I am 20 years old, and will turn 21 in April. I have had multiple concussions as I participated in Football and Wrestling in high school, and then went on to play a year of college football. I've been playing rugby, until last spring during a game I was kneed to the head, received 20 stitches, and another concussion......I then returned to play 3 weeks later, with no real problems. The next week at a rugby tourny the first game I felt concussion symptoms again and then took my self out of the game. That was May of '09 and I have had this hell since. Symptoms are/were nausea, migraines, hazy, no motivation, depression, dizzy, zoned out. I was on Amitriptyline for 6 months, which I've recently weened my self off. I have not been able to lift weights or train since, which was the biggest part of my life. At first I pushed through it like athletes are taught, as it was engrained in me to do so personally. Drinking is up and down as some times Ill feel fine and laugh and be loud as I usually am, and then other times I'll feel stuck or in a haze, basically feel like garbage. I've always been the loud, funny, and people person my whole life, and now it all seems gone.....Depression is what becomes of this, which no one ever wants to admit, but when your whole life has been taken away for damn near a year, it what becomes of it.......if anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it greatly or strories of someone who has become them selves again after a long struggle with Post Concussion Syndrome.....I'd appreciate it more than anyone could imagine.......Thank you very much

Hello bud. First off, I am terribly sorry to hear about what you are going through. My only possible comfort I can give you is my story. Although my concussion does not seem as intense as yours, I suffered a concussion five months ago that have given me a multitude of severe symtoms. Some of them were/are extremely blurry vision (tunnel like, very sensitive to light), lethargy, head aches, anxiety, depression (month and a half), decreased sex drive (virtually none) and many, many more. I, like yourself, would become very hit and miss when I was drinking. Sometimes I could forget a little, other times I took it to heart and became even more depressed. Prior to my concussion I was the happiest, most outgoing and funny guy you could ever meet. My injury caused me to become very dependent on friends/family/girl I was involved with. I became very socially withdrawn and felt like trash, just as you describe. These symptoms began to wein three months ago. The improvements were EXTREMELY slow and unnoticable day to day. The trick i've found is to track your improvement week to week. Very slowly things will come back to you. My depression/concussion was the darkest time of my life by far.

Five months in, I have regained a lot of what I had lost emotionally. Although I am still on sleeping pills and weining myself off, I am a much more functional and happy person. Time does not inch by, nor do I stare at the clock anymore. Life is much brighter. Although i'm no where near 100 percent, I know that I AM getting better and that thought makes everything bearable. My advice to you is to rest as much as you can. I made the mistake of taking on 55 hour work weeks through the heat of my depression because I wanted normalcy. You will feel MUCH better when you rest and are idle (even though it's emotionally difficult). The best thing I can tell you is that there IS hope, you WILL get better, I know because I went through something similar. I lost hope, never thought I would get better. I am, and just like you, I more than anything else would kill for the day I wake up "normal" again. You will buddy, keep the faith. Concussions are by defiintion temporary. Keep yourself out of harms way, rest up, and try and stay as hopeful and positive as possible. The happiness you lost will return to you. All the best

Welcome to NeuroTalk and the PCS forum.

Where do I begin???

Muddyriver,

You are likely suffering from Multiple Impact Syndrome. With each additional concussion, the damage you do to your brain gets much worse. Do some research about the NFL and concussions. They are struggling to find a safe way to keep players playing without destroying the rest of their lives.

The impact of a concussion may be temporary, but the symptoms are not necessarily temporary. Many symptoms do not even manifest the first few days. Some symptoms will not show up until weeks later. The brain is very slow to heal and also slow to respond to the injuries. The alcohol is contra-indicated. Light alcohol is OK but do not get drunk or even buzzed.

You have likely developed a brain that is much more sensitive to impacts than it was before. Rotational impacts are often the worse. There is far more shearing or tearing action in a rotational impact than in a direct impact. A boxer can be easily knocked out with a round-house to the jaw.

You need to understand that the brain does not behave like muscles do. Muscles can be challenged while they are healing without serious damage. The brain needs rest to heal. Very light exercise to keep blood flowing throughout the body is helpful but it can easily be overdone.

You need to learn to read your own brain. There are signs that it is getting too much strain. If you get a starry eyes feeling, you have gone to far. Note how much effort you were putting out. Next time, stop short of that level of effort. If you pay attention to all of the symptoms you feel when you relapse, watch for them when you exercise.

Exercise that causes an adrenaline rush is probably going to cause problems. Treat your brain like an injured body part. If you have muscle cramps, you adjust your nutrition. Same goes for the brain. It needs B vitamins, and a whole host of other nutrients to heal.

You may have long term to permanent personality changes. This is common with PCS. It will help if you identify where you are now and try to learn to accept the new you. Many PCS subjects develop problems with emotional/anger outbursts. Friends and family need to understand this. They can then help you learn to adapt to the outburst triggers.

It is great to hope for a full recovery but is helps to accept the here and now and try to move forward. Let us know how you are doing. You two appear to be new to the concussion experience. There are many here with long histories of concussions.

btw, You guys can help us out by limiting paragraphs to six lines or so. Many of us have visual struggles that make it hard to find the start of the next line when the paragraph gets too long.

I have a 15 year old daughter who on April 3rd fell at the playground and hit her head on the ground made of sand. I took her to the ER they told me she was fine no signs of a concussion. No tests ran. nothing. I waited till Monday and called her peditrician and he told me that she needed a CT Scan. It came back clean. Told me to take her home and give her plenty of rest and keep and eye on her. Then the symptoms just progressively worse so I took her back to the doctor and they admitted her into the hospital. She stayed over night and the Neuro came in and told me to take her home give her the ibuprofen(cuz tylenol does nothing for her)plenty of rest no activities for 4 weeks and come see him in 4 weeks. I did that still no improvement. they put her on an anti-depressent which really messed with her.They took her off that and put her on a blood pressure med and told me to take her for her 2nd CT scan and her EEG. That was the beginning of May (one month after incident). Now he has her on the blood pressure medicine and a musclle relaxer to sleep. the moods are still there. some days are worse than others. then she has days where all the symptoms are just like day one. He put back to normal stuff with caution. Any advice if I should get a 2nd opinion or just keep with the doctor I'm with? he is one of the top for children.

Oh boy...where to start?

First - welcome to this forum. You can find something about just about anything your daughter might experience on this journey. Use the search engine for info on specific issues. For example, I've never heard of blood pressure meds to treat PCS, but someone on here may have posted about it before so just type it in the search function. It actually makes a lot of sense to me. If not, start a new thread.

There are lots of parents of teenage girls here for some reason, and there are lots of teenage girls on here. There is something about the age/gender thing happening with head injury and post concussion syndrome. I am the mother of a 16 year old who is now 9 months post injury and still dealing with symptoms (lessening but still there).

I am definately not an expert, but rather than expending your time and money on a second neuro opinion, I would spend it looking for therapies. For example, does she need to see a chriopractor? Perhaps an endocronoligist to look at hormones? An ENT specialist to check for vestibular problems? A neuro opthamologist? Neurofeedback? Accupuncture? Neuros are, apparently, fairly notorious for the "rest and see" approach when there are some therapies that might help.

You are going to have to do the leg work and get it all figured out. Your daughter is still really early in her healing process. Some of her symptoms may not have even showed up yet. In my daughter's case, we had to wait for some of the constant symptoms to subside before she even realized she was having some vision problems.

You seem to have had the best advice for early treatment already (way better than I had) rest, rest, rest.

Others on this forum will provide you with better, more detailed guidelines. Just know that you are not alone, your daughter is not alone. This really sucks but you have come to a great place for support and guidance.

expwessions - Welcome to the forum. I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's injury. My daughter is also 15 years old and we are at the 7 month mark. Not to scare you - but we too are still dealing with symptoms - but she is so much better now than the first 3 months.

I concur with PCSLearner - REST and lots of it. Don't push her.

Should you get another opinion? Tough call. In our case, it hasn't been very helpful. They either told us one of two things - give it time - or your daughter has an underlining psychological issues (which she had none prior to her injury). Probably the most useful people that have seen her are our upper cervical chiropractor (www.nucca.com and you can search for one in your area) and the ARNP in the behavioral medicine clinic that my other daughter sees. She the one that helped me get the psychologist and others to see that it was PCS we were dealing with and not other issues. Had my daughter not freaked out at the acupuncturist - I think she too would have been good.

If you are into reading - "Brainlash" is a great book. When researching on the web - I'd recommend searching for information on mTBI or TBI. I found way more information that way than I did just looking for concussion stuff.

If you have questions or need a shoulder or a place to vent, there are lots of supportive people here. Remember, to trust your instincts as her mother. You know your daughter better than anyone else.

Expwessions,

So sorry to hear about your daughter, this is no fun. I did have success seeking a second opinion from a neurologist. The second one is wonderful and has helped me quite a bit in different areas (hormones, nutrition, headaches, referrals for other problems). I think he's a rare kind of doctor. I've also recently started seeing an upper cervical chiropracter and it is helping too. I had a terrible first neurologist experience so before I got my second opinion I spent a lot of time researching online doctor rating sites and the different areas of expertise and credentials for the doctors I was considering. I also think I got lucky to find a doc who listens, and cares more about helping me get better than his ego. It is a headache going through all the insurance referral and authorization song and dance. I've really learned from this experience that going to the right doctor is as important as the right type of doctor, it's made all the difference for me and was worth the extra effort.

That said, I'm almost at 8 months so I think some of the improvement is just because time is passing. I'm not all better, but sooo much better than I was at the beginning. It is slow and gradual. I've let a lot of things go so I can rest and heal. From what I understand, resting a lot right after the injury is crucial, and being very slow and careful to resume activities, stopping if anything exacerbates symptoms. This is not the type of injury you can "push through".

Best wishes,

Becca

My man......I appreciate you taking the time to write that....it means a great deal. I agree with everything you have written haha......It's just wild, and how most of the doctors just try and not shoot straight about this. Alls I've heard is new meds and no justifying answers(which I know PCS is not well researched or known for knowing answers to. I've been going to U of Iowa Neurology department. I recently found the U of Buffalo Sports and Medicine Concussion Clinic, which I am tossing the idea of going out there for there studies and therapy that have gotten athletes suffering from the same hell as we have, and got their lives back........I'm just hitting some real lows now, and no one really understands until they have gone through it or are going through it. I appreciate the comment and glad to hear your getting better bro. Hope is up and down, and like you said, Never been the guy to lose hope, or not be the life of the party.....thanks again!

You need to realize that with each concussion it caused more damage.

I personally have had more than a couple of concussions over the
years. Its easy to see now how long it takes to recover.

Donna

I understand time and patience are key to pushing through PCS, and I've never been the guy who wanted pity, showed weakness, nor wanted anyone to feel sorry for me, but it's very difficult while in college to watch all your buddies participate in the sports and training you have done your whole life, and drinking booze, as you know you can not anymore......Environment plays a huge role. What do any of you think of sleeping pills?

And I've been off my meds for about 2 weeks now, do you think I should stay off meds??? The Amitriptyline I was on was 100 mg tablets, which made me in a haze when I'd wake up and through out the day, then they switched me to Gabapentin, which I took for about a month, but I was dizzy and had nausea all day. So I talked to my neurologist and he said to stop taking them and they had another medicine in mind, but I do not want to take anymore medication, I feel better as in less dizzyness and nausea off of the meds.

What do you feel would be my best bet for the treatments all of you had posted?

Also, does drinking alcohol prolong symptoms and the PCS saga? One neurologist from the U of Iowa said he doesn't feel as if it should make things prolong PCS any longer.......but it just doesn't make sense to me.

For a while, Chewing Tobacco seemed to have no effect on my symptoms, but lately it seems as if it does have effect. I've read Nicotine slows blood flow to the brain.......which could be the reason for this. Anyone's thoughts?

I want to let you guys know that it's really good to talk to good people who genuinely care about others symptoms/problems, and know what each other are going through. I'm glad I'm reaching out and expressing questions and feelings on this **** **** PCS!

Thanks again for you opinions and comments! I really appreciate them! SQUAD UP MUDDY!!