I am hoping some of you can provide some insight to help me.

My 13-year-old son hit his head falling backwards playing hockey back in January. He did not lose consciousness, but suffered from severe headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and nausea. He had symptoms for almost 3 months, during which we at first eliminated all activity then slowly eased him back to school. After the 3 months all symptoms were gone, so resumed all normal activity other than hockey, which was to resume this winter.

In July/August, he started having some headaches again, but only when playing French horn, and the headaches would go away 15 minutes after he stopped playing. We did not think it was connected to the concussion, thinking instead it was related to trying to play his instrument for more difficult songs and more frequently while wearing braces. Some days he had them but some days he did not, and they pretty much went away end of August.

Two weeks ago, he came down with a cough and had headaches too, which we attributed to being sick. The cough went away a week later, but now he has headaches more frequently. They are triggered by things such as watching certain videos (I think it was some videos with bright colors and patterns in science class), singing, playing piano, playing horn, even walking through the hallway in school or sitting in a noisy classroom. In all cases the headaches seem to go away 15 minutes later, but they are pretty strong.

MRIs were done both at the time of the injury and just now, with nothing showing up.

My questions:

1) Is it normal or unusual for headaches to return months after being symptom free? Can he expect to have such headaches return throughout his life, or do some grow out of them?

2) Is it dangerous to have these headaches, so that the activities that bring the headaches on should be avoided, or does he have to learn to deal with them?

3) After the initial injury, we made sure he would not play hockey until all symptoms were gone, as our understanding was that during that time he would be in a dangerous state and getting another injury before being recovered from the first could be very bad. We had thought that after being symptom-free for a few months it would be OK to resume playing hockey now. Since some headaches have returned, does that mean he would again be in this "dangerous state" as if he had never recovered from the initial injury in the first place, and avoid playing (even if playing does not trigger headaches now)? Or has he passed that state and is it OK to play (knowing of course there is always the danger of another concussion, but the danger is no greater than if the headaches had not returned)?

4) Any advice on how to deal with the headaches?

We are talking with doctors as well, but unfortunately our experience has been that they don't seem to be very knowledgeable and may even contradict one another! So any advice would be appreciated.