Your head is the first thing to go, which is why treating a concussion after a Conyers car accident is probably one of the first things you’ll need to worry about post crash.
In an accident, there’s virtually no way to keep your head from moving. It’s 10 pounds of bone, muscle, brain and soft tissue attached to a long, movable spindle. While you have no trouble holding it up the rest of the time, during a collision your head becomes a weight that you can’t control. The force of impact is usually going to be too great, too sudden and forceful for you to steady your head or protect it from injury.
While the most common effect of impact is whiplash, which occurs as your head snaps the neck back and forth, straining its muscles, soft tissue and possibly damaging vertebrae – another distinct possibility during an accident is to sustain a concussion.
Both are also possible, too. If the head cranes your neck too far in any position and then hits your steering wheel, the door, a window or another part of the cab, you may wind up with a nasty double header…whiplash and concussion. Sometimes the force of whiplash alone can cause a concussion without the head hitting anything.
Concussion Treatment
While concussions are also called mild brain injury, they’re usually not fatal and easily treated. That being said, there are precautions that friends or family should take when someone has gotten a concussion.
To be sure all is well, someone will need to awaken the person every 2 hours during the night; complications can appear in the 24 hours following the accident that require a trip to the ER.
These include:
- Hard to wake up, or unable to rouse at all
- Worsening, deep headache
- Dizziness or Vertigo
- Nausea, or vomiting twice
- Seizures
- Slurring speech
- Disorientation or confusion
- Restless behavior
- Fluid coming from the nose or ear
- Weakness
- Numbing sensations
- Lack of coordination
Any of these conditions require you call 911 or bring the patient immediately to the Emergency Room. Usually symptoms get better in 4-5 days. However, if after two weeks you feel that you’re still experiencing symptoms, you should see your doctor again.
These are a further breakdown of the normal symptoms following a concussion.
- Headache that worsens with physical activity or exercise
- Having a hard time remembering, concentrating, organizing or making decisions
- Mood swings, or changes in mood
- Changes in your sleep cycle
- Becoming more sensitive to light and noise
- Feeling more tired
- Dizziness
- Imbalance
- Slower reaction times
- Neck pain
- Tinnitus – ringing in the ears
- Changes in smell and taste
- Altered sex drive
- Blurry vision
To alleviate them, you’ll need to rest and make sure your head stays safe. In certain cases a second injury to the brain prior to the healing of the first concussion may be fatal.