One thought on “Brain Injury: Additional Reading”

1. In 2008 I had a traumatic brain injury, hitting my right side of my head and contra cu injury on my left. I had traumatic amnesia the following 12 days. When I awoke I had physical impairment in my right side of my body, including movement of right facial muscles, drinking.
   I had steady improvement over the next month and a half, remained on Dilantin for a year. During my recovery I had sleep apnea, not any more.

   I presently, three and a half years, later, I feel fine have my full faculties and am back to work 80% of the time. The lasting problems I have are short term memory loss and need extra concentration, intensity, to focus (I am now on two blood pressure medications due to the exerted concentration I need to do my work). I also have some impairment in body movement versus spacial location cognition (I am taking tennis lessons and have difficulty but am making progress on reaching the ball in the right place and time). I tried recently to take Ti Chi classes but forgot the moves taught almost immediately and could not progress and dropped out.

   The biggest problem I have is bad to severe nightmares in the early morning hours. I have been on Depression medication for the past five years plus: AM Welbutrin 300 mg, PM Remeron 45 mg, Lunesta starting at 3mg and reducing to 2mg, and Xanax 0.75 mg in the morning. 0.5 mg at noon and sometimes 0.5 mg in the early evenings.

   In the very early morning while on the 3 mg Lunesta I had difficulty walking to the bathroom. The nightmares I had were largely suppressed with no memory of events. I decided to reduce the dosage to 2 mg to see if the degree of mobility impairment and nightmare severity reduced. Morning mobility definitely and the severity of the nightmares somewhat did improve.

   For a week and a half I stopped taking the Lunesta altogether. Instead I took one Tylenol PM at night to go to sleep and for a while did feel improvement on both fronts. However one morning at 3 AM I awoke and could not go to sleep. At that time I took another Tylenol PM and 0.25 mg of Xanax. When I awoke an hour later still in the darkness I had total loss of awareness of where I was at. I did not know at all the house I was in, the street I was on, the city I was in for around ten minutes or more. I went back to the 2 mg Lunesta and never again the Tylenol PM. I was told the Benadrill had an affect on…

   Hypothalamus which may have been permanently damaged.

   I have searched the internet and have come across, adrenal fatigue, Cortisol is the main adrenal hormone; The dietary supplements that BodyLogicMD offers to treat adrenal fatigue, neurohormones; regulates homeostasis;

   I have seen a Neurologist and had initially only some drawing and verbal tests, but nothing that could be more succinct to determine anything more definitive and nothing since then. Are there any chemical tests, scans, etc.

   Your thoughts?

   Thank you!
   Steve Howard

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