[missmyboy]

On March 22nd my six year old boy fell off a merry go round, hit the back of his head hard against it and then was dragged for roughly 30 seconds by the merry go round. I was a mess but my husband insisted that I was overreacting. We sat him down and after he calmed down he wanted to go on the swings. My husband was pushing him on the swings and then he suddenly fainted (however my back was turned and my husband did not see the front of son, I didn't know he fainted until my nearly 13 year old daughter told me he did when we came back from the ER) when he was about 5-6feet in the air and fell to the ground and hit his head in the same place he hit it on the merry go round (the back of his head). We immediately went home and I took him to the ER after he wasn't "right". His speech was slurred, his eyes looked "glazed", and he could remember anything after riding on the merry go round, he insisted he didn't even go on the swings. He was with a Grade II concussion rather than a Grade III because we THOUGHT he had no loss of consciousness until AFTER seeking medical treatment. THey sent us home with the only directions being no physical activity for two weeks. No referral for a followup, no suggestion to see a ped neuro, nothing.

About 11 days post concussion everything changed. My normally compliant, sweet, and empathetic boy changed into a different child. He became irritable, cried over EVERYTHING, became very oppositional, started saying cruel and hateful things to me, became aggressive, started destroying things, threatened to kill me and his sisters, said he hated all of us, tried to run away on his bike, said he wanted to kill himself rather than to live with us, jumped out of a moving vehicle (fortunately I was reversing out of our drive very slowly when he did so he was unharmed) and ran into the house and locked us out of the house for an hour, he is nasty and foul mouthed, he has a hard time falling asleep and in the morning is near impossible to wake, his teacher said he had trouble with being distracted at school post injury. I took him to a counselor about two weeks after this behavior/personality change and she suggested taking him to his pediatrician for a referral to a ped neuro. After the pediatrician examined him, she said she saw no reason for him to see a ped neuro, she said his eyes showed no evidence of sustained brain damage, everything checked out fine. So, the next step was a psychiatric assessment. We just got done with that, three days worth of testing but we won't get results for a month. I refuse to believe that my very sweet child SUDDENLY turned into this person overnight. I refuse to believe that he suddenly got a psychiatric disorder and all of this is completely unrelated to his head injury. He does finally have an appointment with a TBI clinic at our local Children's Hospital in three weeks. I cannot wait.

I miss my son. It has had a horrible effect on our family. My middle daughter has started acting out as well, attention seeking (she is almost ten). She like to antagonize him and get him going and then play the victim when he hurts her. My son is impossible. It takes four hours to get anywhere because once I do wake him, he refuses to get ready. He takes forever in the tub and will sit there even after I drain the tub, once he does get out he runs around the house naked kicking walls and furniture and screaming at the top of his lungs, he acts feral. My parents used to love his company but he is now no longer allowed over there because he has started being cruel to his cousins and my parents and they cannot handle him, truthfully, I can't handle him either, no one can.

I've been reading up on PCS and quickly losing hope. I feel like I will never get my boy back, that this new boy is here to stay and frankly, I don't like him. That is so difficult to say about my son, my very young son but it's the truth. I love him but I don't know how to handle this new behavior or who this person is. I just want my son back. What can I do to handle his behavior? Does it get better? Is there any hope of getting my son back to his old self? I'm very distraught over this. Our family is falling apart. I am desperate, mainly desperate for hope...