Traumatic Brain Injury

  Dear Doctor
  I recently had MRI of my brain with and without contrast due to my headaches and memory loss. I also suffer with fatigue as well. The radiologist interpretation was evidence of old bleed in my brain most likely due to traumatic injury. My neurologist was not concerned about the findings and said it would not kill me or anything. However I am very concerned! I was hit in the head with a door several years ago and in 1995 was in a car accident with no LOC. Did either of these events cause the bleed? I am quite worried as you can tell. My neurologist will see me again in one month and wants me to try Elavil 10 mg at bedtime to start. My symptoms are Headache,memory loss,fatigue,lack of concentration,and mood swings. Are these signs of a TBI? Any information is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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I cannot say wheteer either of the incidents you mention caused the bleed,
it is simply not possible to work back on the basis of a few words in a
posting and work out what happened years ago without even seeing the scan.
From your description of the events they sound more trivial than the usual
degree of injury that is associated with TBI and bleeding.
Appearances can be misleading on scans and while this may resemble a bleed
associated with a TBI this may not actually be the case and this could be
an old bleed which occurred spontaneously.
The symptoms you mention are fairly non-specific and can be associated
with a range of medical conditions including TBI but also includuing
depression, for this reason the Elavil sounds like a good idea.
Since I do not even know what part of the brain is involved or the size of
this finding I cannot say for sure that these symptoms are due to trauma.
In general if the initial problem was so mild that you were not even aware
of it at the time it occurrred, I think it should not be used as a label to
explain your problems without further consideration.
A good next step would be to have the scans seen by another radiologist
for a second opinion as to what this finding really represents.

[wysiwyg1]

A related discussion, Seizure after brain injury was started.

[KITTY36]

A related discussion, closed head or diffuse axonal injury(brain injury) was started.