<p>Thanks. It’s been a week today since the accident, and she has a mild, tolerable headache but no other symptoms. Her profs have been great, already giving her extended deadlines “get it in when you can”, etc. She is confident that she can pull through this semester, and has a follow-up appointment later this week to check her recovery progress. Her biggest worry/regret now is that she totaled a great car that had a lot of life left. Her school is in an extremely rural area, and she is antsy for a car. I’m not rushing to solve that problem though, and feel better she isn’t driving while recovering! She’s a “do everything” kind of kid, so if anything, this is teaching her how to slow down a bit, recognize when some self-care is very needed, and give herself permission to say “no” to an obligation and take a break instead. Important lessons for many of us…Everyone here is so helpful; thanks again!</p>
<p>I’m with you! I would NOT rush into buying another car. I’d bet a weeks pay that she isn’t the ONLY student on that campus without a car. </p>
<p>And most of these more rural campuses have “stuff” going on for the students ON campus.this will give her the opportunity to explore those things.</p>
<p>I’m so glad things are working out. </p>
<p>I do encourage you to educate yourself and your daughter on post-concussion syndrome, to be on the watch for symptoms:</p>
<p><a href=“Persistent post-concussive symptoms (Post-concussion syndrome) - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic”>Persistent post-concussive symptoms (Post-concussion syndrome) - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic;
<p>Hopefully she won’t have this but IMO it is important to be prepared in case it occurs.</p>
<p>I would reccomend a medical leave…it is too early in the semester for an incomplete. Do talk to the Dean of Students asap and get their input. Also, if you read up on the latest treatments for Consussions one of the things they say to do is have Brain Rest. No TV, no computers, no school at first. She has injured her brain, she needs to rest it just like you would rest your knee if you injured it. It is crucial that she recover completely for this concussion so it doesn’t have lasting effects.</p>
<p>Also, people tend to have a “concussions are no big thing” but they really are. The fact that she still has a headache may show that she shouldn’t be at school. Of course she thinks she will do well this semester…they all do! But she may be academically affected and it is much easier to pull out now than at the end of the semester when she isn’t doing well.</p>
<p>You have my sympathies. Given that your daughter really wants to be at school, I hope that accommodations can be worked out, and that she recovers reasonably quickly.</p>
<p>In the hopes that this may help someone, I’ll relate my experience with something similar. My D & I were rear-ended on the way back to school from spring break. We were half-way between home & school, went to the emergency room because D started feeling pain ~10 minutes after accident happened. Police had arrived, but not finished. They offered an ambulance, but D wasn’t feeling <em>that</em> bad, and I was concerned about the logistics of leaving the car with all her stuff on the side of the highway (and there’s no way I was sending D off to the hospital alone.)</p>
<p>The emergency room doc cleared her to return to classes the next day and did not diagnose a concussion from the symptoms she displayed then. He did anticipate she’d have pain from whiplash. Upon arrival at school, I became concerned when she started slurring words and would pause in the middle of a sentence because she had trouble with word retrieval. I asked if she <em>really</em> wanted to stay at school, and she said it was more that she didn’t want a 2-hour drive home. Bzzzzzt… wrong answer. I took her home and made an appointment to see her PCP the next day. The PCP took it <em>very</em> seriously, thought it was a concussion, and recommended a local sports doc who was a concussion specialist. We also got a list of don’ts: no TV, no reading, no listening to music, no computer, no reading – frankly, I had a hard time coming up with things that were okay for her to do.</p>
<p>I had intially thought that she’d be home for a week with headaches, and then would return to school. I was in for quite an education. The doc stressed that she should do very little while she was still having headaches, though he did say it was possible that she could be ready to return in a week. He was very clear that if she was doing an activity that caused her headache to return, she should stop it immediately and rest. To do otherwise would simply prolong her recovery period. After about a week and a half, she was seriously bored, was only having intermittent headaches, and wanted to return to school. So she did. </p>
<p>While at school, her headaches worsened. She was supposed to limit herself to one 10-minute walk/day. This would get her to one class or one meal (but not back to her room.) The school did have a shuttle bus, but it was noisy. The cafeteria gave her a headache – it wasn’t so much the noise level, as the amount of processing a brain needs to do to focus on a single conversation in the presence of background noise. She was unable to sleep the 12 hours that she now required. She met with each of her professors with copies of a handout I provided to her explaining how a concussion can affect someone her age. All of them were very sympathetic and most were willing and able to adapt things to enable her to complete her coursework at her pace. One professor very sadly told her that class participation was too large a part of that particular course for him to see any way she could complete it if she was unable to attend class most of the time. By the end of that week, she tried to attend his class, but had to leave before it was over. He later sent her a very kind email recommending that she take a medical leave – he admitted he was no doctor, but he was very concerned about how she looked while in class and the trouble she was having. I drove out that weekend to assess and let her stay overnight in a hotel room. <em>Huge</em> difference the next day. I made the decision to bring her home so we returned to campus, packed her up and I drove her home.</p>
<p>While I was unsure of the decision at the time (and her father was dead set against it), I do believe it was the right decision. She continued to have trouble with memorization and concentration. She took a 1-hour voice lesson (her passion) in May or June (the accident was in March), and was wiped out for the remainder of the day. It wasn’t until the end of July that she felt like her brain was as back to as normal as it was going to get.</p>
<p>Her school gave us no trouble about her medical leave, and reimbursed us a pro-rated amount for room and board, and I think we got a little bit back on tuition as well. I’m hoping that insurance will restore the remainder, but it’s still (2 1/2 years later) in progress because she has had lingering neck pain issues.</p>
<p>My very best wishes to your D on a speedy, complete recovery! </p>
<p>I would not go by what the doctor said about it being okay to return. I speak from experience.</p>
<p>Rest is necessary to recover. So called minor head traumas often have long lasting effects that some MD’s don’t recognize as yet, but that is changing with all the media attention.</p>
<p>At anytime in a semester, a medical withdrawal is possible and at the schools I have dealt with (3 of them) the slate is wiped clean, without any “W”'s, though the leave of absence is noted on the transcript and there are sometimes hurdles to coming back involving medical clearance by the college.</p>
<p>Maybe there is halfway ground. Can she live with roommates near the college? Are there a couple of easy classes she could take (the college should agree to a reduced course load) with accommodations like extensions and so on (visit the disabilities office). Some people with concussions need to sit in the dark and quiet for months, and some really can return to normalcy after a few weeks, and most I think are somewhere between the two extremes.</p>