todayistomorrow,
There is a difference between continuing to seek diagnosis and treatment and self-diagnosing and letting that influence how others treat you.

Yes, Danielson has struggles that deserve diagnosis and treatment. His questioning every move plays into their ideas against him. There is a lot to his story we do not know. It appears he is left out of the information loop.

I have first hand experience with doctors who tried to claim I am faking or have hypochondria or am embellishing my condition. At first impression, they were justified in their response. But, I used extensive understanding to show them I had a sound factual basic for my concerns. Most accepted my concerns. If I did not have the knowledge I have, I would not have been able to overcome the malingering/hypochondria label.

We fight an uphill battle to get good care. Getting sidetracked with self-diagnosis and paranoia of the diagnostic process only makes the uphill battle harder.

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

I'm not able to do so, I'm too cognitive impaired.

Also you have to consider that doctors are biased towards not admitting and recognizing my problems since they are the ones that put me in this condition by forcing me to take antipsychotics, so I cannnot trust them a lot.

Danielson,

It appears the doctors are not telling you why they are doing what they are doing. They are just doing it, with or without your informed consent.

I don't understand how they can force you to take drugs you do not want to take. What leverage do they use? What symptoms are they seeing in you that cause them to force these drugs on you?

Are you a minor so you have no final say in your care?

I don't understand your comment about MCI vs dementia. Is there a diagnostic difference between the two?

Bottom line is that they say that I'm crazy for believing that is possible to get a concussion/brain damage without losing consciousness.
They forced me to take them because I was not leaving home awaiting for my PCS symtpoms to resolve, which they labelled as a sign of psychosis.

-No, I'm 22 years old.

-I'm not able to express myself clearly unfortunately.
It was a way to say that I'm worried that they will do a superficial test that is not adequate for diagnosing my kind of cognitive problem, and then to use the inaccurate test as a "proof" to reinforce their notion that I'm fine.

First, There is plenty of internationally recognized concussion information that proves that a concussion can happen without a loss of consciousness. Look at 4.4. Concussion results in a graded set of clinical symptoms that may or may not involve loss of consciousness.

http://www.natajournals.org/doi/full...2-6050-48.4.05

Are you refusing to leave the house or are you refusing to move out and live on your own? It sounds like you are refusing to leave the house. There is no justification for this. Even with severe symptoms, most can take short trips outside the home.

What prevents you from leaving the house?

You are quite adequate at expressing yourself clearly in some areas. In other areas, it appears more that you do not want to respond to simple questions.

What can't you do cognitively?

What is the difference between MCI and dementia? How does it change anything?

[QUOTE=Mark in Idaho;1262676]First, There is plenty of internationally recognized concussion information that proves that a concussion can happen without a loss of consciousness. Look at 4.4. Concussion results in a graded set of clinical symptoms that may or may not involve loss of consciousness.

http://www.natajournals.org/doi/full...2-6050-48.4.05


/QUOTE]

I know it, you should tell it to the doctors that says the opposite.

I'm leaving the house now.
I was not leaving my house back in december when they forced me to take antipsychotics.
The reason was that I was succesfully recovering from my PCS and did not want to risk to have a setback until full recovery, I was fearful of having to go back to square one.

Why do you say that?
I have asnwered to every question at the best of my possibilities.

I cannot explain it well, but I have thinking problems, i cannot think properly, i have a very lowered IQ and struggle to form coehrent sentences or reasoning properly, i have no inner monologue inside my head at all.
I also cannot use imagination to picture images in my mind.

Like I said you should not take that terms literally, I don't know the exact medical definition and diagnosing criteria of that terms, I was just trying to explain the concept that I have fear that they are going to do a superficial test which is not adequate to diagnose the kind of cognitive problems that I have.
Probably I have done a poor job in my explanation tough, arising confusion

I think that everyone should be free to decide how to take care of their health and of their life (be it leaving or not leaving home as you please) without being forced to suffer severe brain damage from drugs.

I can't stand know-nothings who have never walked a mile in one's shoes with a brain injury. They do not truly understand. I've found that very few understand, and most people don't even want you to discuss your hardships with them. If anything, people will treat you like you're whining, and they'll not be compassionate in the least. Then, when you make a mistake because of the impact of your brain injury, they want to hold you to the same level of accountability as someone who has no disorientation, no lightheadedness, no dizziness, no extreme headaches, etc., etc., etc.

A brain injury SUCKS. It just does. It's a hidden disability, and people treat you like you're not that injured. They expect you to have the same outlook as someone in perfect health.

Your psychiatrist doesn't know what he's talking about. A person can have a concussion without losing consciousness. It is not uncommon. Whiplash from a rear-end collision can easily do it.

I think that these drugs do more harm than good. My brain felt even worse on drugs that were supposed to make my symptoms better. Oh, they made some symptoms better, but I felt even loopier.

Sounds like a bunch of quack doctors in Italy.

If this so called "professional" was actually knowledgeable, he'd likely know that being hit at only twelve miles per hour from behind can do significant brain damage under certain conditions. These injuries often do not show up on MRIs because the damage is at the microscopic level.

I had the same problem. I have hypopituitarism the result of a whiplash injury sustained in a rear-end accident (someone ran in to me). My growth hormone levels were at 0.03, or somewhere around there. I almost was not producing growth hormone. For two years after my concussion, it hardly healed because the hypopituitarism issue was not diagnosed. I'm much better now, but I still suffer from some of the symptoms.

They've had me on growth hormone injections, and my insurance has covered it. Unfortunately, due to me making a comment, the result of the effects of the brain injury, I have lost my job and will be losing my insurance soon. Growth hormone is insanely expensive. Genotropin is $1600 per month without insurance. I don't know what I'm going to do.

There is research showing the effects of a tbi on growth hormone function. It's just that few doctors even know about it. After going to so many doctors, you realize that many of them haven't the foggiest clue about complex neurological symptoms.

I improved a lot after being on growth hormone therapy.

Today I had the neuropshicological test, like I suspected it was a very superficial test not adequate to show my cognitive problems.
The test was 20-30 minutes long and it consisted in some basic questions such as "what day is today?" "what season is it?" "what year is it?" "how does it make 100-7?", to draw some images like trangles and circles and to fill in some puzzles by chosing the right alternatives between some images.
Basically it was a test to show if someone is full retarded or not, not to perceive the decrease in intellectual ability and thinking struggles due to concussion or other forms of mild impairment.
I asked the neurologist who gave me te test if there are some other test to better evaluate my cognitive ability and to see the limits of what I can actually do, and she said that they do not exist, which seems strange to me because I read on internet that a neuropshycological evalutation usually is composed of many test to analize each cognitive skill in detail and that they usually last several hours and are very challenging.
Can someone please shed some light on this to me? I'm very confused.
Do test more accurate to show thininkg dysfunction that the one I did exist?


The neurologist also said, like every other doctor that I have seen, that is impossible to suffer a concussion wihtout losing consciousness...I'm very frustrated by the general incompetence and lack of taking my situation seriously that I have faced since now.

You had a MMSE, Mini Mental Status Exam. That was not a neuro psychological assessment.

If the neuro said 'no loss of consciousness, no concussion,' she is ignorant to the point of negligence. But, if you have no way to see a neuro psychologist, there is not much that can be done.

What are the name of the tests usually done in a proper neuro psychological assesment?
I can try to ask the psychiatrist (the same who ordered the psychological assesment that I did following my request and insistence) to order me that specific tests without possibility of error and misunderastanding like this time, what do you think about that?

I remember one was the Wisconsin test?

A good test should take 6 to 8 hours to take...

In the US, Wechsler is a popular test, WAIS and Memory versions. MMPI-II, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-II is also part of the battery. The Halstead Reitan brain injury battery is common. There are newer computerized test batteries, too.

btw, A battery is a set of various tests oriented toward a specific condition. There are more than 100 different tests to choose from to fit into a battery.

Here is a wiki about the Halstead-Reitan Battery
Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery - Wikipedia

If I remember, you are in Italy. There may be specific tests that are common to Italy.

Do you think that the Halstead-Retain Battery would be adequate to diagnosis my kind of cognitive issues?

It sure would be heading in the right direction. One of the newer computerized batteries with just a few directly administered tests could also help.

The point is that is does not sound like you had a Neuro Psychological Assessment of any value. Getting properly assessed with any appropriate battery will be worthwhile.