My Year of Concussions | Hacker News Reader

My Year of Concussions

newyorker.com

50 pointsbookofjoe30 comments

I had a minor fall while snowboarding last January. I just slipped on an ice patch while slowing to a stop, and hit the back of my head. Was wearing a helmet. This was my second concussion as an adult (to my knowledge).

My startup was struggling, but that sealed its fate. Couldn't really work for the next couple months. We ran out of funding and pivoted to consulting (thankfully that's going well).

11 months later and I still have significant symptoms. Can't do any real exercise beyond very mild cardio, can't focus on code for anything challenging for extended periods of time, I get a lot of headaches, I'm a bit less patient, and have general focus and cognitive endurance problems.

When an MRI last month revealed mini hemmorages, it felt like a relief. At least it showed me that my symptoms were caused by something tangible, something a radiologist could point at. Motivated me to finally take a real vacation now. I feel more empathetic towards people with mental health issues now.

This was from a minor fall. Concussions are crazy.

Is recovery possible for a situation like that?

For most concussion patients the symptoms gradually improve over years but they never quite make a complete recovery.

I’ve heard that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can be beneficial for some people with brain injuries, as well as omega-3 supplementation.

Not sure why you are getting down voted.

Effect of hyperbaric oxygenation therapy on post-concussion syndrome

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122203/

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for post concussion symptoms

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547434/

Concussions and brain injury: Can omega-3 intake aid in brain health recovery?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160824140113.h...

Dietary Omega-3 Fatty Acids Normalize BDNF Levels, Reduce Oxidative Damage, and Counteract Learning Disability after Traumatic Brain Injury in Rats:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/169e/bf7db8f2cb95255e9bbf1b...

Treatment of Acute Sports-Related Concussion

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6542872/

I had a pretty severe fall while snowboarding the past season. I caught my heel side edge on a jump and landed on my head. I tried to sleep it off. All I did for a week straight was stay in bed and sleep. I haven’t noticed any lingering effects but your story makes me wonder... I still sometimes get flashbacks and I’m not sure I will be returning to the sport.

Did your helmet crack?

I learned a few years ago that one of the best things to do for a concussion is to literally sleep it off. I was surprised to see recommendations saying do not "use your brain to think hard, read, study or try to learn new material [that] may be very difficult and may aggravate your condition."

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/suspect-a-concussion-how-...

Edit: wording

I didn’t read everything, but this jumped out at me:

> What led to the first concussion? I’d decided to repay an opponent who had, during a battle for a loose puck, shoved me into the boards head first. I’d been having neck issues, and this had made them instantly worse.

Imhad a concussion last year. Turned out to have caused a bunch if neck issues that led to post concussion symptoms for many months till I found physio focussing on neck/eye treatment post concussion.

I also think my neck issues pre concussion made me predisposed to it, as the neck braces to help protect the brain in a blow. In the years before the concussion, tiny bumps would often leave me feeling discombobulated. Post therapy, I find tiny bumps are fine.

If anyone has had long lasting concussion symptoms, I highly recommend vestibular physio. Here’s what I wrote about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Concussion/comments/d8e4zz/symptoms...

Professional boxers put a lot of emphasis on training neck strength in order to handle being punched in the head. It apparently helps, but if course the concussion risk remains.

Yup, the brain is vulnerable. But, I would say anyone who had a concussion should seek vestibular therapy. And so should someone in a high risk field or sport, and who has neck tension.

Would not recommend professional boxing to anyone however.

As someone who grew up in TX it still stuns me that in 2019, middle school and high school tackle football are not seen as child-abuse.

Best of luck to anyone recovering, fortunately I've only had one mild concussion from a bike accident where I struck a jaywalking pedestrian.

In youth soccer, heading the ball has been eliminated due to concerns about brain injury.

It seems like the more we study the effect of many small impacts, the worse we realize it is. Eventually I think touching the ball with your head should be the same penalty as touching it with your hand.

I'm not sure how you fix football though. I'm just glad my kinds never wanted to play it.

> it still stuns me that in 2019, middle school and high school tackle football are not seen as child-abuse.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-10-29

One of the reasons concussion is taken less seriously than perhaps it should be is that it is actually brain damage, but the word "concussion" makes people feel it is less serious than if they heard "brain damage".

Concussions are a sub category of injuries referred to collectively as "Traumatic Brain Injury", or "TBI". That's a much scarier term for you.

I had mine this March, fell while roller skating onto a hard wood floor and had a brain bleed. Surgery was required. The extent of the injury wasn't immediately apparent, I'm told I walked into the ambulance. But after the surgery I was in so much pain they put me into an induced coma for a week, with Fentanyl.

The biggest surprise was how random and unpredictable the after effects were. My sense of time was totally messed up; I thought for sure I had killed my chance of getting out of the hospital, after I chased down the doctor and asked him why I was still there when I was scheduled to leave on Tuesday. Then he asked me what day I thought it was, and I realized sheepishly that it was still Monday.

The next week, I was having a conversation with my wife and she was describing the situation where you're trying to remember a word but are not able to. I said "You mean aphasia?" So I was able to remember a word I had probably never used in conversation, but couldn't tell what day of the week it was.

I played open grade (no weight restrictions) rugby for a season as an undergrad after playing since I was 6. That year left me with several concussions and about 5 years of headaches. Haven't played contact sports since.

There's weight restricted rugby?

In New Zealand there is at club level. Also all high school grades, except inter-school matches IIRC, are weight limited.

Thanks. That's a really interesting concept and probably good from a safety aspect too.

I've played rugby from age 12 to 35, in Australia, South Africa and England. I'd never heard of weight restricted teams.

Having said that, it's ten years since I retired, and I guess things move on. If such positive safety measures are being implemented, that has to be a good thing.

I've been playing rugby for 12 years, but I only got one concussion, when my teammate clipped my jaw during a passing drill, spinning my head around. Instant vertigo, fell down, and knew right away it was a concussion.

I felt euphoric. It was wonderful.

For the next 5 weeks, whenever I started warming up for practice (playing touch rugby), I'd get splitting headaches and have to stop. But after 5 weeks there were no headaches, so I resumed practice.

The other two concussions I had were from hide-and-seek when I was ten, a head-on collision in a pitch-black room (I saw stars), and another when I was skiing off trail when I was 23 and knocked my head against a tree (I saw double for 30 seconds).

Concussions apparently didn’t hurt his writing style. I loved it. Does New Yorker help with the editing?

I would be shocked if there isn't a head editor for every section of the New Yorker plus a head editor for the magazine plus several staff editors under each section.

When I worked in the newspaper business, you'd have copy editors to tidy up your prose, sub-editors to cut for length and style, and then the editors to decide what ran and where.

The author has been writing for the New Yorker for almost 20 years. He's probably pretty good on his own at this point, concussion or not :)

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/labourday/audio/20...

His pieces are usually entertaining. He had a recent one about the Masters golf tournament that was hilarious.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/inside-the-cul...

Had multiple concussions in high school, suffered years of symptoms and nothing really helped. Currently in college, where I discovered various forms of CBD as a form of post-concussion treatment.

While here I've had a few more bad ones, but found that using CBD drastically helps with symptoms, both in duration and severity. Sooner you get it in your system after an injury, the better it seems to work. Been able to go from a full concussion back to intense studying w/out symptoms in days, whereas before it would be at least a few months.

Hope this helps someone !

This is not one of those situations that calls for self help. The one thing they tried to impress on me was that the sooner you get treatment, the better it works. Based on my own outcome, I believe them.

...and this is why I stopped play "adult" hockey.

mlk

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