manwar,

Mark will get to you, he'll have answers and or questions for you.

I broke the left side of my skull and above my right eye in an accident that was my fault and totally avoidable if I listened to my little voice that was yelling at me to not do what I did. You'll get over it, like your dad says life is full of mistakes.

I still have mild headaches after 3.75 years now mostly daily but I have adapted to living with them and some days don't notice until my wife asks. Some days it would feel good to hit it with a hammer to relieve pressure, or so I imagine.

Be patient and do what you are capable of doing, it does get better.

I thought that skiing with a helmet was for sissies but won't be caught dead without one for water and snow since my accident, they are a great invention!

Bud

Your neck could be a trigger for your headaches. But, if you can write War and Peace, it appears you are doing OK. It is too much information and overloads me such that I struggle to sort through it to understand what is going on.

Lifting weights tends to cause a lot of muscle tension in the neck. Maybe you need to try to find somebody who can assess your neck and help you relax the muscles.

There are many different protocols for upper cervical therapies. Chiro has half a dozen ICA Council on Upper Cervical Care - Diplomate Program

Some osteopaths are good with upper necks. Some physios, too. You just have to find the good ones. It can take a lot of visits to find the right one.

The propranolol success suggests it is a blood pressure issue. Brain stem concussions/inflammation can cause disregulation of blood pressure.

It sounds like you just need to try different protocols.

My best to you.

Manwar, if you are looking for hope. I had a bad concussion when i was 18 i think. Took years before the pain went away. I think i got migraines almost weekly for about 4 years. I dont remember how long it lasted. Then it went to once every 2 month. Now i dont even remeber when my last migraine was. Never got treated for it. I was already used to chronic pain since i had a hit and run when i was 8 that left my with a painfull leg, so i didnt care about pain that much. So yes it can go away after years.

What mark said about the neck etc. is true. Now on my second bad concussion (which is almost gone) physical therapy resolved pain fast. These things can be adressed.

It's common that when people suffer from head injuries, they also suffer from a neck injury since those parts are close together. There may be a certain point where you have healed from the head injury but still experience migraines due to the neck pain. Or it could be some combination of both. If you grind your teeth at night it can make the neck pain worse.

The best thing you can do is rest, drink water, eat healthy, and stretch your neck with yoga or physical therapy. Avoid coffee and other stimulants, even if they may be tempting because headaches are exhausting. I had horrible migraines for almost 2 years and it took me a long time to learn my triggers. Once I made some simple life adjustments, the headaches went away and life becomes way more manageable again. Good luck!

I don't know if it will help you, but I will mention that what made a major difference for me was starting an anti-inflammatory diet. Some searches in this forum will bring you to some great threads about anti-inflammatory diets. Of course it's not a cure-all but it might be one step towards getting better, along with what others in this thread are recommending.