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I have suffered over a dozen concussions in my life that I am aware of and perhaps a few more that I never realized. The first half dozen were relatively mild and I was back to "normal" within a day or two at most. I then suffered a traumatic brain injury in an automotive accident eight years ago, where according to the neurologist, I destroyed about 10% of my brain (confirmed with MRI.) It took about six months to get back to a plateau at about 90% of my pre-accident level, and then another 2 years to reach about 95%. Since then I have suffered six more concussions. Each subsequent concussion was caused by ever more banal accidents that pre-accident I would never have suffered. Unfortunately, my brain is ever so slightly delayed in reacting and processing situations, so that something that I could have dealt with in the past, I can no longer react fast enough to avoid. My doctors prohibited me from riding for a number of years and then only gave me a green light after I bought a MIPS helmet and passed a variety of processing speed tests. My recovery time from the last two relatively mild concussions exceeded six months and I am still quite a bit slower than in the past. I have been warned that I can expect all future concussions to be far worse.My most recent MRI's show ever-increasing presence of white matter in the brain after each new concussion.
Neurologists that I have seen post-concussion have basically confirmed the concussion and then gave me limitations that I was meant to abide with (which help tremendously with recovery) but can't really do much in most cases. A neuro-optometrist on the other hand helped me tremendously as post concussion my depth perception was knocked out of whack and using occlusion therapy and special prismatic lenses made immediate and useful improvements. Most of the time, the only real cure is time.
Be careful.
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