i read many things about PCS, and the most common are symtoms like these:

headache's
dizziness ( lightheaded or vertigo )
fatigue or sleepiness
double or blurred vision
anxiety
irritability
depression
etc etc

Some people on this forum are feeling very suicidal and depressed, some have extreme headache's.. Some people have dizziness but more vertigo based and not lightheaded, some people still do their work/school, some can't do anything.. So theres is a lot variety of symptoms by each person.

The symptoms which I most have (for 6 months) are lightheaded dizziness, blurred vision and extreme fatique, every morning its a struggle to come out of bed and as the day passes (i work a lot with computers) i get a light headache, and pain around my left eye. When i'm stressed the dizziness seems to get worse. On a good day i work for 4 of 5 hours with some large breaks, on a bad day i can't get out of bed, don't work at all, and then i'm more sensetive for light and sound. I'm in a lucky position that i run my own company with 10 employees, they replace my work, still can pay the bills, and for now that works fine, but in the near future i have to be better and work 100% again, otherwise i will get into some serious problems!

I don't have suicide feelings or extreme depression like other people on this forum but i'm scared and have anxiety that it won't go away and that this is permanent..

my questions to you people are, what are youre symptons and feelings? do you still work or go to school? do also have good day's and bad day's? and what are youre expectations in the future and what kind of possible treatments do you consider?

again, i'm from europe, so sorry for my terrible english!

i forgot to mention the treatments that ive done..

first i got an:
MRI scan
EEG

did some Homeopathy ( arnica, Natrium Sulphuricum, Cicuta virosa, Cytisis Laburnum ) these pills didn't do that much..

i went 3 times to an eye specialist because my neurologist said sometimes after an TBI a patient can be squint-eyed (and i don't know if this is correct english)

the eye specialist did 3 vision tests in a period of 3 months, and now i have to wear prism glasses, i about 2 weeks from now i get these glasses, but i don't know if this effect my symptoms, i hope so!

Since 2 weeks i'm going to a Chiropractor, and since yesterday i also go to Cranio Sacral therapy, on this thread on page 5 t PCS McGee alks about this therapy:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...t=14378&page=5

i must say, the Cranio sacral feels quitte relaxed, so thank you PCS McGee for this tip! but i don't know if this will work for me but i hope so!

For the future, if the Cranio Sacral, Chiropractor and the Prism glasses don't work then i'm thinking on neurofeedback, ( just started a thread about neurofeedback on this forum ) but in my country its very expensive (about $10000 to $15000) so i hope that there is someone with neurofeedback experience who can share this!

i also read an article about chinese herbs, see: http://www.herbchina2000.com/therapies/NCS.shtml

this sounds to good to be true! so i'm a bit sceptic about this one!

Just for the record Applesap, your english is perfectly fine (sadly, you write in english far better than most Americans). You don't need to keep apologizing all the time!

In response to your questions...

For the first two years of my PCS experience, I was in college and remained there, eventually getting my bachelor's degree in 2005 (my grades didn't slip after my accident, but I'd gotten decent grades through my first 3 years of college without studying at all... for the last 2 I had to study all the time to keep up with my former pace). After I graduated I had a nervous breakdown, then started working 5 or 6 months later (doing mindless stuff, like answering phones or filing papers). I'm still doing these mindless jobs from time to time, but I'm seeing therapists twice a week so it's really hard (actually, impossible as far as I can tell) for me to find work that can accommodate my schedule.

I had really bad pressure headaches for the first 2 years that I had PCS, as well as constant dizziness for the first 3 years. Anxiety and depression came on at the 2 year mark for me and have stuck around until the present (though my anxiety's nearly completely gone and my depression is about 10% of what it used to be). I still have days where I'm really irritable, but I've learned to just stay clear of people when I'm in that kind of mood... I have faith that the irritability will go away when the rest of this injury is cleared off. I have odd vision problems that I can't exactly describe, but they aren't crippling at all, they're more just annoying. I also had a disconnection from reality problem, as a lot of people have brought up on here, and that only went away for me (it returns for an hour or so every now and again) a month or so ago, but man was it ever nice for that to go away! Yeah, so I'm not doing as well as I was before all of this happened, not yet anyway, but through good therapy I'd say the problems I'm having now are about 5% of the problems I was having through the first 3 years after my injury. I also have PTSD, which raises a multitude of social problems, but I won't get into that here.

As far as the suicidal stuff goes... I don't blame people for being suicidal within this condition, especially when a doctor may tell you that your condition may be permanent, "so you should probably learn to live with it" (leaving you to say "oh great, every day for the rest of my life is going to be a living hell, fantastic!"). There have been plenty of times that suicidal thoughts have come into my mind during this regardless of whether I actively invited them in or not, though I haven't gotten to the point where I've attempted suicide, or even strategized about how I would do it. Personally, I feel that being completely honest with yourself is the best way to get through any brain-related problem... within this mindset, I realized about a year ago that if I didn't beat this PCS and PTSD, I would end up killing myself, and really it wouldn't matter whether I lived 1 month, 1 year, 5 years, or 50 years before I did so, because as long as I had this condition I wouldn't accomplish anything within that time anyway. I'd leave absolutely no imprint on this world. I wouldn't find a rewarding job, I wouldn't find love, I wouldn't have a family, I wouldn't have anything, because no matter how long I happened to live I would spend every moment of every day psychoanalyzing myself and wishing that all of this had never happened. To me, that's not a life worth living, so I wouldn't live it. But coming back to where you were before your accident? Oh wow, that'd be sweet... I think it'd be better than living a life where "none of this had happened", because you'd have such a stronger appreciation for it. There have been times recently where I've felt it... I'm just an inch or so away from feeling just like I used to, and it feels amazing.

Of course, I've been feeling really good for the past few days that I've been writing on here, so I might not have such an uplifting tone once I start writing on here while I'm depressed, but that'll all pass (it's one of the things about the therapies I'm doing... the therapy makes you feel FAR worse for a few days, then you come out the other side feeling better than you felt before the therapy).

Crap, I've gone and written way too much on here again. My apologies.

thnx for your post, and please don't appologies for the lenghtness of your post PCS McGee! i found it very interesting and I have very similar thoughts as you, it also helps me to feel like i'm not the only one with this crappy PCS! What kind of treatments have you done?

before the accident i had 10000 wishes, now i only have 1...

I like that 10,000 wishes quote... I might save that one. Well put.

Let's see, over the course of my run with this stuff I've done chiropractic (didn't work), accupuncture (occasionally helped, but the effects seemed pretty temporary, though my accupuncturist was not all that good), some weird physical therapy called "matrix repatterning" (worked a little, but not much), somatic/gestalt therapy (helped a bit with anxiety, but not much else), anti-depressants (didn't help at all), hypnotism (caused me to have a complete breakdown the first time I did it, but now I'm doing it again and it's doing GREAT things), cranio-sacral therapy/bodywork (has done absolute wonders for me), and a kind of light therapy that my practitioner calls "fight or flight therapy" (basically ended my pronounced panic attacks, and I believe made the cranio-sacral therapy and hypnotism therapies far more effective than they would have been on their own).

There are a couple of other therapies that I am investigating right now in case the stuff I'm currently doing doesn't completely get rid of my ills... there's a new kind of brain wave therapy called Brain State Technologies that an old therapist of mine is using (he claims to be getting really positive results from car accident people, which is the group that most PCS people can be lumped in with as far as general traumatized people go). Also, my light therapy guy recommended something called Eyelights, which are these glasses that you wear for half an hour a day or something that flash lights in front of your eyes and have the end effect of exercising your brain. That same light therapy guy is also treating people with this new kind of supplement therapy, that apparently is the first attempt by medical science to treat people's problems using the principles of quantum physics... it sounds really interesting, but I don't think I'll try that one unless I've got nowhere else to go.

All that said though, I'm really close to being completely back online, I can feel it, and I seem to be getting better each and every week, so I think at some point I'll go in for therapy and realize afterwards that there's just nothing left to be fixed. That's gonna be a good day.

Applesap, I'm not sure that I've heard the story of what caused your brain injury in the first place... if you're comfortable talking about it I'd be interested to know what happened.

Thank you to everyone for sharing their experience. I think it really helps others to know that they are not alone in feeling this way especially as it looks like there is no simple cure to PCS.

My symptoms are the typical ones experienced by others with PCS:

Extreme fatigue on some days where I struggle to do anything other than lie down.
Poor concentration and memory
Depression (it seems to happen randomly, though I am not suicidal)
Headache at the top of my head
Vivid dreaming every night (but not nightmares)
I've also experienced head pressure at the back of my head but only once.

I have good days and bad days. I have continued to work but some days it is a struggle to concentrate on what I am doing and feel very tired. I feel as though I am not performing at my best and could be doing much better. I am hoping that my PCS symptoms will go away soon and that my life will be back to normal again. I will be so happy when that day comes...I don't want to give up but I am anxious that this will not happen.

I've been keeping track of how I have been feeling over the last few months to see if I am getting better. It looked like I was slowly getting better but then things took a step backwards when I tried exercising again (I was originally injured doing sports) and now it feels like I am starting the recovery process all over again!

Yes, great quote. It really sums up how I am feeling.

also thank you Mint & PCS McGee for your posts! i find it very helpfull to meet other PCS people, it really changed my mood in the last couple of days, and i'm more possitive then before!

@ PCS McGee, is the Brain State Technologies a sort of Neurofeedback therapy? as you know by my previous thread i'm very interested in this kind of therapy! If my prism glasses & chiropractic won't work i'm thinking serious of doing the neurofeedback thing... yesterday i had one cranio sacral session, it was relaxing, but didn't do that much for my dizziness etc... Did you have quick results with the cranio-sacral therapy?

the story about how it happened is really like a stupid home accident, 6 months ago i hit my head against a thick massive construction pole with a big point, ( i don't know the correct english word of these things, they are the wooden pieces sticking out in the wooden frames of old 18th century houses in a attic seeling) it went straight into the back of my head. I was sitting squatted and someone called me so i stood up really fast... and BANG!! After this i got really dizzy and felt sick, had the feeling of trowing up, i didn't passed out. So i went straight to bed, hoping it will go away in the morning, but it didn't. So the next morning i thought, maybe if i'll rest till after the weekend it will be ok! I called my doctor, and he said:' oo don't worry, it's just a light concussion, don't panic, just relax for a couple of days and you will be ok!'

unfortunally this was not the case, the first 6 to 8 weeks i had really troubles with watching TV or sitting behind my computer. Then for a while it went quitte ok, i felt no extreme dizziness and my mood was almost as normal as before the accident. So i thought let's go for a swim in the pool, but that wasn't a good idea. The pressure of the water made me feel worse, and the symptom came immidiatly back and since the swimming thing, i bassicly have no improvements at all...

@ Mint, don't you have the continuous dizziness? and do you feel lightheaded of more vertigo?

I'm not sure what Brain State Technologies would be classified as... you can check out their website (www.brainstatetechnologies.com) if you want to, that will probably have more information than I could provide. From what I've heard though, a BST machine basically runs all of these diagnostic tests on your brain, and maps out the way that each section of it is operating on a brain wave level (I don't know how this is done, but apparently it's pretty accurate). The machine then provides a counter balance to your brain waves to bring them to where they're supposed to be (there's a certain frequency and wavelength that brain waves operate on when a person is in a state of good mental health).

This probably doesn't make any sense... but to over simplify things, imagine that the left hemisphere of your brain is supposed to be producing brain waves that would register as a 5 by this BST machine, but instead it's producing brain waves that register as an 8. The machine then produces a counter balance of waves at a 2 level, which eventually pull your 8 back down to a 5, where it's supposed to be.

I don't know if this is anything like neurofeedback, as I've never tried that stuff out or heard anything about it, but you can be the judge of that.

As far as craniosacral stuff goes, it was obvious to me after my first appointment that the work was doing something positive, though I didn't start to get the really profound effects until a few appointments later. I kept waking up in the middle of the night (this was not at all rare for me at this time) and it was like my body had a craving for more of the therapy (sort of like when you wake up and you really want a glass of orange juice or something, except I was craving this therapy). So that's when I knew it was working for me. Nothing works for everyone of course, especially when it comes down to matters of the brain, so it might not be the answer for you (it hasn't been the entire answer for me, just a very very large chunk of it), I just highly recommend it from personal experience.

Thanks for sharing your story, by the way. It's good to know that someone else's story is as random as mine.