[Stoic]

About 4 months ago I had the second concussion of my life, the first was playing rugby at age 14, which was about 10 years ago and from which I completely recovered in a few days. This time I was riding my bicycle in the dark and ended up smashing my head on the muddy ground of a park in a fall but did not lose consciousness.

The next day I had difficulty following conversation due to impaired concentration but showed no other symptoms.

The day after I woke up with a headache that could best be described as the feeling of electric jolts in my brain, and I would have a constant daily headache for almost 3 months. In the following weeks I continued to have concentration and memory impairments, and difficulty reading (which I think is due to impaired saccadic eye movements).

I took nothing except vitamins and fish oil until about 11 weeks into the incident when university exams approached and I started taking paracetamol to relieve the headaches as I needed to study.

Bizarrely not only did 4-6 tablets of daily paracetamol provide relief but after
a week when I stopped the paracetamol the daily headaches that I had for 3 months completely disappeared.

I was headache-free for a month and my concentration/memory issues significantly improved as well. I still had impaired saccadic eye movements (I skip words when reading, something I never used to do before the concussion) and I feel like my ability to encode new memories still isn’t as good as it used to be before the concussion, but it felt like I was finally making a recovery.

About 3 days ago I played soccer, the first time I engaged in vigorous exercise since the concussion. We played for 2 hours so as you can imagine I engaged in very intense exercise.

That night the PCS headache returned and it has been 2 days now that I’ve had the same headaches which I thought I was finally free of. I should also mention that I never had migraine, tension, cluster or any sort of headaches before the concussion, in fact I can't even remember the last time I had a headache before my recent concussion.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Did you continue to improve after symptom relapses?

[kiwi33]

Hi Stoic

Welcome to NeuroTalk .

The TBI/PCS forum is very active so I am sure that you will get helpful comments from other members (I don't know enough about TBI/PCS to say anything useful).

Best wishes.

[Jomar]

Sounds like you over did the soccer activity and your body did not like that..
Baby steps work best when returning to normal activities, but any very active/risky things might be best changed to something less rough.
Especially when still in recovery mode..
Maybe many months after no symptoms , then lightly test those activities again for short times at first.. build up slowly as tolerated..

[Gabeabebartlett]

Originally Posted by Stoic

About 4 months ago I had the second concussion of my life, the first was playing rugby at age 14, which was about 10 years ago and from which I completely recovered in a few days. This time I was riding my bicycle in the dark and ended up smashing my head on the muddy ground of a park in a fall but did not lose consciousness.

The next day I had difficulty following conversation due to impaired concentration but showed no other symptoms.

The day after I woke up with a headache that could best be described as the feeling of electric jolts in my brain, and I would have a constant daily headache for almost 3 months. In the following weeks I continued to have concentration and memory impairments, and difficulty reading (which I think is due to impaired saccadic eye movements).

I took nothing except vitamins and fish oil until about 11 weeks into the incident when university exams approached and I started taking paracetamol to relieve the headaches as I needed to study.

Bizarrely not only did 4-6 tablets of daily paracetamol provide relief but after
a week when I stopped the paracetamol the daily headaches that I had for 3 months completely disappeared.

I was headache-free for a month and my concentration/memory issues significantly improved as well. I still had impaired saccadic eye movements (I skip words when reading, something I never used to do before the concussion) and I feel like my ability to encode new memories still isn’t as good as it used to be before the concussion, but it felt like I was finally making a recovery.

About 3 days ago I played soccer, the first time I engaged in vigorous exercise since the concussion. We played for 2 hours so as you can imagine I engaged in very intense exercise.

That night the PCS headache returned and it has been 2 days now that I’ve had the same headaches which I thought I was finally free of. I should also mention that I never had migraine, tension, cluster or any sort of headaches before the concussion, in fact I can't even remember the last time I had a headache before my recent concussion.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Did you continue to improve after symptom relapses?

I completely understand your struggles there. In June I got a bad enough concussion from a motocross accident. I thought I finally was healed early that september and hit my head playing basketball. Instant relapse but the symptoms were all worse. And to add to that I fell down the stairs because if the dizziness and got the third that year. I've had up and down weeks/months. Yesterday I was feeling extremely well so I decided to do a calf raise. A singular calf raise. I did this calf raise exercise a little bit to quick and jolted my head a bit. It feels like I've gone back to the beginning after a small event like that. It's not a fun feeling.

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