Is this right?

Margarite · 07-29-2010, 02:30 PM

I went to a neurologist finally and he said that I simply have migraines...Is that right? Can you have a migraine every day, at almost every hour of every day for 17 months?

17 months ago I was 19 at college in Wyoming and then I fell off a horse. I blacked out for 5 seconds, and had permanent amnesia for 10 hours (meaning I still don't remember what happened during that time). I am told that every 5 minutes I would ask the same questions over and over again. After about 5 hours my friends took me to the ER where I had a CT scan that came back negative.

I had really bad balance, headaches, nausea, memory, dizziness, trouble with light and sound, and just wanted to sleep all the time.

Three weeks later I was sitting watching a volleyball game from forty feet away. I looked down for a second and someone kicked the volleyball right at my head (on the opposite side as was hit before).

All the symptoms worsened but slowly all got a lot better. By summer I only had the constant headaches and drowsiness and a little bit of sensitivity to light and sound.

By the end of the summer even the headaches were almost gone and with them the rest of the symptoms. But as soon as I got back to the stress of school they came back a little and just stayed the same all semester.

That semester I caught more of what was going around than any other person. Before I hit my head I had almost never been sick.

By January I was feeling so much better with only a slight headache and everything else was gone. When my friends asked me to go sledding with them I thought it would be OK if I was careful.

I went down 4 times. Now my headaches are constantly bad. I have a lot of problem with light and certain sounds. When I have a headache (almost always) I have trouble concentrating enough to remember things. I am nauseated for a couple random hours almost every day. I suddenly get dizzy or light headed and have to hold onto the wall or something else to steady myself.

I went to see a neurologist and he ordered a MRI and MRA of my brain and an MRI of my neck. All came back normal. He has put me on Fioricet, Relplax, and Lortab. (not all at once, it is a progression depending on the headache).

Now he tells me that all I have is a migraine. He says that normally people do not get lifelong migraines from a concussion, but for some reason he does not know I have them. He said I will probably have them for the next 20-30 years, so I just need to manage them with meds and avoiding triggers.

He is the 7th doc that I have seen and the first to seem to know what he is talking about, and yet there are things about my headaches that he does not understand. Such as my headaches worsening with my heart rate increasing. Or why my headache bounces around my head like it has ADHD.

Also, I don't want to be dependent on meds and take Tylenol every day for the rest of my life....

Does his diagnosis make sense? Why can't he make sense of my headaches? What are these anomalies?

My family is also very upset. My parents are very frustrated with my more serious personality and with my constant desire not to be out in the sun or not to exert myself. My mom keeps saying that it must be allergies, my dad keeps telling me to try this medication or that one, try not eating this or that, try this that or the other thing.

No doc and no relative understands that this was caused by my concussion. That I know the difference between a sinus headache or a tension headache and my concussion headache. They don't understand why I don't want to do things or be a part of group activities. It is very depressing and very frustrating.

In three weeks I go back to college with intense 20 credit hour semesters. I am tired of barely making it, I want to excel like I did before I fell off a horse. I want to be happy again. I want to act like a 21 year old not a 65 year old. I want to have fun without my pill bottle and a bed to lie down on.

Sorry this is so long and so broken up one of the other neurotalk posters asked me to spread my posts out.

Thanks in advance for all you responses!
Margarite

Site Navigation

NeuroTalk Online Support Groups

Is this right?

NeuroTalk Forums