Hi all. I don't know if any of you will remember my first post, so to reiterate, I suffered from a concussion in April of 2017, and struggled with recovery being set back by smaller bumps along the way. I am a college freshman, and started my first semester feeling like I was finally over all my symptoms, and went through the semester feeling recovered. I even bumped my head a few times (decently minor bumps) and was able to overcome the anxiety from them and received no symptoms. However, two days ago, (on Thursday), I was at my friends house, and was on my way up the stairs to go to the bathroom. I was running up the stairs, and was unaware of the low ceiling above me, and hit the top of my head pretty damn hard. It hurt enough for me to crouch down for a few seconds after, in shock from the blow. In the two days after, I have had a minor headache, and just feel a little bit "off". I've tried to just sort of brush it off and not think about it, as I've done when I've had a minor bump before, but I'm afraid that this one might be out of my control, and that I could've received another concussion. I'm worried about this since it was a much harder hit than the others I've endured. Any thoughts and opinions on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Since your first post was back in August, I'll link it here -
New member: Looking for PCS advice about minor bumps after a concussion.


A head hit can misalign your atlas/axis (c2-c2) that can cause some off feelings and other symptoms.. Up C Spine has info on that..
that can be treated with good practitioners

As Jo*mar said, a hit like that can traumatize the upper cervical vertebra. The vertical compression can be quite problematic and cause lots of inflammation. This can cause headaches and a myriad of symptoms. It would be good to ice your upper neck, focus on maintaining good head and neck posture, especially when sleeping or napping and if things don't improve, seek out an upper cervical therapist. This can be a properly trained upper cervical chiropractor, physical therapist, or osteopath.

Hi Mark in Idaho. Is this something I should be worrying about? I haven't noticed any problems with my neck, only mild headaches and feeling kind of foggy. Are you sure this is the case, and if so could you go into further detail?

The trauma to the upper cervical vertebra is what I call a subtle neck injury. It usually has very few symptoms. The most obvious would be headaches as the injury and inflammation does two things. It can cause spasms in the muscles behind the ears that can cause headaches. It can also cause inflammation in and/or around the brain stem that can reduce vertebral artery blood flow to the brain. This can cause the foggy brain sensation and disrupt sleep.

I had a vertical compression injury and it messed up my neck but I had no neck specific symptoms. I just had problems with sleep from my neck being in a bad position. A chiro tried to help but a very uniquely trained physical therapist was the most help.

NF,

The head can be pretty tough or tender.

About a year before my head injury I was sitting in a truck at work. One of my employees needed something so I jumped out of the truck and ran smack into the trailing edge of one of my plane wings in the middle of the forehead, it knocked me over onto the backside of my head on the concrete.

I got up looking around to see if anyone was looking and never gave a head injury a first thought and a head injury never showed up.

Now I would be dealing with squelching a state of panic if such a thing happened.

It would sound to me like you most likely aren't going to head down that dark path of PCS.

Good luck at school!

Bud