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SK's avatar

I have never experienced this but, wow, what a helpful post! I'm always amazed at your generosity.

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Carol Wayne's avatar

Hi there,

Thank you for sharing your story. I just read Unfit Parent by Jessica Slice who suffers from POTS. Her's was brought on by severe dehydration after an incident on a hiking trail in Greece. I definitely think we need much more awareness about Concussions and POTS.

Hope you continue to improve.

Carol

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Melissa Urban's avatar

I agree. It’s a misdiagnosed and often under-diagnosed condition often written off as stress of anxiety.

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Sarah Pepin's avatar

Melissa, thank you so much for sharing your story. I had a major concussion in 2019 and still feel like I have after effects that I never dealt with. I've never seen a PT, only a neurologist - twice.

I didn't get the right continuous care I needed, and I'm paying for it now. Any advice?

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Melissa Urban's avatar

Ask your neurologist for a PT referral, and go through the battery of evals to see if there are systems still affected. Could be vestibular, vision, cognitive… a good evaluation from someone experienced with TBI would be a good place to start.

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Shawna Olds's avatar

Will you explain the “bonk” symptom more in part 2?

Thank you so much for sharing this story. I have similar symptoms but haven’t had much luck with trad med and my PT has helped with maybe 80% of it but I feel like Im just managing symptoms and not getting to the root of things.

I’m curious if your “bonk” is like my “jolt”.

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Melissa Urban's avatar

To “bonk” typically means to run out of glucose (fuel) during a race, leaving you exhausted and struggling. I felt that on the trail to a degree I never had, for two hikes in a row. The first time I assumed I needed to eat more carbs, but the second time I was fully fueled and wasn’t sure I’d be able to go all the way to the summit. My brain was struggling to get energy, and I suspect the dysautonomia was messing with my blood pressure, leading to feeling faint and dragging.

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