about eight months ago, and since i just aggravated mine tonight with weightlifting, i'd assume that it's possible to aggravate a year-old one.

You cannot aggravate a year old concussion. It is a new concussion. As Lucy confirmed, a prior concussion or multiple concussions can easily create a situation where you brain becomes very sensitive to any quick motion. There are a few ways your brain can be concussed:
1. A direct impact where the brain is forced against the part of the skull that is hit or suddenly stopped.
2. A contra-coup injury where the brain bounces back and forth from the point of impact to the point on the opposite side of the skull.
3. A rotational trauma where the skull is rotated suddenly and the brain twists within the skull and against the bony protuberances on the inside of the skull.
4. A vertical brain movement that pushes the brain up or more likely down into the base of the skull. This can compress against the brain stem and be very damaging.
5. A shake or impact that causes the brain to move about the corpus callosum, the center of the brain at the top of the brain stem. Many concussions of the other types include injury to the connections from the lobes to the corpus callosum. This is often the cause of the sensory symptoms as the brain does not communicate between the different lobes. The corpus callosum is like the central switchboard of the brain, directing information between the different lobes.

The more often the impacts, the greater the chance that healing is incomplete leaving the brain cells, especially the axons, susceptible to damage from much lower impact forces. There is never a complete healing. There is always a residual weakness in the brain tissue.

Regarding the metallic taste, I have experienced this symptom for over 30 years. It only last a few minutes. Only one doctor recognized it as a symptom of a concussion. He was fresh out of med school.

I am like Lucy. I can get a concussion from speed bumps and other road bumps and quick stops. I can also get a concussion from roller coasters and other fast moving amusement part rides. Once, I got a concussion from a Tilt-A-Whirl. I was nauseous for a day and it was not motion sickness. Like Lucy, I had a very bad concussion long ago and was knocked out for 30 minutes. When I regained consciousness, I spoke very slowly for about three days. My personality changed drastically after that event. I have had a few more personality changes after more recent concussions.

Since a concussion in 1996 when I stood up under a heavy wood beam, I can get sea sick very easily. I had never had this problem before during almost forty years of rough water boating and fishing.

Lucy had the only test that does not result in false negatives and has high accuracy in true positives. It is the QEEG. The Quantitative Electro Encephalo Gram uses 20 to 40 leads to measure the electrical impulses between the different lobes of the brain. It uses a much finer timing that a normal EEG. The millisecond graphing allows the doctor to see minute changes or aberrations in electrical activity. It also allows him to compare the right and left hemisphere simultaneously. The brain should work in a symmetrical pattern. If it doesn't, it is a sign of malfunction. Functional MRI's can also show the damage but are not in wide use. There are a few other new imaging techniques being developed but not yet widely available. The QEEG is in wide use and has been well researched with over 170,000 articles in the medical libraries.

The QEEG shows that my brain operates at 25% power in the occipital (back) lobe. The corpus callosum does not "gate" information properly. That means it allows too much information to flow to the other areas such that the other parts of the brain are flooded with too much information. A normal functioning corpus callosum would stop the information, sort it out for relevance and then only pass on the important information. It basically acts like a filter blocking the unimportant information from clogging up the brain. Mine allows too much auditory and visual information through causing an information overload.

Lucy, you probably have many of the same problems. Dr. Dorothy Gronwall and Phillip Wrightson of New Zealand have been pioneers in concussion research. Dr. Gronwall died of a stroke in 2002 or so. Their clinic may still be in operation. They have written three very good books on head injury. There is a good synopsis of one of their books at http://tbilaw.com/tbilibrary.com/gronwall.html

So, those of you who think you aggravate old concussions need to do the reading and understand that your brains cannot tolerate additional impacts. The later impacts are new concussion events. This is a fact.

Hi Mark - guess what - I was seeing Dorothy Gronwell - she took me on as a favour!

When I was struggling to work my boss spoke to a friend of his who was a Dr in the Head Injury unit of one of our hospitals and she had worked with Dorothy before she retired and rang and arranged for me to see her.

Dorothy saved me - she confirmed that I had pcs and not having a mental breakdown. She also arranged for me to take a month off work and was worried that I had been trying to work full time for the previous 2 months.

Her office was in the basement of her home and she had a siamese cat that could open doors! Hows that for a valuable piece of info!

After I had taken the month off work I had to go back to see her for reassessment - can remember sitting there crying unable to complete a test -she calmy went and made me a coffee and after that I went home. - She died a few days later - needless to say I was devasted - I have always thought that she is the one specialist that I saw that totally believed me.

Her one piece of advice that has stuck in my mind is "just go with it, don't fight it"

No other specialist has completed tests the same as hers - maybe because most of the other specialists are paid for by the insurer? Don't know. Unfortuanately I didn't receive my second report.

Lynlee

Lynlee,

Wow, You have been blessed.

Dr Gronwall and her colleagues are the only ones who "GET IT." Her practice and cat sound so much like her. I can easily see her as going against the flow of conventional thought.

I though I met a Physiatrist here in Sacramento, California, who was open minded like Dr Gronwall, but a follow up appointment proved me wrong. I had a neurologist who was fabulous but he is 84 years old and had a cerebral embolism and has lost most of his eyesight and had to close his practice.

I was just talking to my mom about my head injury and finally getting disability. She mentioned that when I regained consciousness after my injury when I was 10, I was crying that I could not see. I had never heard this part of "my" story before. I am finally learning a lot about what happened to me 44 years ago.

btw, I have never heard the name Lynlee before. It is a pretty name.

There is a neuropsychologist in Washington State by Seattle who has some good ideas about PCS. He has done research and developed the Cripe Neurological Symptoms that can be used to differentiate a brain injury/concussion from psychological problems. He has other differentiating criteria too. Unfortunately, he has not been well published so his ideas are not followed.

For example, I test in the top 10 - 1 percent for intelligence according to the WAIS-II criteria. I test at the bottom 10 percent for processing speed and memory functions. The neuropsych say that I have psychological problems because nobody can test at both ends of the spectrum. Dr. Cripe's research shows that the conflicting scores are indicative of a organic brain injury. He also says that psychological causation has to be ruled out because it would show low scores across the whole spectrum of tests.

So, the psychologist who testified at my disability hearing says I have psychological problems that qualify me for disability, not a brain injury.

We know better. We know that they are the ones who are nuts. They refuse to acknowledge the logical truth.

They may have a diploma, but we are the ones with the real knowledge, even if our brains are broken.

My best to you as you "just go with it and don't fight it."
I have done best when I have a similar attitude.

Mark, I hae been repeatedly told by psychologists - (other than Dorothy of course) that as I have scored above average and in some cases in their top 20% (percentile as they would say) that there is nothing wrong with me and most people would be happy to score as well as I had.

I end up sitting there trying to explain that I was never "just above average" - average did not exist for me - I was always an extremely quick thinker - excelled at school and sports - was a perfectionist. I know that it sounds like rose coloured glasses but that is how I was. And who needs to have a sleep after 2 hours of testing and has a massive headache from concentrating so hard for so long?

I am now thinking that the higher the IQ etc the more we notice any brain imperfections or injuries. I firmly believe that my tiredness is due to my brain trying to process as rapidly as it did previously but requires more energy to do so which explains why my good time is so limited during the day. I don't know how to slow it down - it is not exacly like taking your foot off the accelerator and I do try to avoid over stimulation of my brain i.e. one thing at a time. I am sure that the "speed" of the brain is a genetic thing set at birth or shortly after. I try to avoid cramming too much into my good brain time as I pay for it the next day.

When I did the QEEG it was reported that I was in the bottom 20% as far as learning disabilities go - I find that really hard to believe, though when I think about it I realise that as the most disabling incident was when I was 45, prior to this I had stored an extremely wide spread general knowledge - including a lot of irrevelant junk in my brain - this is always easier to retreive that anything that I have learned in the past 8 years. Often it will take me days to remember something that I do know that I know the answer to. Word finding can be a pain too - I am very good at bluffing - few people would realise any of this!

Sorry I am waffling away here - my bed time now!

Lynlee

Did the QEEG analyzer say anything about your frontal lobe power? Mine is at up to ten times normal. This is the source of my high intelligence. My processing speed is at 10% and memory functions at about the same.
My occipital lobe is at about 25% power. Thus the two lobes do not communicate very well.

The high intelligence problem with the neuropsych assessment is very common. I think part of the problem is when the psychologist sees someone with higher intelligence score than his own. They have labeled my intelligence as extraordinary and phenomenal. This shows that it is better than theirs. They think that just because you have high intelligence score, there is nothing wrong. It is intelligence envy. They claim that the low memory and processing skills are just a psychological aberration. I have yet to meet a neuropsych as smart as I am. They are usually just a trained robot that cannot think outside the box. It is one thing to be able to store knowledge. It is quite another thing to know how to use that information. The latter is probably you and me.

I have good access to old information. That is pre-morbid knowledge. Since 2001, I have very little memory or ability to learn new skills or information. If I am doing research, I use cut and paste with wild abandon. I will cut and paste anything that has a remote connection to my project. Then I can slowly sort through all of the information I have collected so it makes better sense. Otherwise, I will have no idea of what or where the good information is. I sometimes use multiple monitors or even multiple computers so I do not lose track of information I need for my project.

They define skill sets that are retained after brain injury as "over-learned skills." That is, they have been used so many times, that they are stored in many different parts of long term memory. Thus, they can be found when the brain needs to recall the skill. It is like there is a well beaten path to the stored memory. Either that or there are many different paths to the stored memory. The information since injury (post morbid) does not get this path system set up as well so recall can be hap-hazard. I will finally remember something I searched my memory for, often days later.

I moved to my present home six months before my injury. I had already memorized many of the streets all over the valley. After my injury, those memories were just gone. I had not over-learned them yet. I have not been able to memorize them again.

One of my tricks when I cannot find a memory is to look around and identify the different things I see. This sort of tests a bunch of memory routes and sometimes, the memory is found. I have horrible problems with word finding. I often use a word with the same first letter or even a combination of the same letters. I might say 'decide' when I mean 'discover.' My wife is good at helping me correct to the word I was wanting. She can almost read my mind better than I can. When I am giving her driving directions ( I do not drive anymore), I will say left when my brain means right. As soon as I hear my mistake, I can correct it.

I do a lot of work with power tools plugged into extension cords. If I need to unplug a drill and plug a saw into the extension cord, I will always get it backwards. I unplug the drill and instead of dropping the drill cord plug end, I drop the extension cord plug end. Then I pick up the saw cord plug end and try to plug it into the drill cord plug end. I can concentrate to try to do it correctly and still I drop the extension cord plug end.

When driving down the road, I will see road signs that look odd. When I look again, I realize that I scrambled the letters to come up with something quite different that the actual word. It can be quite amusing. It is sort of a dyslexia problem.

I have a similar problem with my keyboard skills. I will type "and" instead of "an," 'are' instead of 'or', 'this' instead of 'the', and other quirky combinations. I will not add an "s" to make a word plural. It is like my brain short circuits and sends a message to my fingers based on the first similar word in memory. My brain thinks the right word. It just gets sidetracked sending the message to my fingers.

I use spell check in everything I type online.

One of my serious problems is with papers or forms. I cannot fill out a form that is full of blanks to fill in. My mind gets overwhelmed with all of the blank spaces and I get stuck. If I just have to fill out a form with lots of blank spaces, if I remember, I put a sheet of paper over the blank spaces and only expose one line at a time. This allows my mind to focus on just the one blank.

A similar problem happens with multiple pieces of paper. I cannot look at three or more pages at the same time. I quickly get overloaded. My solution is to three hole punch them and put them in a binder. That way I can only see one page at a time. I can organize them easily this way. Sorting through multiple loose pages is just not possible.


Well, I digress so much it annoys people to no end. I should stop this and let it be read so someone can make a flippant comment.

BTW, I think you are right. Because we "had" such highly developed skills, we are extremely sensitive to all of our new dysfunctions.

Hi,

I was wondering if I could email either of you a copy of my QEEG and if you could comment/ give me your opinion on it. It may sound weird, but I have not found anybody properly qualified to comment on it in New Zealand. (only about 4 million of us in the entire country.) I went to Sydney for it and the nuero/psych had not completed the report before I came home. She had been very excited that according to her showed damage.

The Brain Injury Assn here seem to deal with those with more severe injuries and most specialists appear to be linked to my insurer (ACC)- who of course would like to be able to say there is nothing wrong with me!

Regarding the metallic taste - I believe it is the nortriptyline and zopilcone which I take for sleeping at night causing this for me.

thanks

Lynlee

Lynlee,

Usually, a Qeeg is computer analyzed based on a database of both control and injured subjects. The simplest analysis is by was of comparing hemispheres. There should be a symmetry between right and left and between front and back. If you have the color pictures, they should look symmetrical. The power scales need to be compared to normalized data. That is data from a control group of similar age.

Even here in the US, many Qeeg results are sent out to be analyzed. My neuro built his own database and had much of the research data in his head. He and his Qeeg tech would look over the results and knew how to look for the minute dysfunctions. They would advance the time by very small amounts and could find the minute glitches that represent dysfunctions. The bad spot might be for only one-tenth of a second.

One of the databases used is called Neurometrics Here is a good simple explanation of the analysis methods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurometrics

Dr. Robert Thatcher is one of the pioneers and is developing a mini Qeeg system to indicate brain trauma in athletes.

Here is a list of good articles about Qeeg. I would suggest those with Dr. Thatcher as author. http://www.brainfitness.com/researchEEG.html

The only member in your area in the International Society for Neurofeedback and Research is Bruce Mackie, Auckland, 64 9 524 3698.

He only has a masters degree so most likely is focused more on neuro-feedback therapy than diagnostics.

Dr. Thatcher's web site is http://www.appliedneuroscience.com/
His contact is at the bottom of the main web page.

Does your test data have any trade names on the pages? They would indicate the database used.

Did you go to the Sidney Neurofeedback Centre? I have looked at their web page and find it lacking of information about their analysis process. They do say they refer to www.appliedneurosciences.com/au for expert analysis. I do not find any better information on appliedneurosciences web page.

By my research, I bet you were tested by Donna Sobanski. Am I correct? She may be sending the test results of for analysis.

How could you e-mail the results? Is it just text or are there pictures etc? Or a PDF maybe?

If you want to try, I will post my e-mail address to you privately.

I just want to comment this. I have experienced the same thing with getting a slight knock and even just by gently whiplashing my neck at one time. The sympthoms came back stronger, with for me headache beeing the major thing. So I know that this talk of re-injury is correct and that it most definelty has to do with you beeing concussed before and still suffer from PCS.

I brought this issue up with my Senior Staff Neurologist that I see, and her opinion was that this small of a hit or bump could NOT cause the damage done normally from a concussion. She couldnt say why I had intensified sympthoms. It is easy to just blame it on increased anxiety and necktention from knowing that youve been hit/bumped etc.
Her professional opinion was that I did not do any in-reparable damage. But she couldnt say what mechanism cause the increase of symptoms.

Im almost a year into the PCS and still feel very little if any improvment. What HAS improved is that I thanks to the anti-depressants, think in different paths and am no longer depressed. I start to accept my life as it is. Im far from really accepting it, but I can enjoy myself WITH the limitations applied from the PCS.

I have people I know who had the same thing as me for 1.5 year and are now fully recovered. One even got himself a new concussion that lasted for two weeks and then went totally away. He was afraid that it would be cumulative and start the cycle from the start. BUT IT DIDNT!

My thoughts (based on my experience on this exact subject) on the cumulative part of concussions is that while your brain is in "recoverymode" its is cumulative in a more serious way than if you are as healed you will get, before getting a new concussion..

Can anyone give me their insights on the topics I have gone through!?

This is to me one of the most important subjects, because it right now keeps me from doing a lot of the stuff I love so much. Im giving it at least 1.5 year before a start doing anything that can hurt me.

Emil from Sweden

I would agree with your idea that while still recovering from a concussion, another concussion will have more serious effects. Once you have healed to a stable point, another concussion would hopefully not be as damaging.

Your neurologist is dead wrong. A concussion is defined by symptoms, not impact force. This is a common problem with neurologists. Until Dr. Robert Thatcher gets his active concussion monitoring device on the market, we will just have to believe our own experiences. Dr. Thatcher is developing a miniature EEG device that can be worn by an athlete (football player) that will signal a concussion based on the EEG parameters developed by Dr. Thatcher. This device will use brain function to determine a concussion, not impact forces as the NFL and NCAA are trying to suggest.

Unfortunately, neurologist do not follow concussion research. They are more oriented to other neurological problems. Neuropsychologists are the source of most concussion research.