Hey all

I sufferred my concussion a month ago, and have recently started getting night terrors, as well as 3-7 incidents of tinnitus a day for the last two weeks. It's very frustrating right now. The injury, was a bare skin shin/foot kick to the temple-->nose region of my head. It was only 1 blow, and I remained conscious and standing. Now, I am entering an injury rehab program as it was workplace, but looking for some advice/support on this as I'm not one to trust the workers comp. folks as they are crooked!

I've been given naproxen and tramacet to help with pain and swelling. My doc does not think the meds are causing the terrors, however, the head injury. Does anyone else get this?

also, the tinnitus. This is terrible, reduces me to tears and usually starts a major headache. Anyone else have this, and is there any way to deal with it? My physio person, who i see today for the last time as its no longer covered, worked my neck a lot and hoped it would help, however it doesn't seem to have, only improved the whiplash symptoms.

Thanks in advance, sorry to blabber.

CanadaLEO,

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

I think you have two issues to consider. You likely have a subtle neck injury. These are hard to treat because the symptoms are more inflammation without stiffness. It is important to not strain the neck while getting treatment. Range of Motion exercises can go against healing in the short term. Icing after each treatment or exercise period is important. Maintaining posture discipline while sleeping is another. That brings me to the second issue. Gentle traction and mobilization by the PT worked best for me.

If you are straining your neck when sleeping with poor posture, you can cause inflammation. This inflammation can reduce blood flow. Reduced blood flow will disrupt sleep and can trigger night terrors or just stressful dreams. This reduced blood flow can also trigger Central Sleep Apnea. This is when the brain stem stops telling the lungs/diaphragm to take a breath.

I know this one personally. When my CSA manifests, I have very stressful dreams and a miserable day after. It took me a couple years to get to where my neck was stable when I sleep. Until then, I had to be very disciplined with sleep posture.

My wife gets up before me and could tell how my day was going to be by observing my breathing and/or facial expression. If my face had a stern grimace, I would have a bad day.

I also notice that if I woke in the morning after stressful dreams, I would have a bad day. Everything pointed to my neck.

I spent a lot of time sleeping in a recliner because I got the best relaxing and restorative sleep that way. I would curl a pillow up around my ears to help keep my head from rolling to the side.

I understand your struggle because I dreaded going to bed because of the dreams I would have.

Of the meds your doc gave you, only the naproxen has anti-inflammatory value. The acetaminophen in the Tramacet is pain relief but not anti-inflammatory. Anti-inflammatory meds need to be taken consistently. It is difficult to reduce inflammation once it sets in. It is easier to maintain a low inflammation by consistent medication. I learned this from my ortho after shoulder surgery. He put me on 200 mgs of ibuprofen 3 times a day.

I did well combining aspirin and acetaminophen. The aspirin provided anti-inflammatory and pain relief and the acetaminophen provided pain relief using a different pain relief mechanism. The relief was almost like taking a codeine pill without the woozies. You can take max does of each at the same time.

Any ongoing neck therapy should be gentle treatments. C-2 and below can handle more stress but C-2 and above cannot. It is usually C-2 and above that causes the problems. They do not have faceted joints that hold alignment so only ligaments hold them in position. Ligaments take 6 weeks of no strain to heal, longer to strengthen.

My PT/physio did gentle traction and mobilization. Nothing stressful.

I wish I could help you with the tinnitus. I have lived with tinnitus for decades. It is screaming at me right now. I have had to learn to ignore it or use masking sounds. It is louder than my laptop cooling fan at full blast. The concussed brain makes it worse because the concussed brain can lose the filter and ignore capacity to disregard meaningless stimulation.

Some here on NT that neck healing helped with tinnitus.

My best to you.

Thanks for the reply.

My sleep is a special type of evil, as I have a CPAP as well. So I generally sleep on my back, or my one side. Interested you mentioned CSA, however, my API is still only 2.3 at the moment, which is at my manageable level as discussed with my RT. I use a nice memory foam pillow which gives me the best posture/support possible with this, and my PT at the clinic I am going to gave me a nekrol the other day, which I tried out for a couple of nights and seem to love it. Have you tried this before?

I take the naproxen on schedule 2/day at wake up w/ food and 8 hours after. it seems to be a decent balance for me. Tramacet I take as needed, but have been scheduling it with naproxen for a while, as pain management has helped with agitation.

Yes, the tinnitus is definitely evil. It's woken me out of a dead sleep before, which is super frustrating with how hard it is to get to sleep. My PT was doing a lot of massage work on the mandible area, and temple regions to help with some of the pain, and really working a few certain muscles on the inside of my neck (almost near the esophagus). Seems to help with neck pain, but no relief on the tinnitus.

I could never use a neckroll. I need my head flat on the bed. I only use a pillow to support the sides of my head so it does not roll to the side. I cannot tolerate any head lift. When on my side, the pillow it bunched to hold my spine straight.

I do best when I have the support that makes me feel like I am floating.

Massaging the tension areas may help temporarily with that symptom but what about looking for the cause? I needed the C-0 to C-2 to settle down for the headaches and other muscle tension to subside.

Some people have roller coaster tinnitus due to blood sugar issues. I have my worst usually when I get up and just after a meal. I have reactive hypoglycemia. It can roller coaster for a while after eating. I just ate and my ears are screaming.

An AHI of 2.3 is normal from the charts I've read. I was having 16 apneas an hour. No CPAP or BiPAP. I resolved it with sleep posture. With CSA, my diaphragm was just shutting down.