Morning all,

I'm the mom of a 17 y/o girl who was hit full force with a shoulder to the head when she was coming out of the net to save a shot (she's the goalie). She did black out for a few seconds (didn't realize that at the time until she mentioned she didn't remember the hit, falling or what happened right after).

Being the kid she is, she ignored the headache and ran a 1/2 marathon three days later. She went to the doctor on the Monday and he told her it was a concussion...just take it easy for a week or until the headaches were gone.

Long story short, she lied about the headaches and played in three more soccer games the week after taking it easy.

She finally admitted that the headaches were horrendous and was there all the time. This 90 percent student - graduation year - failed three tests in the weeks after the hit. One of the tests, she failed because she did all the calculations backwards.

Took her last week to a sports medicine clinic and it was confirmed that she has PCS and she was to take off a few weeks from school/work. She was put on an anti-inflammatory and tylenol 1's with codeine at bedtime to help her sleep. She is actually sleeping now at night for up to 12 hours which is a good thing.

She isn't reading, no computer but is watching TV. She's on house arrest basically and its driving her batty!

She's freaking out because this is her graduation year and she is terrified that she won't graduate with her class plus with no exercise for this fanatic she's going to blow up and not fit into her grad dress.....she is off school again this week and we'll have to see next week. She is in pre-cal, bio & chem...definitely not the classes you want to miss three weeks in.

Anyone have any suggestions on what the school can do/what I can do to help her with the tests that she has missed, assignments she has missed. She has short term memory issues and obviously putting a five page test in front of her and have her complete it will be basically impossible.

Sorry for the long essay but I'm really sick over this and wish there was something I could do to help her. The meds she's on don't touch the heachaches....suggestions on that also would be appreciated.

Thanks

Yuck...I'm so sorry you're going through this.

If you search my posts (PCS Learner) and those of NancyS on here you will see the trials and tribulations we went through with our teenage girls. Lots of the same struggles.

My daughter was a sophomore, which is way better than being a senior. Her GPA dropped about 9%. Now, as a junior, her GPA is back to where it was pre-injury. She is also in advanced or honors classes as your daughter is.

We listened to books on tape for English, I read a lot of textbooks out loud to her for other classes. I'll admit that I wrote quite a few papers for her. We would talk about the subject matter, but it didn't seem like a good use of her limited energy to sit and write the papers. Math is tricky...my daughter had some major vision issues that basically caused the numbers to dance around so that was the hardest subject.

Asking teachers for extra time on tests doesn't really do much to help, in my opinion. Instead ask them if you can substitute long, written tests with written reports on the same subject matter. If you google "concussion guidelines for school"...something like that...you will find some new guidelines put out by the AMA a few months ago.

We saw a sports psychologist who equated a head injury with any other type of soft tissue injury. She said, "If you had torn your ACL you would expect it to take several months to heal, right?" That seemed to put it in perspective for my daughter.

My daughter is also an athlete. She lost lots of "friends" when she had to drop out of sports. And, like your daughter, she freaked out about losing her muscles, gaining weight, etc. After a disasterous basketball workout that set her recovery back MONTHS, we started a gradual return to exercise by walking on the eliptical. I think she started at 2 minutes and increased it by one minute every week. She is now able to ride bikes, run, play ultimate frisbee, yoga, etc., without symptoms. She's just a different kind of athlete now.

Again, looking over those old posts will help you with some ideas for tracking down specific symptoms, treament options, etc. Everyone has a different experience with this. Otherwise all I can tell you is that she turned major corners at 6 mos, then at 8 mos. By 1 year post injury she was about 95% and at 18 months there was virtually no difference in her memory, concentration, performance at school, etc. No headaches since about 18 mos. This isn't something you can "push through".

Good luck!!

As others have said, your daughter needs to rest and take it easy. Her anxiety will only make her recovery slower and much worse. At her current state, going off to college in the fall HAS to be put on a back burner. Her brain health is the most important and will likely effect the rest of her life.

Her mistake in playing hurt has magnified her problems. The sub-concussive impacts she received after her severe concussion have hampered her brain's ability to recover.

Download the TBI Survival Guide at www.tbiguide.com and print it out. Read if and share the important points with her.

There is nothing she can do to speed up her recovery. Her test taking skills at this point are not even close to being representative of her abilities. Taking tests while symptomatic will just leave smudges on her academic record. She is injured. She needs to consider the time it takes to recover as pure and simple LOST time in her life. She needs to endure it the best she can without causing excessive stress and anxiety.

If she had broken her thigh bone, she would be out of commission for months. Her brain is worse. It does not have the ability to create scar tissue. Think of her brain as a sand sculpture in a vase. If you shake the vase, the sand gets mixed up. Imagine trying to sort out the colored sand and get it back where it belonged.

The brain needs to heal the neurons (only during REM sleep) all the while it has to sort out the bad connections (axons), rebuild them (the wires), and find the proper dendron to reconnect to. This reconnect is a hap-hazard process. The axon tries to connect, is either accepted or is rejected and needs to try another connection.

A recent article talks about stress and brain injury recovery. See http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...KyYuIQ&cad=rja

I lost more than half of my sophomore year and had to overcome the smudge in my grades. I went from better than 10th to 23rd in my class. Her college applications are already finished so the rest of the year will not impact her college as much. What will be the most important is for her to learn to work with her brain struggles. They may be with her for quite some time. Nobody can predict any time lines. Her brain's nutritional needs need to be a prime focus. This will help her establish good brain nutrition for the rest of her life. She will need it.

Regarding tests, work hard at trying to get her teachers to give her an alternative form of tests. A low stress conversational oral test would likely be the best result. The stress of looking at a page of questions overwhelmed my brain. The brain often cannot filter out the other questions to focus on just the one question. A second option would be a test with only one question per page or something that allows her to focus on only one item at a time.

Test taking can be a struggle and any skills she can learn for test taking with PCS will help her.

Hope she can understand the need to rest and drastically change her life until she has some recovery and has learned some skills for dealing with PCS.

My best to you both.

First, get her doctor to write out a order to put her on homebound
schooling. This can work many ways. Even to the degree that if she
can go back to school for the easier classes that she can do the harder
classes on a homebound type situation. Or the other way around.

ITs something that is done individually. But you can contact a advocate
in your state that can help you put this in place. I am a advocate in
Indiana, and can help you as much as I can. But its done different in
each state.

For one thing each of the books can potentially have tapes. If this is the
case you can get a copy and have them already. She could be listening
to them and trying to remember things. Then it would be okay for her
to take sections of test at a time. And even in a homebound situation,
it might be that you could give them to her orally at home. Were you
ask the questions and she explains the answers.

Donna

I am a junior in College and got my first of 8 concussions in the second semester of my freshman year. The only way that I barely passed was with the kindness of my friends. They read a lot of my books out loud to me and my professors were lenient on tests. My GPA went down from a 3.8 to a 2.0, but I got through it. The big thing was explaining to each of my teachers what I was going through. They didn't let me off the hook, my diploma has to mean something, but they did give me a lot more time on things and were very available to help me after classes. Also, for my math class where we would randomly have to get up and present problems to the class my professor assigned my problems to me in advance so that I would have more time to study. Some days I could participate in class and other days I would leave in the middle because I was feeling so badly. I just had to communicate with the teachers and they were very understanding. With your daughter they can look at her grades from previous years and see that she has always had pretty good grades, so often they will give her the benefit of the doubt.
It is only a month more, so I am sure that she can push through it. It might be best to take a year off before college, if that is her plan, but it will really help.
As far as fitting into her dress if she can do less intense floor exercises or yoga that might help her to feel better as far as getting rid of energy. I know that for me I try to go to the gym 3 times a week. Some weeks it works and other weeks it just does not. Don't do any contact stuff, even jumping rope or running it too bouncy for my head at least.

For me the big thing was having goals. I had to have a reason to push myself and your daughter seems to have one: graduating with her class. She just has to realize that she might not have the best grades, but she can pass if you communicate with teachers and really focus on not doing anything to exacerbate the problem.

As a junior in college with one full year since my last concussion, I am now getting a 3.0. It has been a struggle to get it that high, but I have cut almost everything out of my life except school. I still relax by watching movies, or just talking with people, but dancing, hiking, horseback riding, soccer, all this is out. I even have to be careful watching my friends play soccer because my second concussion was from a kicked volleyball. But, life is good. I know what is most important to me and I am chasing it no matter how hard. It keeps me from the depression which often accompanies PCS.

My friends are also wonderful, they have adapted the way they have fun in order to include me, and I in turn find ways to exclude myself sometimes so that they will go hiking or dancing or out for a drink without me. Life can be good with just a little determination and a firm decision to get better despite cutting many things out of my life.

Good Luck, don't let her get a second concussion because that is when the long term trouble starts.

Margarite

Very good comments.

The school should work with you on this. It is her senior year. And
its supposed to be great for her. Make them work with you.

Remember she has given them most of 12 good or great years.
Your only asking for say 1 or 2 good months from them.

Its not that bad a trade off.

Donna

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to all who responded with some great advice.

I've honestly been sick with worry about her....she is currently off school - this is her second week and its driving her nuts. I think the stress of thinking about what is waiting for her back at school and her attitude of "I'm not going to pass!" is making things worse. I'm going to speak to her doctor today and see if she can work at things at home at her own pace so she can feel like she's doing something to help her graduate.

The one thing she said to me yesterday was "I miss going for a walk" - broke my heart....her headaches haven't subsided but haven't gotten worse. The meds she's on haven't touched them so she is going on her 8th week of headaches...some days worse than others.

I forgot to mention this is her second concussion...she had one a # of years ago when she was hit in the head with a door. The other concern of mine is she had childhood seizures....they went away but that's always in the back of my mind.

She needs something to pick up her spirits...she was in her room last night hiding her sudoko book under the covers. She knows she's not supposed to be doing it or reading or anything really but she said it was driving her nuts.

I'm meeting with two of her teachers tonight at parent-teachers and hope to express to them that she is suffering something serious and she needs significant help to get through the next two months. I know one of the teachers - the pre-cal teacher is going to be a problem but then again...I'm seeing the principal next week to work out a schedule for her.

Once again,...thanks so much for all your advice and your thoughts....much appreciated and I don't feel totally alone in this.

I can say from experience that when my friends come for a visit (although they think staying for over an hour is good for me..it isn't) A nice half hour visit would be wonderful. So, schedule time that her friends come -- make brownies...(let them know ahead of time...short visit. She needs some normalcy in her life and she prob misses her friends.

As for tv...not sure how she feels after watching it...is that too much for her? I can't watch more than a few mins...even computer...I do 5 mins at a time.

I'm noticing new symptoms prob because I'm pushing myself too much.

I'm not sure what state you are in. But please when you talk to her
doctor ask if they would have her put on homebound for now. It is
usually being out of school for a minimum of 10 days.

This would help her by giving her a tutor. And some of her work at home.
I would also work through with her doctor that if you go with her or someone
else that helps her set a limit to the amount she walks that she can go for
a walk. And have her wear sunglasses for the headache.

When it comes to the fact that she had seizures. One of the things I would
consider is asking for one of the drugs that is a maintanance drug for migraines.

Such as topamax or depakote. There are others. This would maybe help too.

I would personally want to use something like topamax.

Donna