I've tried to get my workload reduced but the teachers can't much at all because most of it is essential for earning the college credits. I'm almost caught up in the two difficult classes, but I have been pushed extremely hard.

Termed college or not, they would be difficult no matter what. The teachers are older and hard-nosed.

The easier class I am in I'm pretty far behind in but my teacher is much more understanding.

I realize I shouldn't be doing as much work as I have been, but I can't exactly control that. My teachers are pushing me and I really don't want to keep getting behind! My brain has held up very well. And I have a break coming up soon after this last stressful week of school. I've been successful and I think my cognitive function is probably at around 95% of what it used to be. Does that mean anything?

I'm seeing an anxiety specialist this week, which should help a lot. I have lots of anxiety, caution, stress about my head and rightfully so, but I know it's not all the best.

I think I should see a chiropractor soon though. Any thoughts?

JBuckl,

It is almost scary how similar my situation was to yours. I am 18 and a senior in high school just like you. Football and sports was my life but were taken away from me just like they were for you.

I received 4 concussions from football, and the last one I believe I had a small one and continued to play with it for about a week, receiving sub-concussive blows which sent me on a 19 month journey of PCS. That was April or 2012.

6 months ago I shared the exact same head sensitivity you did. Someone could pat me on the back, hug me too hard, or I could barely hit my head on something and I would have concussion symptoms for 2-3 days. This was incredibly scary as I'm sure it is for you because once you get that sensitive it seems very hard to get back to your normal self.

5 months ago I saw a nuero chiropractor out of Dallas, Texas, who put me on an anti-inflammatory diet and prescribed several supplements to me. This diet, which basically consists of lean meats, fruits, and vegetables, has completely saved my life. 6 months ago I could hardly walk or ride in cars without feeling my brain shake, and now I am running and jumping with no problem.

Just like you I also have pretty severe stress and anxiety from trying to protect my head and what not. I've kept it to myself and haven't really done anything about it but it is getting much better as my head sensitivity goes away. By no means has it been an easy road to get to where I am today. I had to become obsessed with protecting my head and preventing further set backs, and I also became obsessed with following this diet ( The Leaky Gut Diet). So here is my advice to you:

Start the diet as soon as you can, get you parents involved buying the right food for you. Its gonna be hard, but it is completely worth the sacrifice to get your life back. Continue to be very cautious about protecting your head, it is essential that you let the diet do its work and not set your head back anymore. Lastly, have a positive attitude. Look at my story, know that this is only temporary and believe that you are going to get better. Find success in everyday and try to be as stress-free as possible, this helps with the healing process. Do this and in a matter of months you'll have your life back and be ready to head off to college next year.

Please let me know if you have any questions, I really want to help you out because the situation you are going through has had such a huge impact on my life and I want you to experience the same healing I have experienced.

Best of luck

What kind of classes are you taking? Are these AP/IB, or joint enrollment?

What kind of credit schedule is your school on? If your classes continue in January without ending for a final grade for one semester by Friday, my suggestion is that you try to set aside a segment of time each day to work on getting caught up on school, but otherwise relax as much as you can over the break. Take a break from electronics and exercise even, as much as you can. Your brain will thank you.

As far as anxiety goes, what are you doing, if anything, to manage your time? I teach high schoolers, and I see students like you struggle all the time because they get overwhelmed by the amount of work due. Now more than ever, while you are trying to heal, you need to make sure you are managing your time wisely so that you don't overdo things but can still make progress so that you don't get even more stressed. Do try to plan plenty of breaks while doing your homework... maybe doing it in chunks will make it more manageable.

My heart goes out to you because you sound a lot like my students, and I know how much it would upset them to be in your shoes. Take care of yourself.

Dan thanks for the support and I would love to hear everything about the diet and supplements. I'll look more into the diet myself, but what if you could say the foods you ate and supplements that would be awesome! I totally believe that diet is important as I have a brother who is obsessed over his and feeds me info all the time.

I also would like to know if you got an cranial adjustments? I've been looking into that and I know a good chiropractor nearby who is big into nutrition.

I have been gluten free for about a month and dairy free for about 6 months because of the inflammation it causes to the brain (gluten). I also have been trying to avoid other grains for similar reasons due to the chemicals being sprayed on them. Grains are different than used to be. I don't know a ton about this topic, but my brother has highly recommended me getting off of gluten and another brother dairy because of the acne reaction that I used to get from dairy.

I know this whole situation is not what you wanted and I'm sorry it happened. I know it stinks. I was going to play college football and run track, still maybe can run track. I've also had many other disappointments in the past few months. But if you get some satisfaction out of helping me and other people and grow as a person. I hope that all the pain wasn't a waste. That's how I've seen it and you seem like a great person. And thanks already for giving me some guidance and hope. I was really down about my future until I read your post.

courtney w, first off I'd like to say thanks for your concern. The courses I take count as college credits. We apply by computer to the college we take them through and our high school teachers teach them. I don't know if you consider that joint enrollment?

I take a College Chemistry Class, College Spanish Class, and an intro to stats class this quarter. I recently dropped band and choir this quarter and may potentially for the year depending on my symptoms as I have not been able to go to those and they're not necessary for my graduation. I have one lab to make up in chem that I'll do after the Christmas break, and one quiz left in spanish to do. The stats course, I'm a little bit further behind, but the break will help.

That said, I have pushed myself very hard to get caught up by this break, but I haven't stressed about school much at all maybe because I've had to get caught up before but I've been more worried about my health and college more, as I just got accepted to a very difficult private school and am concerned that it may be too much to handle. until Dan gave me some more hope.

My brain functions about as well as it used to except when symptoms build up too much.

For anxiety and relaxation, I do some deep breathing exercises I talked about in a different post maybe on a different topic/thread and I plan to exercise over the break and into school more now that I'm more caught up.

Also Dan, if you could give me some advice on the anxiety and preventing stuff and how you progressed that'd be appreciated.

Specifically, how did you realize when you could start walking faster, running, hugging people? stuff like that.

And what were specific situations that you avoided and how you dealt with anxiety, stress, and maybe other stuff.

I know caution and anxiety are necessary, but my anxiety is excessive.

Yep... joint enrollment means you are enrolled in two schools at once; a high school and a college. AP and IB are different, in that those programs are offered through the high school and count for high school credit, with the opportunity to take exams at the end of the term that can make a student eligible to receive college credits.

The good news is, at least I'm guessing, the Spanish class is probably not much more difficult than the Spanish you would have taken at the high school level; in fact, it's probably mostly review of what you've already had. It's probably tedious, but not overly difficult as far as the material is concerned. The chemistry and stats might be a different story. (I know that you know all of this already LOL... I'm saying all of this more for the benefit of others in this thread who aren't as familiar with the program you are in).

Are you supposed to start college in the fall? The good news is that, as a freshman, most of your classes probably will be review of material from high school and it won't be quite as stressful as it is right now because you won't be taking the high school classes with them. You'll probably have more time between classes that you can devote to studying, resting, or relaxing... so as long as you are managing your time wisely, you stand a very good chance at still being able to be very successful in college, particularly given how much you say you have recovered already.

Be careful with the exercise... I have found that heavy exercise makes my symptoms worse. Exercise is awesome if it's not hurting you, but please listen to your body... if you start to get a headache or other symptoms that resemble those from your concussions, stop whatever you're doing and limit yourself to walking for a while afterwards. I know that's no fun, but neither is prolonging the life of any lingering symptoms. I learned that the hard way when a simple light jog sent me into a migraine so bad that I could barely even communicate with my husband beyond whispering. It was awful.

Best of luck, and keep us posted! I'd love to get updates on how you're doing

Thanks for the advice.

Yeah, I start in the fall, and I'll be sure to contact admissions counselors if possible. I also have contact with some track and football coaches as well, whom I may get a hold of. I'm not quite as worried as I was, but as sensitive as my is, a small accident could really take me out of school for some time, and I have to make sure that the school knows that and that there's a plan of some sort if that does happen. I can't be spending thousands of dollars to fail school, and I know there's some insurance policies, but I know people at the school would know more about that.

Track will probably not be an issue by the time that season rolls around... football, however, might. At least you'll have a helmet on. I'm not sure about the effectiveness of a typical football helmet... is that the kind of thing where you can maybe get the helmet a little bigger to allow room for extra padding, just in case? Ultimately, you'll just need to have some kind of plan in place to protect your head as much as possible, if not playing isn't an option.

I'm really glad your going to give the diet a try. The diet is called the Leaky Gut Diet, which is designed to fix "leaky gut syndrome" but it also reduces inflammation, heals the blood-brain barrier, and does a number of other things..this is all what my chiropractor told me. Here is a link with the diet's restrictions:

http://askdrakiba.com/food-sensitivi...pair-vite-diet

It is basically the Paleo Diet but a little more extreme. The diet basically consists only of lean meats, fruits, and vegetables. There are even some high-glycemic fruits you can not eat like banana or pineapple. You can eat as much as you want, and I recommend eating a lot because it is easy to start losing weight when you are eating so healthy. Try to eat anti-inflammatory foods like ginger, berries, and fish. My mom buys a lot of meat at the beginning of the week and I grill it up and feast on it throughout the week. It may seem boring at first but after a while you really start to enjoy the food.

To adapt to the diet I drink coconut milk, which is really the only kind of milk you are supposed to drink on it. I also have an avocado everyday, cook with coconut oil, and try to eat ginger with all of my meat. It is funny you have an older brother who is obsessed with his diet because I do to, and he's helped me out along the way too.

As far as supplements go, I would ask your chiropractor who is big on nutrition what he/she recommends. My chiropractor did a pretty thorough blood test for me and recommended supplements based off of that. Some supplements that you should definitely take are fish oil, magnesium, B2, and reservatrol. Two others that she put me on are NeuroFlam and NeurO2, which both help with inflammation and can both be found on ebay or other places online. I would ask your chiropractor though because I'm sure he/she is going to recommend the same things.

Over the summer when I was in my worst condition I would desperately search the internet for hours looking for answers and solutions to my problem. I actually went to see my chiropractor out of Dallas because she did cranial adjustments and I had read all about them. She did do them, and I think they did help a little bit but its hard to say how much. I still think the primary thing that healed me was the diet. So I would say to go ahead and try the adjustments, just be careful your chiropractor understands your situation and does it in a gentle way, mine did in a massage-like way that was not jarring at all.

Another thing I did and still do everyday is put a lot of time in strengthening my neck. A strong neck helps to prevent form further injury and has definitely helped me out. Im sure you are familiar with neck drills from football, just be careful how you do it so you don't hurt your neck at all.

Also, I don't know if you are into partying, I was for a while but completely gave up alcohol/drugs in order to let my brain fully heal, and I think that was very important.

What we are going through is definitely not fair, but its nice to have someone to go through it with. It was definitely scary for me over the summer because I could not find anyone who shared my situation and there was no advice on how to heal from it. So I am very happy that I get to be that person for you and help you get through this. Please ask me any questions or advice, I really enjoy helping you out. Also, I'm from Austin and my real name is Garret Hemphill, my screen name is Dan because I wanted to stay anonymous when I made this account a year or so ago. Try and find me on Facebook and we can communicate that way too.

Best of luck