New concussions or setbacks?
 

I had 'the' concussion that brought about my PCS 8 months ago now. After 3 months I had a month of remission where I was free of daily headaches, the fatigue improved significantly etc. I relapsed on month 4 after playing football/soccer and the problems came back (in retrospect I still can't tell if it was a relapse or another concussion from shoulder-barging).

In the past 4 months following the relapse/setback I've gradually improved again and for the past month again my headaches had significantly improved.

Two weeks ago I finally decided to go to a 'concussion clinic' in the capital where I was given ocular and vestibular exercises by a... physio-therapist.

One of the vestibular exercises was this gaze stabilization exercise where you shake your head side to side while focusing on a letter chart in front of you.

The therapist recommended starting with slow head shakes and progressively increasing speed up until 180 beat/m on a metronome.

This Wednesday I finally got to 180 beat/m with disastrous results. I did it for a couple of minutes and immediately stopped after I got a strange sensation in my head, not dizziness but the feeling that my brain was hitting the sides of my skull in my head (which it obviously was given the movements)... I think I may have concussed myself by violently shaking my head side to side...

I developed nausea not too long after that exercise and only stopped myself going to the ED because the nausea subsided after an hour. Since yesterday I've been experienced something akin to the first few weeks of my first concussion - sound and light sensitivity, terrible headaches, crippling mental fatigue, fogginess etc etc

My question is how are we supposed to tell whether we have a bad case of setback/relapse or a new concussion? It seems ridiculous that we can get concussed from shoulder barging in soccer or fast head turning but I have read cases of individuals with PCS who were fainting after relatively light accidental bumps on their head from a stray elbow so who knows, maybe a PCS brain can have a concussion threshold of a few gs.

They can't be concussions from shaking your head side to side, so no, your brain isn't hitting the side of your skull. You haven't fully healed yet from your concussion, and these shakes are aggravating the initial injury in some way, in my opinion. It could be related to your head or neck, or both. With that being said, your doctor obviously thinks these are harmless, or he wouldn't have you doing them. If I were you I'd stop them, but other people, like your doctor, might advise otherwise. Its really your call to make.

I had a medical professional of some sort tell me to do the exact same head shaking exercises, and I really didnt like it so I didnt go back. I told my doctor that it wasn't worth the risk of prolonging my recovery. I don't think he agreed (since this head sensitivity is pretty rare amongst concussion patients and not yet widely recognized as an actual thing).

I also have the sensitivity to bumps, and usually after things flare up, they revert back to what *my* normal situation is after anywhere from a couple days to a month. I've been told that these aren't doing any damage, but just causing setbacks of some sort, as you put it.