Thank you Nakamova, I suppose it's easier to carry on with this thread. I meant to reply a while ago, but didn't get around to it. Feel free to skip parts if it's too long. The main questions are in the LATELY bit so people can skip easily to it:
BACKGROUND: I suffered a blow to the top of my head from a falling vehicle container box lid made of steel. It was a very hard blow, but didn't knock me unconscious. Straight after, I felt a strange pressure around my nose, kind of like the bridge area was being squeezed, and shortly after I realised that I felt a little disconnected from my surroundings, as though things were slightly surreal. My mind just felt strange overall.
The strange feeling continued that evening, and the following day I awoke still feeling 'odd' so didn't go into work. By early afternoon I was feeling more disorientated and disconnected from things around me, almost like being slightly drunk but not the same, so I telephoned the NHS Direct service here in the UK for advice. They told me to get to A&E at the local hospital. While waiting at A&E something strange happened: I was talking to my wife sat next to me, when my mind went funny, I felt a 'strumming' in my mind like a plucked guitar string vibrating, and my vision went a little odd and I couldn't think. Then it eased off and I said to my wife that I'd just had a strange experience.
Minutes later the doctor finally saw us and I told her about what had just happened. She seemed tired and uninterested, but what got me was that I told the doctor the experience in the waiting room lasted only 3 seconds to me, but my wife said it was at least 30 seconds and she was trying not to panic, and didn't tell me before because she assumed I'd known. Apparently I was just staring at the wall and unresponsive. The doctor gave no remark and when I directly asked about it, she said 'it might happen again' but nothing more. She prescribed me Ibruprofen for any headaches and got rid of me.
Following day I felt ok until late afternoon when I suddenly felt pressure around the bridge of my nose area, a pressure feeling in my head, and detached from reality somewhat but all worse than before. Managed to get an appointment with the GP (family doctor) for that evening, who was so worried by how I was blinking too much and too heavily, and the way I seemed distant and kept going blank when talking to her (my mind just went blank here and there and I couldn't think of what I was saying or was going to say and generally felt slow and not with it) that she told me to go straight to A&E again, and that she'd ring them and insist I have a CT scan.
We had to return home first to drop our then 6-month old off at the mother-in-law's, but while at home, the way I was in the GP's surgery worsened, and all of a sudden my head felt even stranger, the pressure around the bridge of my nose increased and my eyes started producing tears (I don't like calling it crying because there was no emotion behind it) and the right side of my body started twitching like mad, and when I tried to speak to my wife, I kept stuttering and getting caught on sounds, and it felt like there was a blockage between my brain and mouth and I just couldn't get my mouth to say what I was thinking. It scared my wife so much that she called an ambulance, so I ended up at A&E via that.
Back at A&E the doctor said I was probably panicking and my throat constricted making it hard to talk and shaking was panic attack, and said they'd keep me overnight and check my blood pressure all night to see if it showed I had a bleed in the brain. BP was fine all night. In the morning, another doctor came to see me. I told her everything written above, and she said that she was unfamiliar with what I was describing but would get me a CT scan to ensure I didn't have a very slow bleed. CT scan came back clear, so she told me that the brain works in mysterious ways and I might just be suffering odd side-effects to concussion and to go to my GP if things worsened.
MORE RECENTLY: Since then the same things have been happening, with some variations and occasionally new things. I've had episodes of twitching on one side that vary from very mild with maybe only my head jerking slightly to the side and my abdomen twitching and jerking me forward, to my entire body down that one side twitching quite violently. The twitching is only one small part of it, though. I have random episodes of feeling excessively tired, of feeling 'spaced out' and having trouble thinking and concentrating. My memory seems poor, and in the past few months I've had moments of feeling like I'm burning up inside (so hot that I've had to get in front of a fan) suddenly start, and minutes later suddenly stop. Quite often that happens shortly before I twitch a bit.
These things and others I'll mention might happen for a few weeks and then stop for weeks and come back again. Same with the twitching; at one point I thought it was all gone and I was back to normal, because I had weeks of feeling good apart from some short-lived very slight feelings of detachment, giddiness, etc., but then it came back with a vengeance with the worse bout of twitching I'd ever had.
Since that really bad one, I haven't had much time at all feeling 'normal'. I've had lots more twitching, from mild to quite bad, but more than that it's the other stuff I've experienced more often, and sometimes without relief for days: the feeling strange, feeling like my head is pressurised internally, or being squeezed, feeling giddy and my balance being slightly poor here and there, usually when my head starts to feel more odd and congested.
I had a scary moment a few weeks ago where I started to slow down. I've had that before, usually before twitching, but this one was more pronounced. Felt myself slowing down mentally and physically and when I got up to walk outside, I got halfway to the door and then my head felt very strange and I felt really disorientated and giddy, and then I had trouble moving my right leg, and I watched as I tried to move my leg forward and it went really slowly, with the sole of my shoe scuffing the ground, it was the strangest experience. I felt very unstable on my legs (had this before too) as though I was going to fall down (legs feeling weak, shaky and my balance feeling like it's in trouble). I felt so giddy and odd that I grabbed the doorframe and sat down. Shortly after I started twitching all down that side again. Afterwards I felt a bit better, but not as good as I used to feel after twitching; it used to feel like it had 'cleared the air' inside my head, much as a thunderstorm clears the air. Now it doesn't seem to make me feel quite so much better.
LATELY: Last week has been bad. I've had headaches suddenly come on that are really bad, and just as quickly disappear. If I have twitching after hours or days of these headaches, it usually removes the headache completely. The last one started suddenly one evening and during the night I awoke every hour or so, in immense pain, I couldn't move it was so bad. It carried on into the next day. Then I had some mild twitching, and straight afterwards the headache eased off. I still have it now as it keeps seeming to go and then come back, but now it's mild in the background.
Last night I had the extreme pressure on my nose, but nothing more happened, other than feeling a little out of it for a while. Today I've just had a couple of very short-lived odd moments where my mind has gone a bit blank and I've found my movements a little slow and considered, and then within seconds I've felt better again.
Another thing that I have from time to time is the sudden onset of the blackest mood I've ever experienced. A malignant mood is a good way of describing it, put forward by my dad after he experienced 2 days of me in this mood just before the terrible headache set in last week. I can't fight it or control it, but I become moody and not very pleasant, arguing with my wife and not wanting to speak to anyone. Then it just suddenly lifts and I'm left with the guilt of being so horrible and not understanding why. Even in my teenage years I didn't have moods quite so dark. Thankfully they seem rare, only had them about 3 or 4 times since the injury, but it's another odd thing happening.
My appointment for my EEG results is for the 28th of this month. But my wife, worried by how things have slowly been getting worse and more frequent, emailed the neurologist just to see what he thought about things getting worse. His reply has knocked us a bit, and we don't know what to think now. He said that he'll go into things more fully at the appointment, but that my EEG was clear despite the fact that the strobe, on the third flashing fequency, started a very bad episode where my entire right side twitched violently, with my arm and leg bouncing about off the chair I was lying in, and my eyes streaming tears (it's an odd feeling, I feel a pressure build behind my eyes and then it gets closer to my eyes and I feel them squint up against my will and tears start coming out - it's almost like what onions do to you when cutting them).
It was recorded with a video camera too. He said that since the EEG didn't show anything despite what he described as 4-minutes of twitching on the video, he was going to suggest I see the neuropsychologist. The GP had mentioned that if they found no physical cause for what's happening to me, they'd assume it was psychological. I don't know what to think of that.
It'll be the 2nd time I've seen the neurologist when I go to formally hear the results and be told what's next. Anyway, I don't know what to think now. My wife isn't convinced it's psychological, and I just don't know what to think. All I know is it's affected our lives in a big way. I'm not allowed to drive for the timebeing, go up ladders or do much of what I used to. I want answers and for this to stop and go away, but I had my hopes pinned on the EEG showing something so I could finally get right. But it hasn't.
Is it likely all the things I've mentioned are psychological? Can it happen that EEGs are clear but there is a problem, in which case how do doctors ever find out so they can put it right?
I'll do as they say and see the neuropsychologist, but it's worrying me that things are just carrying on and all this takes so much time. It'll be months until I see the neuropsychologist, as it has been to see anyone. In the meantime I've got to hope the company carries on paying me my salary. I'm tired of all of it. I don't understand what's happened to me, and now I'm afraid I'll never know.
More than anything, I just wanted to know if the madness that has become my life, with such a variety of strange feelings, actions and experiences are as crazy as they seem to me, or if other people have had anything similar. The first neurologist looked at me like I was mad when I described the strange feelings in my head, the detachment from my surroundings and how I can suddenly feel like my legs are going to give way, or I'm just going to 'stop being able to stand up'. I can't describe these odd feelings any better, and that doesn't help.
Sorry this post is so long.
