I have not been to this site in months! On June 8, 2009 my daughter collided with another girl playing soccer. She was diagnosed with a orbital fracture and severe concussion. Initially she could not walk, her memory was very bad, and too much stimulation gave her extreme headaches. She became an every other week patient at Children's Memorial in Chicago. Every visit was the same thing - we don't know how long the healing process will take come back in two weeks. After six months they wanted to put her on antidepressants and beta blockers - they could not give me any solid proof that these would help her. To me it sounded like it would just numb her symptoms, so we declined.

Though we kept going back to Children's I was alway looking for other answers. We went to many many hospitals, doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, etc. I could not except that this was going to be her life. Finally late May 2010 we went to see Dr Deborah Zelinski at The Mind Eye Connection. She did her "magic" put colored contacts on my daughter and life turned around. It was not instant, the first week she still had some pretty bad headaches. Today when wearing the contacts she is her old self. She just recently made a regional team again after 14 months of debilitating headaches. Scares me, but it's what she loves.

I question now how bad the concussion really was. Yes, I think she had one. But all those doctors we saw never looked past it. Was the damage to her brain or her eyes? We went to two different eye doctors and neither of them found this until Dr. Z. She had my daughter close her eyes, then she put colored lenses over them and rang a bell. My daughter had to find the bell with her finger, amazing, the 3rd or 4th color she used was teal and her finger went right to the bell. She also did they same type of test using prisms - the angle the light entered her eyes affected her ability to find the bell. I call it magic because I never even realized we still can see with our eyes closed. She did the testing on me and because I have good eyesight the only way I could not find the bell was when she put solid black over my closed eyes. Amazing!

Also, just a few days ago, my daughter was practicing in a racquetball court before school, when I went to get her I could see instantly she had a headache. Sure enough she forgot her contacts. Her workout was not very intense, it did not take much to bring the headache on. However she went home showered put on her contacts and by the time she came down for breakfast it was gone!

I know every case is different, but don't give up hope. Keep looking for a solution. I think some of these doctors are stuck in the "same old" rut, there are many new things we are learning, keep searching. I wish you all find the solution to a pain free existence!

I've been asking this same question "was it really PCS" as my daughter improves through vision therapy! Ours doesn't involve colored lenses, but instead a lot of homework using prisms, etc.

My conclusion is that PCS is a group of symptoms, so yes she did/does have PCS. I do wonder though if her eyes had been taken more seriously how much less suffering she would have endured.

So glad you found some answers!

I would suggest keeping an open mind about the PCS. Just because vision issues and therapy have provided the most improvement does not mean that your daughters' brains were not injured. My most problematic symptom is visual. Second to that is auditory. When I close my eyes, my auditory functions improve markedly. Too bad I can't drive with my eyes closed.

The way I understand it is this. Each sense requires a minimum number of processing cells to process that sensory input. Lets just use tactile, visual and auditory. Say you need 100x cells per sense. You have 300x shared between tactile, visual, and auditory. If 20 visual cells are damaged, the tactile and auditory cells can 'donate' 10x cells to visual processing.

The more realistic example would be a blind person who now has 150x cells for tactile and 150x cells for auditory. Now, both tactile and auditory sense have 50% more processing power. The ability to process Braille and the taps of a cane on the sidewalk has now improved greatly.

The receptors in the eyes that process color (cones) specialize in a specific wavelength (color spectrum) L (long wavelength) is for yellow, M (medium wavelength) is green and S (short wavelength) is violet. With the tinted lenses, a specific wavelength is blocked. It is likely that this wavelength had been overpowering the brain as compared to the other wavelengths. This resulted in processing chaos.

The prism lenses work similarly. The brain dedicates a great amount of processing power when it merges the image from each eye. If the image is too divergent, this process requires an overload of processing power. Or, some of the brain cells that do this merging may be damaged limiting how divergent the images can be that are merged. The prism moves the images closer so the brain has less work to do to merge the two images.

My father needed prisms decades ago as he started developing chronic encephalopathy ( brain atrophy) from oxygen starvation to his brain from chronic sleep apnea. The prisms lightened his visual load immensely.

I think the gist of this issue is that your daughters' brain may need to have a lessened sensory work load to function and top capacity. There are plenty of skills and work-arounds to help with this situation. Hopefully, the vision therapists, etc. can direct you to some of these skills.

Just remember, their brains have already shown how they react to trauma. Please help your daughters understand their need to avoid future injuries. Life is too long with too much to enjoy to lose out to Multiple Concussion Syndrome. Their injuries of today will become much more evident as they approach mid-life (40 to 50 years old.) They will have plenty of risk of head impacts from just ordinary daily activities. Walking on to an athletic field is a serious choice to ponder.

The NCAA, NFL and NHL are all giving concussions a serious look as they try to reduce the life long disability concussions can cause.

My best to you.

Interesting facts here, Mark, as always.

I don't for one second believe her brain was not injured. It was just more apparent in the areas that handle eye/brain relays and stress control. Her vision therapist has explained this in very simple terms so that she and I can best understand it. The therapy is brain training, not eye training. This is probably different from the type of therapy that involves different colors. Other than that all I can do is have a little faith and hope she keeps her head protected as much as possible.

I just wonder why none of the bazillions of docs we saw pointed us in this direction sooner. On the other hand some of the symptoms had to sort of simmer down before the eye stuff became obvious. I don't know...just extremely thankful we found this underlying issue and a caring, through doc to help us treat it. My instincts were SCREAMING that there was some underlying, treatable issue. It took a long time for someone to finally listen.

As for re-injury we are very cautious. She has "retired" from contact sports. She will probably run track this spring, and she runs and does yoga and all sorts of other activities. Losing her sports was devastating. I had to be the bad guy but I think I made the right decision. More importantly now that she is on the other side of the worst of this SHE thinks I made the right decision.

Just my opinion here, but enough things can happen accidentally in daily life to hurt your head without adding in the dangers of a contact sport. She goes through life at hyper speed, which contributed to her injury in the first place, so I am constantly reminding her "slow down, be careful".