Had a CT scan today, and no bleeding...but the DO said I would probably have a headache for up to 3 months, and dizziness for a couple weeks.  Does that seem normal?  I just deal drugs, but that seems odd to me.

Forgot to add I hit my head a few days ago.

legal drugs...the AF paid for my schooling to do it...

Since you couldn't remember hitting your head a couple of days ago maybe you should take the meds.  

I briefly lost consciousness, I do have a concussion...I had a CT scan, and there is no bleeding....
I've been a bit disoriented, almost as I've been drinking or on drugs since the fall.

She said the Headache could last months, but if the dizziness/disorientation lasts for more than another week to go  back in.

Not unusual at all. If the vertigo and headaches are gone within a year, consider yourself quite fortunate.



Still rocking the occasional dizzy spell and frequent headaches a couple years after my last melon thump.

It'd save me a great deal of money if you could explain how to do this.

Fall with around 190 pound body weight face first into a heavy duty jeep bumper...

I do not recommend this however, I'm having memory problems and a constant headache,

Sorry for you man, I hope mine goes away sooner...I'm eating vitamin M like candy and it's not doing shit.

Switched to percocet...and it's still not doing alot.

With the kind of fall you had. I expect that you'll be going to the Neurologist for a while. You'll probably get better in the short term, but there will probably be brain damage that doesn't actually start revealing itself until later in life.

 

Yeah, so I'll become a retard  Not that I'm that far off as it is.

I was rocking Oxy with a Tylenol buffer, which is essentially the same thing, for about 6 months. After that long, I figured I'd better Cowboy The Fuck Up and find another way to deal with the headaches before I ended up a junkie.



My pain tolerance has risen substantially, if that's any consolation.



I hope your case turns out differently but, after seeing the best Neuro Geeks "money could buy", I'm still rocking nearly constant headaches and the occasional bout of vertigo. You pretty much just learn to live with it.



Don't rock the Percocet for too long. No need to add another problem to the equation. If I can live with it, so can you, brother.



[longkissgoodnight]LIFE IS PAIN![/longkissgoodnight]



 

Sorry to hear that Aiden. Sounds to me like.... with no obvious skull fracture or hematoma (epidural or subdural)... you most likely suffered a DAI (Diffuse Axonal Injury).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_axonal_injury



This can be a very devastating injury to the brain with many short-term AND long-term complications (much worse than a simple fracture or hematoma). It can be almost as bad as a penetrating head injury (think GSW) where part of the brain tissue is displaced or destroyed/removed! With DAI there is no surgery that can repair the damage because it involves EVERY SINGLE BRAIN CELL!!!



If this is the case, the best thing you can do is to give your brain a rest - literally, and give it a chance to heal itself. This means limiting or avoiding anything that causes increased brain activity/requires cognitive  thought. Avoid computers, video games, homework, plot-intensive movies, etc.



My best advice is to HEED THE ADVICE of your Neurologist. You will probably be seeing him on a regular basis for a while.



DISCLAIMER: I am not an MD nor a Neurologist (a battlefield neurologist maybe), but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once!



With that being said... dibbs on guns, ammo and Steve... if they haven't already been spoken for. Good luck.

ill IM the link to one.  I don't know if he'll want to out himself, so I'll give him the option.

I thought I was outed long before this.

You sound like you have fairly classic post concussive syndrome. I seriously doubt that you have diffuse axonal injury as another poster googled. Axonal injury is best viewed with MRI, but can sometimes be seen with CT as well. Even if you do have axonal injury, there is no specific treatment.

The main thing to be concerned with is the trauma itself. Having a CT done is smart as it is actually better than MRI for blood and bone which are the two things you are worried about with trauma I.e. Hemorrhage and fracture.
Barring either of those, you fall into a very difficult category of closed head injury, traumatic brain injury, post concussive whatever you want to call it.  When I still worked at the VA, we saw these patients coming back in droves from AFG and Iraq. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of great therapy. It's a wait and see approach, and your doc mentioned some of the more common timelines.

I will warn against taking chronic daily opiates. I would stop pain killers as soon as possible. If you continue to take morphine and percocet, you will become an addict, albeit a legal one. Even the benign over the counter medications as tylenol and ibuprofen can set up a cycle of rebound headache that has your body creating pain in order to get more medications.

If your symptoms continue, evaluation by a neurologist might be in order (I suspect you saw an ER or PCP doc). There are a few daily prophylactic meds we can try. It's not well understood, but there is a psychological component to chronic daily headache. With post concussive syndrome, studies have found that the headache is worse for longer if there is ongoing litigation. Stress worsens them as well.

From the dizziness standpoint, dizziness with head turn, rolling over, or looking up, I might be able to help with a bit over the Internet even. Do you have a spinning sensation (vertigo) or lightheadedness? Does it seem to come on with position change?

didnt wanna risk it man

Crap, I'm going to start wearing a helmet 24/7.  Good luck, OP and others.

Clivus,

Have you used / had success with the Epley maneuver for BPPV?  Had a couple of good responses in my office.

You read my mind. I have had great success wth the modiied Epley. I first do a DixHallpike to determine the offending ear then do the modified Epley with head turn toward the side that caused the most symptms during the Hallpike. It is one of the few cases that the patient will declare you a miracle worker the following day.

Exactly the same here.

Of course (more central to typical chiropractic care) I see a lot more cervicogenic headaches and vertigo resulting from hypomobility, along with referred pain from involved cervical muscles.  Hopefully they come to me when the CC is head/neck pain and go to you when it's vertigo -but some patients sure do take a long route through various offices before they end up in the right place.

I am fortunate to hear the word "miracle" fairly frequently in my field ~followed all too often by failure to complete the treatment plan, discontinuing homecare, and a return to aggravating ADLs...

Such is patient care.

i dealt with post concusion syndrome for well over 6 months

Would a caloric test help?
That's the only neurological intervention I know (Diagnostic, certainly not therapeutic!!!).

OP, hope you get to feeling better ASAP!!! Take care man.

A three month headache sounds like a hassle. See if you can talk him down to just a few weeks or something.

Lol that's really mean. Cold calorics will induce vomiting in the awake patient. I only do them when evaluating brain death.

Do yourself a favor and look up the term ATLAS SUBLUXATION ( misalignment of ATLAS ,AXIS cervical vertabrae). This happens from head trauma , TMJ, whiplash, etc. The symptoms are vertigo, head aches, all kinds of neurological crap. You need to see a ATLAS SPECIFIC chiro(NUCCA), they will dertimine if you have a subluxation.The correction is painless and fast and could save you a lot of misery and recovery time..........ask me how I know. GOOD LUCK!

After getting my skull cracked and blood in my brain from being hit by a drunk driving illegal alien, I had bouts of dizziness for 3 nearly 4 months. Couldn't work or drive, did lead to some quality time with the girl who became my wife though!  


Rapid recovery man.

Subluxation would have picked up on the CT that was surely done in the ER. Any other consideration of it is fantasy bullshit.

Im asking on behalf of Aiden, should he get further treatment or wait it out?

 

If the initial workup was negative, it's a wait it out situation.

Not a neurologist but work in the department of neurology for one of the major medical centers in Dallas.  If you need a doc in the Dallas area I could point you yo one or two. Other than that I dunno man

I had 4 MRI  done, 7 emergency hospital visits,been seen by 4 different neurologists , and an assortment of other pill pushin quacks that drugged me up with no relief to my symtoms. The only relief symptoms came from the ATLAS SPECIFIC chiro. It is far from fantasy!

You at Parkland? I may need a fellowship

Close. UT southwestern, but alot of our docs see pts at parkland.

Glad it helped. You may have needed PT. However with normal MRI you have no evidence that you had subluxation.

Without going into unnecessary history or detail, use of the terms "subluxation" or "vertebral subluxation" is something the chiropractic profession is unfortunately saddled with.  Old timers won't let them go and resist adopting more specific and modern terms for the types of joint or connective tissue findings appropriate for manual manipulation.

The world health organization's definition isn't too bad "A lesion or dysfunction in a joint or motion segment in which alignment, movement integrity and/or physiological function are altered, although contact between joint surfaces remains intact. It is essentially a functional entity, which may influence biomechanical and neural integrity."  

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue though.

Given the medical definition of subluxation there's no good reason for Chiropractic to continue using the word differently -especially given that it first and foremost looks to the average MD like a misdiagnosis or ridiculous claim in light of objective findings.

"Manipulable lesion" as a category with specific modifiers added may become the norm...

And despite what they want to believe or claim PTs are not well trained, as a matter of course, in grade V mobilizations -much less in applying them to zygapophysial joints.

.