MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS AND CONCUSSION
My first Blog was Tracking a Healthy Heart. This Blog is Tracking information about Concussions and Brain Injuries
This health blog is about concussions and traumatic brain injuries. I am going to mainly talk about concussions caused by motor vehicle accidents, because there is so much attention right now on people who suffer from concussions who are in the military and who are in sports activities. Very little concussion information is mentioned about those in motor vehicle accidents. There needs to be attention made about how whiplash can cause brain injury. Whiplash is like an injury a football player would receive in a game when they get their concussions. Some car accident people have repeated whiplash injuries just like a football player has repeated concussions throughout his football career. There has been scientific studies done specifically toward the sports and military related head injury the information that follows will focus on the motor vehicle accident victims. The neck is not so strong. The head as a whole weighs on average ten to eleven pounds. Your brain weighs only three pounds. If you have ever been bowling before that is how much the bowing ball weighs ten pounds. The neck is carrying that weight day in day out. When you think of a sudden slam of the brakes in a motor vehicle accident at a certain rate of speed at the sudden stop and your three pound brain banging back and forth within the skull you can imaging the force the brain goes through in a motor vehicle accident. Sometimes your car hits another car while moving or sometimes your car is stationary and the other is the moving force. Some cases have different speeds. Low speed impact crashes cause whiplash concussion brain injury damage as much as a high impact crash. This is why there has to be more medical standard investigation for concussion victims, not just the typical wake the patient up ever hour scenario. Concussion are more serious than that.
Here is how a concussion is defined generally. It is an injury to the head that may cause loss of awareness or alertness for a few minutes to a few hours after a traumatic injury. They say a mild traumatic brain injury is being unconscious with a closed head injury for less than 30 minutes. Moderate traumatic brain injury is a closed head injury of more than 30 minutes. A severe traumatic brain injury is closed head injury that is unconsciousness for more than 24 hour. Headaches come after concussions due to the insult on the brain. The pain starts in minutes after insult and can last for days or months the ones that last for longer are called traumatic or post concussive. There may be brain bruising and lacerations in the more long term headache cases
Additional reasons for head aches
. Pressure in the skull
. Inflammation or increased meningial changes
. Bleed either inside the brain or between the skin and skull
.Myodystonia or increased muscle tone of the skull area
. Blood flow changes in or to the brain.
.Displacement in the cranium from trauma.
Depending on the severity of the motor vehicle accident impact will depend on the type of head injury you sustained. No matter how minor you must be evaluated by a proper doctor and not just one time concussion symptoms can leave you a wondering zombie walking in circles. Some symptoms are vague and get missed and some people end up with no diagnosis and get what is called a second impact concussion. Some people have become permently brain damaged after a second concussion or worse death.
.Displacement in the cranium from trauma.
Depending on the severity of the motor vehicle accident impact will depend on the type of head injury you sustained. No matter how minor you must be evaluated by a proper doctor and not just one time concussion symptoms can leave you a wondering zombie walking in circles. Some symptoms are vague and get missed and some people end up with no diagnosis and get what is called a second impact concussion. Some people have become permently brain damaged after a second concussion or worse death.
Motor vehicle accident concussion searches rarely get included in Google searches or media reports. It is very difficult for Motor vehicle accident persons to get the information they need specific to their type of injury. Head injured persons in motor vehicle accidents tend to fall through the cracks. They get ignored by insurance companies and even their doctors. Insurance companies phone the patient too early into their treatment plan asking them if they are better yet when it can take months and sometimes years to recover.
It is best to have your lawyer answer the adjusters questions, after all you are recovering from a brain injury and need as little stress as possible. You should get a bodily injury lawyer to assist you ,it will be so much easier. You don't pay them unless you win, and when you win it comes out of the auto insurance not your pocket. Just do it get a lawyer even just to ask a few questions.
It is best to have your lawyer answer the adjusters questions, after all you are recovering from a brain injury and need as little stress as possible. You should get a bodily injury lawyer to assist you ,it will be so much easier. You don't pay them unless you win, and when you win it comes out of the auto insurance not your pocket. Just do it get a lawyer even just to ask a few questions.
With concussions some of the injuries are noticed immediately, but other symptoms arise later from day’s weeks to months. Some MVA persons are sometimes not believed because there have been false claims filed to insurance claims departments in the area of motor vehicle accidents not just with concussions, but with other injuries. A false claim by one bad guy can make hardship for many other people seeking proper treatment. Always be sure to keep up with your appointments like doctors and specialist. Write down questions you have to ask any type of doctor or therapists.
Document your symptoms for each appointment. Ask for copies of your scan and x ray reports especially if you are going to other doctors or for second opinions.
I am going to share my journey and what I have been through; maybe it can be of some help to someone. I am an example of a person who has had repeated concussions of both open head injury and closed head injuries.
Document your symptoms for each appointment. Ask for copies of your scan and x ray reports especially if you are going to other doctors or for second opinions.
I am going to share my journey and what I have been through; maybe it can be of some help to someone. I am an example of a person who has had repeated concussions of both open head injury and closed head injuries.
MY THIRD CONCUSSION
I will start from the present this being my third concussion. Right now I am going through a closed head injury. This is my third concussion second closed head injury. This happened after taking an epileptic seizure behind the wheel in my sports utility vehicle. The SUV hit several guard rails on the right hand side of the road then went up an embankment. The SUV narrowly missed a waterway and then rolled. The front axle snapped in half on the SUV. No other vehicles were involved. I don't remember anything before during or pretty much the hours after the accident. It was August 2015. I spent five days in the hospital. I had other injuries as well. Seven months later I am still having bad head aches, extreme tiredness and a few other injuries I sustained are still painful. Getting started with the wrong physiotherapist didn't help. It is so important to get a physiotherapist who can give treatment for concussion. This involves retaining your eye movement to head turning to be to controlling your dizzy spells. As well as whiplash treatment. Physiotherapy can go for three months to several years depending on the injuries.
SECOND CONCUSSION
In 2006 I had a whiplash injury and concussion and other injuries, from a rear end SUV accident while at a red light. There should have been no reason for this accident. It was a three way intersection. I was in the far left lane and the person who hit me came up the middle lane and hit me and the person in the right lane. Now that is crazy driving to hit two stopped vehicles. The 2006 accident left me with absence and complex partial seizures. It took four years of testing EEG before doctors would believe me that my “zone-outs" were actually seizures. Many people with multiple head injuries end up with seizures. Like me seizures get missed or you may not understand you are having seizures. Some seizures are not the typical convulsions type. Some are like a deep day dream like state, or like I was calling them zone outs. At times people would just look at me strangely or just laugh when I was trying to describe these zone outs. Then finally doctors caught the zone outs on the EEG. They called me epileptic it actually had a name. I was having another type of seizure was called myoclonic jerks. I would just be sitting or lying still and suddenly my leg or hip or mid section would violently jerk or jump. I would mention it to the neurologist over and over. When my medication was finally increased the jerks decreased somewhat but not completely. These jerks happen at times unexpected such as when drinking a cup of tea my hand will suddenly jump and my tea will go everywhere. This is a condition that has to be monitored carefully by the doctor because most of the time it is brushed off as something that everyone gets just as they begin to fall asleep that startle feeling that happens. In my case my myoclonic jerks were more than just a startle,
My GM drivers licence went back to a basic G1 learner’s license because it was under medical suspension for four years. I completely lost my motorcycle license I worked so hard to get. I could not retrain for a motorcycle license because the bodily injuries I sustained would not allow me to safely ride a bike and the cost to put my bike back on the road was not affordable. I still have my bike and will put her on the road. She is an antique and a beauty.I got my car license back through retraining. However it is medically suspended because of the current SUV roll over. I drive one handily with a spinner knob so my vehicle has to be specialty adapted for me. I can reapply for my driver’s license to the Ministry of Transportation Ontario, MTO through my doctor. By letting MTO know I have changed up meds and have been seizure free for six months or more. I will have to wait for the MTO decision. They could say wait a year they could say you are too much of a risk or they could say yes carry on. My last seizure was October 1st 2015 in the check out at a grocery store. I was one month out of the hospital post MVA. At the time of seizure the bright lights of the gambling type coin game at the end of the checkouts that entice young kids to spend pocket change set me off into a 60 second complex partial seizure. This was the only one I have ever had since my medication increase. People who end up with multiple concussions and seizures from them need to be followed more closely by their doctors and neurologist especially in the area of epileptic medication blood levels and EEG. In my case my blood levels were not being check regularly and I ended up being the victim of taking a seizure behind the wheel
MY FIRST CONCUSSION
I have what was called thin skull syndrome because I have a plate in my head on the left side of my head, from a car accident at age six. As a child I was crossing the road on the way home from school and was hit by a car. This was my first MVA. My first concussion.
This was also an open head injury I was not a passenger in the car I was crossing the road on my way home from school in grade two. The bones on one side of my head were destroyed. After they were removed there was a dent in the skull leaving the brain vulnerable to injury. A mesh plate was put over the dent in the skull as well as Teflon filler. This was done around a year after injury so the bones around the dent would firm up. I remember how big that dent was and how it hurt if I was to get bumped at school. The skull was still not as strong as the bone would have been. The concussion I had in this case was classified as severe because I was unconscious for more than twenty four hours. It was closer to a week. It left the left side of the brain bruised to the point it affected the movement of the right side of my body for a little while.
In the long run was left with occasional dizzy spells and had brain freeze like attack pains all the time. It ended up there were two arteries pulsating on the fifth trigeminal nerve causing neuralgia pain. By age 42 I had brain surgery to correct this pain.
MRI IMAGING
After repeated head injuries to date an image shows Encephalomalacia which is a serious condition in the brain where the tissue softens. It can spread to adjacent areas. The area of brain being affected could also affect other parts of the body that part of the brain is responsible for including organs.
It is not likely someone with typical concussions from motor vehicle accident would have encephalomalacia show up on their imaging study. It is likely due to my injury from the open head injury and two closed head concussions back to back that contributed to this.
Where To Find Help
To get out of the feeling of being in a fog all the time after a concussion you need to seek treatment. The most important thing you need to do is be under the care of a medical doctor and a neurologist. These doctors are the only ones who can prescribe proper medication such as headaches, vertigo and send you for diagnostic test like brain scans and MRIs
Other places to get help would be a physiotherapist who specialize in concussion care. This is where problems can start when seeking concussion care. Some physiotherapy concussion places are only for sports injury persons, and some are only geared for children. I was turned away from one centre because my injury was not from a sport related injury. It did not matter how serious my condition was they still turned me away. It was so upsetting I could not believe what I was hearing. I even said I was a first degree black belt in karate. What if I said I took a head shot in karate, could I come for treatment then, they still shuck their head because they already knew my storey.
Don't worry there are places that do care for motor vehicle accident patients. It is best to ask around specifically for a therapist who deals with brain injury and concussion patients. After talking to a few physiotherapy services then make your decisions. Below I have provided two local dependable concussion services for people with motor vehicle accidents. One of the services is provided by a doctor who runs the clinic herself the other in a physiotherapy office with physiotherapists who are trained in the area of concussions. Any concerns medically would be directed to the medical doctor or neurologist as needed.
1)QUINN REHAB SERVICES
Unit 505, L4N5R7
2)Concussion North 190 Coundles Road East, Suite 001
Barrie Ontario L4M 4S5
1-705-503-3033 Fax 1-705-503-3009
Email:info@concussionnorth.com
http://twitter.com/concussionnorth
Photo Credits by Lynda Lawrence, 1) Red Rose Photo. 2) Long Neck Giraffe.
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Tracking Motor Vehicle Accident Concussionions
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENTS AND CONCUSSION
My first Blog was Tracking a Healthy Heart. This Blog is Tracking information about Concussions and Brain Injuries
This health blog is about concussions and traumatic brain injuries. I am going to mainly talk about concussions caused by motor vehicle accidents, because there is so much attention right now on people who suffer from concussions who are in the military and who are in sports activities. Very little concussion information is mentioned about those in motor vehicle accidents. There needs to be attention made about how whiplash can cause brain injury. Whiplash is like an injury a football player would receive in a game when they get their concussions. Some car accident people have repeated whiplash injuries just like a football player has repeated concussions throughout his football career. There has been scientific studies done specifically toward the sports and military related head injury the information that follows will focus on the motor vehicle accident victims. The neck is not so strong. The head as a whole weighs on average ten to eleven pounds. Your brain weighs only three pounds. If you have ever been bowling before that is how much the bowing ball weighs ten pounds. The neck is carrying that weight day in day out. When you think of a sudden slam of the brakes in a motor vehicle accident at a certain rate of speed at the sudden stop and your three pound brain banging back and forth within the skull you can imaging the force the brain goes through in a motor vehicle accident. Sometimes your car hits another car while moving or sometimes your car is stationary and the other is the moving force. Some cases have different speeds. Low speed impact crashes cause whiplash concussion brain injury damage as much as a high impact crash. This is why there has to be more medical standard investigation for concussion victims, not just the typical wake the patient up ever hour scenario. Concussion are more serious than that.
Here is how a concussion is defined generally. It is an injury to the head that may cause loss of awareness or alertness for a few minutes to a few hours after a traumatic injury. They say a mild traumatic brain injury is being unconscious with a closed head injury for less than 30 minutes. Moderate traumatic brain injury is a closed head injury of more than 30 minutes. A severe traumatic brain injury is closed head injury that is unconsciousness for more than 24 hour. Headaches come after concussions due to the insult on the brain. The pain starts in minutes after insult and can last for days or months the ones that last for longer are called traumatic or post concussive. There may be brain bruising and lacerations in the more long term headache cases
Additional reasons for head aches
. Pressure in the skull
. Inflammation or increased meningial changes
. Bleed either inside the brain or between the skin and skull
.Myodystonia or increased muscle tone of the skull area
. Blood flow changes in or to the brain.
.Displacement in the cranium from trauma.
Depending on the severity of the motor vehicle accident impact will depend on the type of head injury you sustained. No matter how minor you must be evaluated by a proper doctor and not just one time concussion symptoms can leave you a wondering zombie walking in circles. Some symptoms are vague and get missed and some people end up with no diagnosis and get what is called a second impact concussion. Some people have become permently brain damaged after a second concussion or worse death.
.Displacement in the cranium from trauma.
Depending on the severity of the motor vehicle accident impact will depend on the type of head injury you sustained. No matter how minor you must be evaluated by a proper doctor and not just one time concussion symptoms can leave you a wondering zombie walking in circles. Some symptoms are vague and get missed and some people end up with no diagnosis and get what is called a second impact concussion. Some people have become permently brain damaged after a second concussion or worse death.
Motor vehicle accident concussion searches rarely get included in Google searches or media reports. It is very difficult for Motor vehicle accident persons to get the information they need specific to their type of injury. Head injured persons in motor vehicle accidents tend to fall through the cracks. They get ignored by insurance companies and even their doctors. Insurance companies phone the patient too early into their treatment plan asking them if they are better yet when it can take months and sometimes years to recover.
It is best to have your lawyer answer the adjusters questions, after all you are recovering from a brain injury and need as little stress as possible. You should get a bodily injury lawyer to assist you ,it will be so much easier. You don't pay them unless you win, and when you win it comes out of the auto insurance not your pocket. Just do it get a lawyer even just to ask a few questions.
It is best to have your lawyer answer the adjusters questions, after all you are recovering from a brain injury and need as little stress as possible. You should get a bodily injury lawyer to assist you ,it will be so much easier. You don't pay them unless you win, and when you win it comes out of the auto insurance not your pocket. Just do it get a lawyer even just to ask a few questions.
With concussions some of the injuries are noticed immediately, but other symptoms arise later from day’s weeks to months. Some MVA persons are sometimes not believed because there have been false claims filed to insurance claims departments in the area of motor vehicle accidents not just with concussions, but with other injuries. A false claim by one bad guy can make hardship for many other people seeking proper treatment. Always be sure to keep up with your appointments like doctors and specialist. Write down questions you have to ask any type of doctor or therapists.
Document your symptoms for each appointment. Ask for copies of your scan and x ray reports especially if you are going to other doctors or for second opinions.
I am going to share my journey and what I have been through; maybe it can be of some help to someone. I am an example of a person who has had repeated concussions of both open head injury and closed head injuries.
Document your symptoms for each appointment. Ask for copies of your scan and x ray reports especially if you are going to other doctors or for second opinions.
I am going to share my journey and what I have been through; maybe it can be of some help to someone. I am an example of a person who has had repeated concussions of both open head injury and closed head injuries.
MY THIRD CONCUSSION
I will start from the present this being my third concussion. Right now I am going through a closed head injury. This is my third concussion second closed head injury. This happened after taking an epileptic seizure behind the wheel in my sports utility vehicle. The SUV hit several guard rails on the right hand side of the road then went up an embankment. The SUV narrowly missed a waterway and then rolled. The front axle snapped in half on the SUV. No other vehicles were involved. I don't remember anything before during or pretty much the hours after the accident. It was August 2015. I spent five days in the hospital. I had other injuries as well. Seven months later I am still having bad head aches, extreme tiredness and a few other injuries I sustained are still painful. Getting started with the wrong physiotherapist didn't help. It is so important to get a physiotherapist who can give treatment for concussion. This involves retaining your eye movement to head turning to be to controlling your dizzy spells. As well as whiplash treatment. Physiotherapy can go for three months to several years depending on the injuries.
SECOND CONCUSSION
In 2006 I had a whiplash injury and concussion and other injuries, from a rear end SUV accident while at a red light. There should have been no reason for this accident. It was a three way intersection. I was in the far left lane and the person who hit me came up the middle lane and hit me and the person in the right lane. Now that is crazy driving to hit two stopped vehicles. The 2006 accident left me with absence and complex partial seizures. It took four years of testing EEG before doctors would believe me that my “zone-outs" were actually seizures. Many people with multiple head injuries end up with seizures. Like me seizures get missed or you may not understand you are having seizures. Some seizures are not the typical convulsions type. Some are like a deep day dream like state, or like I was calling them zone outs. At times people would just look at me strangely or just laugh when I was trying to describe these zone outs. Then finally doctors caught the zone outs on the EEG. They called me epileptic it actually had a name. I was having another type of seizure was called myoclonic jerks. I would just be sitting or lying still and suddenly my leg or hip or mid section would violently jerk or jump. I would mention it to the neurologist over and over. When my medication was finally increased the jerks decreased somewhat but not completely. These jerks happen at times unexpected such as when drinking a cup of tea my hand will suddenly jump and my tea will go everywhere. This is a condition that has to be monitored carefully by the doctor because most of the time it is brushed off as something that everyone gets just as they begin to fall asleep that startle feeling that happens. In my case my myoclonic jerks were more than just a startle,
My GM drivers licence went back to a basic G1 learner’s license because it was under medical suspension for four years. I completely lost my motorcycle license I worked so hard to get. I could not retrain for a motorcycle license because the bodily injuries I sustained would not allow me to safely ride a bike and the cost to put my bike back on the road was not affordable. I still have my bike and will put her on the road. She is an antique and a beauty.I got my car license back through retraining. However it is medically suspended because of the current SUV roll over. I drive one handily with a spinner knob so my vehicle has to be specialty adapted for me. I can reapply for my driver’s license to the Ministry of Transportation Ontario, MTO through my doctor. By letting MTO know I have changed up meds and have been seizure free for six months or more. I will have to wait for the MTO decision. They could say wait a year they could say you are too much of a risk or they could say yes carry on. My last seizure was October 1st 2015 in the check out at a grocery store. I was one month out of the hospital post MVA. At the time of seizure the bright lights of the gambling type coin game at the end of the checkouts that entice young kids to spend pocket change set me off into a 60 second complex partial seizure. This was the only one I have ever had since my medication increase. People who end up with multiple concussions and seizures from them need to be followed more closely by their doctors and neurologist especially in the area of epileptic medication blood levels and EEG. In my case my blood levels were not being check regularly and I ended up being the victim of taking a seizure behind the wheel
MY FIRST CONCUSSION
I have what was called thin skull syndrome because I have a plate in my head on the left side of my head, from a car accident at age six. As a child I was crossing the road on the way home from school and was hit by a car. This was my first MVA. My first concussion.
This was also an open head injury I was not a passenger in the car I was crossing the road on my way home from school in grade two. The bones on one side of my head were destroyed. After they were removed there was a dent in the skull leaving the brain vulnerable to injury. A mesh plate was put over the dent in the skull as well as Teflon filler. This was done around a year after injury so the bones around the dent would firm up. I remember how big that dent was and how it hurt if I was to get bumped at school. The skull was still not as strong as the bone would have been. The concussion I had in this case was classified as severe because I was unconscious for more than twenty four hours. It was closer to a week. It left the left side of the brain bruised to the point it affected the movement of the right side of my body for a little while.
In the long run was left with occasional dizzy spells and had brain freeze like attack pains all the time. It ended up there were two arteries pulsating on the fifth trigeminal nerve causing neuralgia pain. By age 42 I had brain surgery to correct this pain.
MRI IMAGING
After repeated head injuries to date an image shows Encephalomalacia which is a serious condition in the brain where the tissue softens. It can spread to adjacent areas. The area of brain being affected could also affect other parts of the body that part of the brain is responsible for including organs.
It is not likely someone with typical concussions from motor vehicle accident would have encephalomalacia show up on their imaging study. It is likely due to my injury from the open head injury and two closed head concussions back to back that contributed to this.
Where To Find Help
To get out of the feeling of being in a fog all the time after a concussion you need to seek treatment. The most important thing you need to do is be under the care of a medical doctor and a neurologist. These doctors are the only ones who can prescribe proper medication such as headaches, vertigo and send you for diagnostic test like brain scans and MRIs
Other places to get help would be a physiotherapist who specialize in concussion care. This is where problems can start when seeking concussion care. Some physiotherapy concussion places are only for sports injury persons, and some are only geared for children. I was turned away from one centre because my injury was not from a sport related injury. It did not matter how serious my condition was they still turned me away. It was so upsetting I could not believe what I was hearing. I even said I was a first degree black belt in karate. What if I said I took a head shot in karate, could I come for treatment then, they still shuck their head because they already knew my storey.
Don't worry there are places that do care for motor vehicle accident patients. It is best to ask around specifically for a therapist who deals with brain injury and concussion patients. After talking to a few physiotherapy services then make your decisions. Below I have provided two local dependable concussion services for people with motor vehicle accidents. One of the services is provided by a doctor who runs the clinic herself the other in a physiotherapy office with physiotherapists who are trained in the area of concussions. Any concerns medically would be directed to the medical doctor or neurologist as needed.
1)QUINN REHAB SERVICES
Unit 505, L4N5R7
2)Concussion North 190 Coundles Road East, Suite 001
Barrie Ontario L4M 4S5
1-705-503-3033 Fax 1-705-503-3009
Email:info@concussionnorth.com
http://twitter.com/concussionnorth
Photo Credits by Lynda Lawrence, 1) Red Rose Photo. 2) Long Neck Giraffe
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