Hello and please help! (And pardon if a similar case has been threaded previously)


(I am 4 months post initial concussion)


This past summer in June I bumped my head while exiting a car and managed a slight concussion with the usual symptoms, a couple weeks after that a very minor bump to the head again occurred and then yet again a month afterward I knocked my head while entering a car. Each of these bumps to the skull seemed to significantly reduce the recovery that happened after the initial impact.

But these have all been slight impacts, and for them to invoke the resulting symptoms (slowed cognition speed, rusty memory, becoming less articulate, difficulty reading) is certainly laughable and saying I have such a soft head.

As the months passed, every time I felt I was approaching normalcy I'd shake my head too much while I talked to someone, or just ever so slightly bumped it, or was too quick to putting a sweatshirt on (it's such a chore to wash my hair even!), and the symptoms of having my overall cognition/memory slowed would flood myself again (but never to the point of the severity the first minor concussion, and the recovery time between each damaging event has been lessening).

I tried seeing a doctor about this, even went to the same one twice, but he chalked it off as me being too anxious or neurotic, "because the skull/brain is made to withstand more serious blows!", he would say, and instead of actually respecting my perceived symptomatology, he recommended I see a counselor, because I was overly concerned about permanent brain damage.


Has anyone experience something similar to this?


My conclusion to what is going on is that the initial concussive inflammation has never fully healed, and that each subsequent perturbation to the cranium reawakens this inflammation, of which goes on to either suspend normal brain function because of the shock its system, or constrict the flow of blood to parts of the brain integral to the lost functions, or both. (The blood conclusion I came to because earlier when after I would walk around for hours at work, headaches would form similar to ones during caffeine withdrawal, which I interpret as an increase of blood throughout the brain, and I would feel myself to be a bit more of how I'd normally feel.)

I've been trying to heal myself this last month by supplements of gingko and St John's Wort, along with multivitamins and green foods, and I am now about to include Vinpocetine to the list.

Ibuprofen makes even more mental fogginess and encourages constipation anyway, so I don't really like taking this for the supposed inflammation.

Although one possible interpretation for the ibuprofen mental fog is that "oh, it's reducing inflammation and allowing blood to access regions of brain matter/brain functioning that have been off for some months, so this fogginess is me just having to relearn how to be normal again!" Although the threat of constipation is preventing me from experimenting with this further.

I could be drinking more water and fluids.

I have not been taking coffee or alcohol or drugs since this started.

I do find that the hours of walking I have to do at work help with the blood flow, but I am still at the point where if I were to shake or nod my head, I would feel a tightening inside my skull which I interpret as swelling, and then which goes on to depress the central nervous system, i.e. the set of symptoms I've been so far plagued with.


So can anyone relate to this symptomatology? If this still goes on for 2 more months I'm going to try to see a neuro-doctor.

Should I just wait it out and not move my head too much and drink more water?

I am hoping my blood-flow theory is correct and that the vinpocetine will help the healing process.

Any words of experience would be super-duper helpful and appreciated!