Well, to be clear that’s not a doctor’s opinion; however, the evidence is pretty heavily in favor of that diagnosis. During his hockey practice on Wednesday, he collided with another player, hitting face-mask to face-mask in the process. He says that his head started hurting after that. When he came off the ice, he came right over to me and told me he had a headache. He complained it hurt more after we took the helmet off, though I attribute that to the adrenaline from practice running out.
We went home, he took a shower and went right to bed, but he didn’t sleep well. He got up a several points during the night to complain to me about his head and his room being hot. The fan helped him a bit with the room, but I told him there wasn’t much we could do about his head. We kept him out of school yesterday since his head was worse by the morning.
By midday, his head was feeling better and he said there was no more headache at that point. As bed time approached, however, he said it was starting to bother him again. He went to bed at the normal time and slept well, waking with no headache this morning. We sent him to school today.
The headache came back around midday today, as the school nurse called to let us know. The plan was to let him rest a bit and get him a little lunch and some drink and see how he did. We didn’t hear anything more today until he arrived home. He got off the bus and complained that his head was hurting again. He said it never really stopped but he didn’t want to go back to the nurse so he just stayed in class and took it easy during recess and some other things.
Somewhat compounding the problem is that he might be catching a cold. His colds are often times accompanied with headaches. The Wife and I are figuring to keep him out of hockey this weekend to be on the safe side and possibly ask his martial art instructors to give him a pass in sparring next week. He’s a bit young to chance getting multiple concussions.
I’ll note that the initial symptoms after hockey and such as he described are pretty similar to my own experience from being concussed, including the headache that peaked about 12 hours later. Fortunately, the helmet kept his experience from being on a par with my own. Unfortunately, it didn’t prevent it entirely- that’s disappointing.