Hey guys,

Tripped on a loose brick and fell down a wheelchair ramp like a graceful ballerina and whacked the asphalt with the left side of my face about three months ago. Had some extremely nasty symptoms, and it ultimately turned into PCS.

Had a terrible time reading and writing-- reading is mostly better unless I have to scan down a list, and writing is still really challenging-- have a hard time organizing my thoughts.

Anybody else had this? I'm at that 3-month plateau of going oh god, i'll never get well...

Definitely affects my job performance and I'm really sick of being a moron at work. Plays merry hell with the self-esteem, no? Please tell me it gets better!

dancingcavalier,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. You post sounds like just about every newbies post. Sorry to hear you are struggling so.

Yes, things do get better. Unfortunately, recovering from a concussion is not like most other recoveries. You need to let you brain recover by allowing it to have quiet rest. It also helps to moderate stress levels in all of your daily environments.

Please tell us more about yourself (age, job, living situation), your symptoms and what you have done to try to help you brain recover.

It will help if you read the sticky thread about Vitamins and nutrition in the top panel. It has some good links in addition to the nutritional information.

Since you whacked the side of your head, a side twist to your neck was likely part of your injury. Getting good diagnostics and therapy for neck injuries will be helpful. Often, there are no neck injury symptoms except for maybe some sore to the touch spots behind the ears. Icing will help while you seek care.

Feel free to tell us anything. We have heard it all before so nothing surprises us. Doctors may think you are strange with your complaints but we don't.

My best to you.

I get where you are, because I was there. I've gotten significantly better, so take heart, you can get well! If you have some time and want to be uplifted, read the hope and healing thread at the top of forum page. Part of my story is in there, but I plan on reposting once I'm totally better.

I am still trying to get back to writing, as I am a writer, and I have written one children story and one poem recently, so I'm thrilled about that. My cognitive problems are over, but I still have some emotional problem to address, as well as problems with my eyes that make reading and writing difficult at times. Have you been to see a neuro ophthalmologist? Knowing what I know now, that should've been one of the first things I did. It certainly couldn't hurt for you to do that. A regular ophthalmologist will not be able to diagnose any PCS related Vision issues.

If you share more of your story, I'm sure we can offer more help and support. Good luck to you!

I'm using voice recognition on my phone, and it's not perfect.

We all understand. I'm at six months and still having lots of trouble with reading, writing , auditory processing....the list goes on.

My advice is to try to understand your weaknesses and find work arounds or help. AND, most importantly stay hopeful and focus on the things that you can still do well. It might be a long time til I can read a book or write a paper or make a presentation, but in the meantime I am focusing on expanding upon the things that I CAN do. Until I started doing that I was feeling quite depressed.

Su seb

A lot of us go through this in varying degrees about 6 weeks after my accident I realised I couldn't remember how to write my signature let alone do much else. I does improve over improve time and recently even proof read my daughters degree dissertations - 20,000 words each.