How to Know if You Suffered a Concussion Quora

March 12, 2022 Post a Comment

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I opened my eyes to see a clear bluish sky and two men leaning over me to put a caryatid around my cervix. I don't know if I was already on the stretcher or if I was notwithstanding on the pavement, but there are enough of things I don't remember. As I would after find out, I had a brain injury.

Was I badly hurt, I asked. I felt as though someone had smashed a two-by-iv beyond the entire left half of my face. The two men on either side of me advisedly lifted my upper body to finish with the brace, giving me a view of my legs. I wiggled my left toes, which were more obliging than my lips. It couldn't be that bad, I decided. My spinal cord still worked.

The man on my right — either an EMT or a paramedic; I had no manner of knowing — asked if I knew where I was. Was I… outside the Whole Foods? Did I know what happened, he asked. No. Look… when the bronze car turned left in front of me, cutting me off, I striking the brakes on my bike. Information technology didn't matter, I remembered realizing. I wouldn't stop in fourth dimension. The next thing I remembered was the heaven. I had been unconscious for most 15 minutes.

"She'south confused," the guy on my right said to the guy on my left. I had hit my head, the perhaps-paramedic told me. I had a concussion. It was a skillful thing I was wearing my bicycle helmet. I call back he said it so, but he might take said information technology later, in the ambulance, when he was removing my helmet. In whatsoever effect, I was going to the infirmary instead of my yoga class.

I spent the hours after the crash immobilized and braced, while things I didn't fully understand happened around me. Like about writers, I am a command freak. And similar most editors, I am accustomed to telling people what to do. On whatsoever kind of normal day, this situation would accept filled me with anxiety or fury, possibly both. I had the energy for neither. I was having trouble making memories and also frequently losing consciousness.

I was vaguely aware of being removed from the ambulance and sent into the emergency room. Then, a lot of people stood around me to lift me from one stretcher into another, a surprisingly gentle operation. Later on, a woman was asking me where I hurt, and I gestured to the left side of my head. My skull felt like it was trying to get out my torso through the peel, pulsing routinely confronting the mankind of the left side of my face up and my brow. I'll call this The Headache, and information technology was worse than any other headache I have ever felt. The fentanyl the doctors gave me didn't stop The Headache, but it did succeed in making me intendance a lot less virtually it.

I noticed someone moving above me, and asked her what was happening. I was about to get a CT scan, she told me. She is the first person whose appearance I call up, even in role. She had Shirley Temple curls. I'm not sure what her face up looked like, merely I remember I liked her pilus. I was a science journalist and had written about CT scans but I'd never had one before, I told her. So this was exciting.

But every bit they moved me into the scanner, I wondered: was I a science announcer? I had spoken without thinking. My unabridged life before the ambulance felt dim and far off. I might as well have been built-in on the pavement, with the neck brace half on.

I had reported on concussions, actually — particularly during the flow when they were a negotiating point for the National Football League. At Bloomberg News, my previous employer, I'd written most the controversial new diagnosis, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, after Junior Seau's suicide. CTE, which tin only exist truly diagnosed after death, causes symptoms like memory loss, depression, and confusion. (Scientists are now trying to discover ways to make the diagnosis in living people.) Multiple concussions also raise the risk of dementia, with or without CTE. CTE isn't limited to football, of class — soccer players, boxers, professional wrestlers, and others who participate in contact sports are at risk — but the NFL has been at the cutting edge of the enquiry.

American football has provided a frontline for discussing multiple hits to the head, and what they do to human brains. On September 21, Aaron Hernandez — a former tight finish for the New England Patriots who was serving a jail sentence for murder when he killed himself — was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. His family'due south lawyer, in announcing the findings, said it was the well-nigh severe example the experts had seen in a 27-year-old.

"It'southward scary to recall that my brain could be deteriorating," wrote Warren Sapp, a hall-of-famer. Ed Cunningham, a former NFL offensive lineman, quit his job as a colour commentator for ESPN and ABC, telling The New York Times, "I don't currently think the game is prophylactic for the brain. And, oh, by the fashion, I've had teammates who accept killed themselves. Dave Duerson put a shotgun to his breast so nosotros could report his encephalon." (Duerson, who played with Cunningham in 1992 and 1993, killed himself in 2011 and was diagnosed posthumously with CTE.)

Old players take agitated for research on what multiple concussions practise to the human brain. John Urschel, a 26-twelvemonth-old offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, was so concerned about his mind, he retired in July later 3 seasons and so he could focus on his PhD work in mathematics at MIT. Urschel'south conversion to total-fourth dimension PhD student came on the heels of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association of donated NFL players' brains: 99 pct of the NFL players' brains had signs of harm. Now, there's some selection bias there — salubrious retired players' families are probably less probable to donate their brains — but the report did observe that the longer someone played, the more likely it was their encephalon showed signs of CTE. The written report'southward authors cautioned against using it equally an interpretation of CTE prevalence, or every bit a mode of estimating take chances.

The scientific discipline on CTE is yet in its infancy. Some other study, published before in July in JAMA Neurology, found that high school football players who played in the 1950s died with normal brains. CTE is real, and a existent trouble — only we don't know how widespread it is, or exactly what it means. What I quickly realized, equally I lay in the ER, is that reporting on multiple concussions hadn't exactly prepared me for a single 1.

It was comforting that I knew what a concussion was. I'd written about the cumulative furnishings. I'd edited pieces nigh how football helmets protected players from some kinds of brain injuries but not others. I'd described symptoms of concussions. During my recovery, I began to understand the poverty of those descriptions. CTE is terrifying, simply concussions themselves are bad plenty.

A concussion, according the U.s.a. Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention, is any kind of bump or jolt to the brain that results in a change in mental condition. I knew they were the most common kind of brain injury, and frequently associated with athletic activity. I likewise knew they were balmy traumatic brain injuries. The CDC has estimated that the number of annual concussions due to sports and other activities was as loftier every bit 3.8 million yearly. (Not every concussion results in a visit to the ER.) That, of course, doesn't account for concussions sustained in car crashes, another mutual cause.

What happens in any concussion — including mine — is a recognizable set up of symptoms: confusion, fatigue, difficulty remembering new information, nausea, dizziness, mood changes, and sensitivity to light and sound. The number of concussions receiving medical intendance has been on the ascension in the last few decades, in part because people are more than familiar with the idea of brain injuries. Some of that increase is probably also due to the increasing athleticism of sports similar football: every bit athletes get bigger and stronger, they're more than able to generate the kind of force that causes a concussion.

You don't even need to be hit on the head to accept ane. Your brain is a gelatinous mass, floating in a puddle of cerebrospinal fluid inside your skull. A concussion occurs when the encephalon hits the skull, even if the person's head doesn't collide with an object. Whiplash alone can generate a concussion. After all, information technology doesn't take much to deform Jell-O. The force of the bear upon with the skull tin crusade the brain to twist or even rebound against the other side of the skull.

The result is chaos, says John Leddy, a concussion expert at the Academy of Buffalo. Brain cells stretch and twist, blood vessels go leaky, and the chemicals that the brain uses to communicate dump at random into the spaces between brain cells. The electrical activity of the brain is dampened. There's a period of macerated action from brain cells, likewise every bit reduced claret flow in the brain, according to inquiry on the concussion pour.

It'south a piddling hard to say specifically what happens in living brains, because brains are generally encased by skulls. Also, post-concussion chaos isn't visible on an MRI or a CT, the two most mutual ways to image the brain. Scientists accept tried to figure out what's going on by creating windows into animals' brains by removing part of the skull, but that tends to exist traumatic in its own right. There are some methods of observing concussed brains used by researchers, just they're non widely bachelor.

While some scientists are pursuing blood biomarkers or heart scans as a style of diagnosing a concussion, the all-time way of determining whether a person has a concussion or not is still a checklist of symptoms. This is reflected in the NFL concussion protocol, which goes into effect for whatever player displaying one of 7 symptoms: loss of consciousness, slowness getting upward, balance issues, a blank look, disorientation, clutching the head, and visual facial injury. Any of those symptoms volition go a player immediately removed from the field, to undergo examination by an contained neurologist. (Whether this protocol works, however, remains something of an open question.)

The checklists work because concussions have predictable symptoms. Anything that requires cooperation across larger areas of the brain, similar residual, is going to exist more than affected by a concussion, Leddy says. A loss of balance is a archetype symptom of concussion. That'southward because the parts of your brain that help orient your trunk in infinite are spread throughout the Jell-O; your optics, ears, muscles and joints all contribute signals, which are candy through the cerebellum, cognitive cortex, and brainstem. Vision is similarly vulnerable, since the control of the centre is spread throughout the encephalon too. "Those are the physical signs on examination that I await for in everybody who I see with a concussion," Leddy says. "How their eyes are working and what their balance'due south similar."

Another common symptom of whatsoever brain injury, including concussion, is impaired retentiveness. I experienced ii kinds. The first was for events that occurred before my brain injury, called retrograde amnesia. I call up realizing I would crash, but don't think the impact. The other kind, anterograde amnesia, is for events after the brain injury. This form is probably due to the chaos that was taking place inside my skull.

Lost memory is one of concussion's hallmarks, says William Mullally, the associate principal of clinical neurology at Brigham and Women's Infirmary, and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. He's not only familiar with concussions in the clinical sense, either: betwixt his hobbies of karate and boxing, he'due south had a few himself. In i boxing friction match, he remembers going out, then the next thing he remembers was using his opponent to pull himself up. The fight was 3 rounds, and each round was three minutes with a minute in between to pause. "Then that'south 12 minutes I have no recollection of," he tells me. Plainly, he came back from having been knocked out, determined to end the match.

The lost memories are probably the upshot of difficulty in the seahorse-shaped sections of the encephalon, called the hippocampus, Mullally tells me. These structures — at that place are 2 in a normal brain — are very sensitive to a lack of blood flow and changes in electrical activity. Without functioning hippocampi, it'south impossible to encode short-term memories, Mullally says. And so he and I have gaps in our retentiveness — he while boxing, and me, in the ER — where we were perfectly awake. Blackouts.

When my memory started again, I was in a small room. A nurse was trying to make me comfortable. I was ravenously hungry, and requested nutrient. She nodded and left, pulling the door nigh of the way closed behind her. I located my telephone — under the blankets with me, I discovered — and began informing people that I had inconvenienced them.

Where was my food? Suddenly, the hunger turned to nausea. I began looking for a phone call push button, a mode of alerting someone that I required a saucepan. I couldn't find it, and puked resignedly onto the flooring. But even that didn't alarm me much.

Mood changes are mutual with concussion, and mine started the moment I woke up. Aye, I was dislocated; I was too, maybe more accurately, bemused. All I needed to do was lie in bed and let people examine me. It was a lot similar floating on an inner tube down a river: I remained still and the scenery inverse. I mostly felt cheerful and upbeat, even though I didn't actually empathise what was going on; I had at no point experienced any fear at all.

But now the people were gone, and I was lone in the room. After making a few phone calls — I wasn't coherent company, merely I still wanted to chat — I took a selfie. Information technology was the outset time I'd managed to become a look at my face: the left side was bloated, my lips were busted and bloody. My chin was scraped, equally was my nose. My left centre was at half-mast, but overall, it was fine. Also, my eyebrows and pilus looked keen.

It wasn't until my boyfriend arrived that I really began to understand I was seriously injured. Immediately after getting a good await at me, he seated himself apace on the flooring and put his head betwixt his knees. My face, I understood, was so disturbing that he had nearly fainted.

After Andrew had recovered from the shock, I fabricated the starting time catalog of my injuries. My face injure, of course, but so did my left shoulder, hip, and knee. (All would afterward produce technicolor bruises.) I had chipped a tooth. That was it. The nearly damage was on my face up. I must accept landed direct on my head.

When I stood up for the beginning time since the crash, I discovered standing made The Headache worse. I began to shuffle toward the restroom nether a nurse's supervision. The bathroom couldn't have been more than than twenty feet abroad, but it still took me quite some time to attain information technology. I had only the vaguest sense of where my limbs were and whether my feet were aligned correctly with the flooring. My body had become a impuissant mecha suit, and I was trapped inside, trying to operate what felt like a large hunk of metal.

Things happened quickly after I demonstrated I could walk under my own power: a dr. came in to summarize what they'd found (concussion, nothing more serious) and give me prohibitions: no TV, no alcohol, no reading, no net. Then, I was discharged. We went domicile in a cab big enough to hold the 2 of the states and my totaled bike. I figured my recovery would take a week. I was incorrect.

Analogy by Alex Castro / The Verge

I alarmed people pretty much every fourth dimension I mentioned my concussion. Never heed that the actual injury was non scary to me — it scared everyone around me.

The brain lives pretty close in our imaginations to the cocky. It's one of the reasons some people locate the self specifically as the brain, which is probably why people cryogenically freeze their heads. It's there in the hopes of a "brain transplant" from that preposterous Italian surgeon. This belief is probably why encephalon injuries scare people.

So we take come to a scary phrase: "personality change." I had 1. They're common with brain injuries, including concussion.

Personality is a major office of how nosotros understand ourselves; in fact, we use information technology every bit a reference for famous people, like a television set personality. To have your personality altered by brain trauma seems to upset people more than having information technology altered past, for instance, emotional trauma. I don't know why this is! But anybody's personality changes over the course of a lifetime, unremarkably gradually — and that'south not only truthful of Americans, either. Perhaps it's the suddenness of the personality change that frightens people, or perhaps it raises scary questions almost identity.

I'g a pessimist, the person who is useful in the worst-case scenario because they are the only one who planned for the worst-case scenario. Or rather, I was a pessimist before I hit my head; I am slowly returning to it now. But I spent nearly a calendar month afterward the crash incapable of doing anything other than looking on the vivid side.

I still felt like myself, just it was kind of similar my personality was a set of piano keys and someone had sliced off all the notes you'd ordinarily play with your left paw. I could proceed playing with both hands, but only the top half of the keyboard was available. While I was in the ER, it occurred to me: what if I am stuck like this forever? I considered it, and so decided, "Well, I'd have to quit my job, which is a shame because I like it. But there would probably exist another job I could do. Anyhow it's a concussion and I'm going to recover." So I felt satisfied and airtight my eyes for a nap.

If I thought I was my encephalon, probably I would accept found the injury more than upsetting. Simply I didn't and don't believe that; my self is an interaction betwixt my torso and my encephalon. In Oliver Sacks' A Leg to Stand up On, Sacks injured his leg skiing and required surgery. After surgery, his leg no longer felt like his own. "I could no longer remember having a leg," he wrote. "I could no longer remember how I had ever walked and climbed." An injury to his trunk changed his mind. The brain solitary, then, tin't be the reservoir of cocky; a encephalon injury might alter me, just it doesn't annihilate my cocky any more than than a cleaved leg would.

The mood change did make retentiveness lapses easier to endure, though. I had ever been bad with names, but I was noticeably worse: no new names stuck. I often experienced "tip-of-the-tongue syndrome," where I'd know in that location was a word I specifically wanted but couldn't remember what it was. "Boat farm" meant marina, "salad with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil" got me caprese , and "circular reasoning where you say the same thing twice" is tautological. It was similar a game of Catchphrase where even I didn't know the discussion people were trying to guess, and I played with whoever was around me until I plant the word I was looking for. Viewing information technology every bit a game made it less frustrating and a footling more fun, and then I chose to practise that.

I started writing again about 2 weeks after I hit my head, which is the longest I've gone in my adult life without writing something, annihilation. That diary entry shows more cross-outs and uncertain spellings than any of the previous ones. As I continued writing, afterward, the number of cross-outs and bum spellings declined. Only it was articulate: there was a before, and in that location was an after.

My personality change — the loopy skillful mood, the entirely unfounded sense of well-being — isn't something whatsoever of the experts I spoke to meet that oftentimes. What'south more mutual, and what tends to exist listed in the literature on concussion, are two things: feet and depression. Only the brain-body connection is relevant hither, as well. Most concussion patients have difficulty with light and noise; they often isolate themselves in night, serenity rooms in response. In people without concussion, this kind of behavior creates depression and anxiety. So, did the depression and anxiety come up from the brain injury, or the self-imposed isolation afterward?

For a long time, doctors idea that patients needed to balance totally subsequently a concussion until all symptoms were relieved, Leddy says. "For example, you take an boyish athlete and tell him or her to do nada for weeks. Well, they're used to doing things, you know, beingness at school," he says. "We know that if you take someone like that who doesn't accept a concussion and tell them not to do annihilation, they become symptoms. They get anxious and some get depressed and they get irritable." That's why concussion patients are encouraged to get back into activities when they kickoff to experience able to, and to accept it gently, he says. "We think that's a meliorate way for the brain to recover."

The symptoms tin come from other places, also, former NFL histrion Ben Utecht told me. He's the author of a volume called Counting My Days While My Mind Slips Away, written to preserve his memories. He's had 5 documented concussions, he told me, between college football game and professional person play. Recovery was unlike every time, though he never experienced chronic headaches. Light sensitivity, though — that he remembers. "The consequences I faced got worse with each concussion I sustained," he told me. After the fourth concussion, he was diagnosed with amnesia. That recovery process was different because it was more than severe.

The biggest changes concussion caused for Utecht were cognitive: he struggled with the skills nosotros rely on to manage fourth dimension and pay attending, chosen executive office, and his memory deteriorated. When Utecht joined the Cincinnati Bengals, learning their offensive system was harder. He received his final concussion during training in 2009; after that, he ended his football game career. His mood tanked: he was depressed, and anxious, and his patience was nonexistent. "Simply I had just walked abroad from a game I had played for 20 years," he said. "How much of that is just life?"

What improved his mood, he told me, was an intensive brain-training program. (He describes cerebral fitness training every bit "my miracle story.") While he'd taken it to boost his memory, he discovered he was less irritable as his retentivity improved. Having a difficult time remembering his calendar, remembering names, and remembering the right words made things more frustrating. "I think that frustration plays a role in stress, and lack of patience," Utecht said. "Because nothing else changed in my life just this cerebral grooming."

At that place is no treatment for concussion except for patience and fourth dimension, but people seem not to believe that. Well-significant friends suggested I supplement with omega-three fatty acids and swallow extra protein. In that location is no prove either make a difference for concussion. Some people recover apace, taking just days to feel normal. About one in 5 concussion patients take weeks or months to recover. I was ane of those patients. How severe the injury was has footling to practice with how long it takes to recover; women, younger people, those who've had concussions before, and people with other encephalon disorders are likelier to take longer, according to Leddy'due south research.

"I always tell my patients, I don't have a crystal ball," says Alicia Sufrinko, a concussion specialist at University of Pittsburgh. "I'one thousand non gonna be able to forecast this." Some people have stronger systems for remainder than others; some accept better visual systems. But it'south likewise impossible to separate the contributions from the environs, she says. Social factors too matter. Loneliness and isolation make recovery harder.

The NFL's concussion recovery protocol doesn't have a timeline associated with it, either. Instead it's a 5-footstep process: residuum and recovery first, then some lite aerobic activity. After that: strength training. Then football-specific activities, like returning to practice but not doing any parts that would require contact. Throwing and catching are okay, but tackling is out. Then, once an contained neurological consultant approves: total recovery, clearance, playing again.

This recovery system wasn't in place when Utecht played. "The render-to-play protocol at that time was relatively nonexistent," he said. "Concussions hadn't really exploded on the American sports scene. It was still getting your bong rung, at that point. There was no real knowledge about what concussion truly is." Nor was there much knowledge well-nigh concussions' long-term effects.

At that place's more teaching now about concussions' effects, Utecht says. He likes that, and he thinks the NFL's concussion protocol is an improvement. Merely there's no unified program, no mode of knowing what to do if your child is concussed, for instance. "It's still sort of 'go sit down in your room for two days,'" he said. He expects that to alter in the next decade.

While I had the luxury of recovering at my own footstep, a lot of athletes don't. Doug Baldwin, a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, told Bill Simmons on Any Given Wednesday that some players crook at the sideline concussion evaluation so they'll exist put dorsum in the game. Why would a histrion fake out the concussion protocol? About players will do any it takes to play, Utecht said. "How you lot're going to create an environment for any athlete to willingly tell their trainers they have a concussion — that's a whole other matter," Utecht told me. "It kind of goes against American sports civilisation. That'due south the toughest function, right there."

In that location's also the financial attribute: the NFL doesn't take guaranteed contracts, so if the athletes don't play, they don't get paid. Utecht would know: he had to take the Bengals to arbitration to get the balance of his 2009 salary.

I sat in my room for more than two days; I spent well-nigh of the starting time week later the injury asleep. I still had The Headache, and being asleep meant I didn't feel information technology; information technology was my constant companion for a week. But also, every time I woke upward, I felt a trivial better: my balance had improved slightly, for instance, and it was easier for me to think. For the beginning week after the crash, I kept the shades fatigued in my apartment and didn't turn the lights on until I absolutely had to.

Even for people who experience normal, things aren't back to normal in the brain, Harvard's Mullally tells me. Unusual patterns of blood flow in the brain persist for a month, studies in humans and in animal models show. Gentle cardio exercise — like walking — can help improve it. A concussion patient shouldn't go back to total-steam alee immediately, but neither should they wait until they are well to begin resuming their lives, he says.

Even afterward The Headache finally vanished, bright calorie-free and loud sounds could trigger smaller, migraine-similar ones, and so I wore sunglasses every time I left the business firm. I besides carried earplugs with me, only in instance. Before the crash, I hadn't noticed how loud everything was; now I was painfully aware. Coffee shops (high ceilings, cement floors, and exposed tile), airports (high ceilings, hard surfaces, intercoms, inconsequential beeping), and public transit (the screeching of a train on the track) all guaranteed headaches. The sensitivity to noise lasted for virtually 3 weeks, and it was isolating. I often left the apartment with earplugs in.

The world isn't designed for brain injuries. Basically, Mullally told me, nearly everything is brighter and louder than we realize. Our brains filter a lot of stuff out, but my encephalon couldn't do that filtering.

After a week in bed, I got restless. I started with a half an hour of walking, and when that didn't make me tired, I moved up to an hr. Doing besides much, of course, could mean a headache. That was the worst period of my recovery. Past the second calendar week, my black eye was gone and my lips weren't busted anymore, but stairs and curbs — annihilation that required stepping down — were still terrifying. I didn't feel normal only I looked normal. And that meant people treated me similar I was normal. Our society really isn't equipped for people with brain injuries, which are existent but invisible. Even though I knew my rest wasn't good enough to stand on public transit, I was scared to ask for a seat on a crowded railroad train. An injury no i can run into doesn't inspire sympathy.

After a month, I felt confident enough to get back to yoga, where I discovered my residue was however bad; piece of cake one-legged poses I'd considered the base of operations of my do were gone. I could walk and even bike but fine, just the subtleties of positioning my body in space hadn't returned.

That was as well effectually when I went back to work. I still got tired rapidly, and my day ofttimes concluded earlier than I wanted — usually with a headache. But working helped with my retentiveness, also. Things that had happened to me before the concussion yet had a patina of unreality to them, considering I couldn't feel the memories. I quickly discovered that while the content of my retention was intact, the emotions associated with the memories were gone.

Fortunately, memories aren't static. Every fourth dimension you or I recall a memory, we repaint it in our minds. Our memories change every time nosotros pull them frontward. And and then, back at work, I began to recompile memories of my pre-concussion life. Later a few weeks, most of my memories over again had emotions associated with them.

There were the trivial victories. The first mean solar day I was back at work, I told a author her story had an unclear antecedent; I was immediately filled with glee that I not only had noticed, but had selected the correct word. Something in the familiar procedure of editing had chosen them along — and remembering them was alike to finding an unexpected $20 neb in an erstwhile pair of pants.

There were also little losses. For case, it was apparent, in one case I was dorsum at work, that my attention span wasn't what it had been. This is really common in concussion patients, says Sufrinko. Information technology'south related to the problems with vision, which makes sense, since attention and vision have a lot to do with each other. Vision steers attention in ways most of usa aren't aware of, she says. "If you're heedless and yous're off in your own picayune land, and then all suddenly you lot realize you're not paying attending, you also realize that visually you're not focused," she says. "People with visual problems lose their attention a lot."

Just this distractibility too faded. My rest improved. Finally, the merely thing left was fear. For weeks, sound and light gave me headaches. When it stopped, I nevertheless avoided music, Telly, and movies. I felt bodily dread almost them. I worried I'd spiral upwardly something serious at work if my attention drifted. And steep downhill slopes or uneven stairs filled me with gut-level terror. It didn't matter that I navigated stairs and slopes as well every bit I had before. My conviction was gone.

I had learned to avert sure things, I realized. A calendar month is plenty of time to be conditioned to fear my headache triggers: complex tasks, audio, bright lights, tests of my rest. Was this was the anxiety that had been mentioned in the medical literature? Merely my fears were conditioned; I had learned to fright the headache. That was good news, I figured, since conditioned fear could be extinguished. The trick was to reexpose myself to the things I now feared, starting slowly and gently: Bruce Brubaker'southward Glass Pianoforte . One-half a idiot box bear witness. A yoga class. Backpacking for days in a redwood forest on a mostly downhill route. Writing this article.

Structurally, as a author, I want to put some kind of moral hither to ship my reader off happy. I actually spent weeks thinking: what is the lesson? As far as I can tell, in that location is no lesson. Brain injuries happen for no reason, after all. Even when I constitute it difficult to retrieve straight, I didn't feel much of a loss. In any outcome, I have bought a new bike and a new helmet. I've been riding my wheel to yoga grade for the terminal few months, and I accept successfully arrived every fourth dimension.

Correction: An earlier version of this mail misstated John Urschel'due south position. He is an offensive lineman.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/27/16086018/concussion-diary-brain-injury-recovery-symptoms