Small Bumps and Sympton Return / Exercise After
 

Hi All,

Wanted to get others feedback to see if you may have had the same issues. I have had 4-5 mid grade to serious concussions in roughly a 3 year period due to playing baseball and rugby. I had a serious one in late 2015 that took roughly 9 months to get over as I kept trying to exercise and lift prior to full recovery.

Since 2016, every small knock to the head (always seems to be forehead), even those that wouldn't seem to cause enough force to cause a concussion give me a headache, visual issues, and brain fog (usually very sleepy for first 1-2 days too). Once I get over the symptoms, I can run, jump, do exercises that would seem to put more force on my head than any small bump, but when another small bump occurs, I have prolonged symptoms again.

My last case was a tiny bump to the forehead over a week ago. I have been dizzy since and went for a long walk yesterday because I was feeling better and now I am so dizzy I can stand up.

So to sum up, I have 2 questions:

1. Do others have issues from extremely small knocks to the head, or is this some sort of hypochondria?
2. To follow on the above, why would even light exercise make me feel awful if such knocks were minor? Also, I seem to feel fine after excercise but my symptoms come on the next day, is this the same for everyone else?

Yah I experience something sorta similar. When I get an impact to my head it would immediately cause this very specific feeling. It was like this sick nauseaus feeling and feeling a little faint and like I wanted to rest. Generally this feeling would go away the next day or after a couple days. This is what pushed me to quit contact sports. I had one definite concussion and many of these smaller impacts btw.

However, this was caused by an actual impact (dunking the ball and throwing it through the rim directly into my head, being elbowed hard, hitting head on boards, etc)

If I slightly bump my head on something now nothing happens unless I focus on it and start worrying and then my anxiety kicks in and causes symptoms.

Ive also had many problems with walking that you can read about in my old posts. I've reduced my walking to simply what I'm comfortable with and what I have no choice but to do in my day to day life and activities. This has helped.

So how hard are the bumps your talking about? If it's relatively hard ones that cause you problems then Id say it's fairly normal but if it's really soft impacts you would have never worried about before your last concussion then I'd say it more anxiety related.

Could you go more into detail about your concussions, how you got them, how bad, did you get knocked out,etc?

Are you seeing or have you seen doctors to tell them about your problems? If not I think you definitely should.

I also read something online about nerve sensitivity in the head and neck following a concussion being the reason for sending the return of symptoms after mild bumps. That could be a bunch of bs and I've never heard any doctor talk about this but the truth is we know relatively very little about the brain and concussions so that theory is as good as any.

Oddly, even the small bumps directly to the head are what causes the issue. What shouldn't even cause a headache sometimes brings on the symptoms even if I am in the middle of sleeping and get a small bump that wakes me up. After the small bump I am usually very groggy and will sleep an extra hour or two the day or two after it happens.

These happen every 3-6 months since 2015, which was a bad head to head collision which caused 8 months of symptoms. My last "bump" was a week ago and was nothing more than a slight tap. I went to the gym an hour later feeling ok, then with the start of exercise I got nauseous. I felt fire the rest of that day after the gym and my symptoms flared back up the following day. As mentioned, my symptoms seem to get worse the day after exercise even if exercise doesn't cause an issue.

I have been to several neuro's and concussion therapy in the past along with neck related therapy to help fix any cervical issues. They seem to help while there but nothing has helped with the return of these issues.

I'm not really sure what to say other than try not to worry about it and don't look for symptoms. I agree these minor bumps are a nuisance but theres not much you can do about it so its best to just pay no mind to these insignificant bumps. Perhaps if you stopped thinking about it you would notice this feeling of increased symptoms start to fade. I don't see any way a tap could do anything physiological to you so it sounds to me like your looking for symptoms.

How do you manage to receive a bump in your sleep and how do you know you received one if you were sleeping? And maybe you feel groggy because you woke up in the middle of the night? Its normal to feel groggy in this circumstance and a bad nights sleep where you woke up in the night can easily make you feel bad the next day.

What did your doctors say about all this?

I've tried to tell myself to not worry about it, small bumps wouldn't affect me, etc. but it seems that I struggle to exercise after these issues as its brings on worse symptoms. I understand it could be in myhead, but wonder why exercise would bring on dizziness/headaches the next day.

Usually I will wake up if I get a bump to the head at night although there are times where I think it's sort of a dream when I get the bump from my partner. The grogginess is usually much more pronounced though after one of these knocks as I feel much more sleepy than normal for 1-2 days.

Doctors haven't really dug in to that much depth, I've really just been told that smaller knocks could cause issues due to my extensive history.

Again, how do you know you are getting knocks while your sleeping? I have a lot of anxiety over getting another concussion and ill often have nightmares in which i hit my head and that will cause my wake up but it doesnt mean i hit my head it just means i had a nightmare. I dont think your gonna breal this cycle unless you accept this is probably all in your head.

Once or twice I have been awake when this has happened but I also have had the nightmares where this happens although I don't wake up with the fog/headache everytime. I did try to convince myself a week ago that my last knock was in my head but after intense exercise I get extremely nauseous now.