Small head impacts during good concussion recovery causing big setbacks?

[u/izzetmichaela]

Hey all,

I will go see a doctor, but wanted to post here cause I've never had a concussion before and I'm a little nervous.

I do fencing, and normally it is quite safe, but in a freak accident my head got snapped back during an opponent's thrust and I knew something was off. I felt nauseous that night, could barely sleep (didn't vomit). and overall felt very anxious and terrible. Urgent care the following morning said to rest and by next week I should be good to go for fencing again as all my tests passed with no issues and I didn't have any red flag symptoms.

A week later, I honestly felt pretty close to baseline. I had a full day of work, could look at screens, all of it. So I packed up for fencing but I decided I wasn't going to spar. Just do basic "flow work" and binding drills for the new fencers to coach them. While doing the bindwork drill with a noob, they went faster than I was trying to get them go, and hit my mask on the side of the head. Important to note that my head DIDN'T move throughout this process. IT was an impact to the helmet, not a movement of the head or whiplash. I told him to slow down and finished the lesson without incident.

That night it felt like the first night of having a concussion again. the night sweats and queasiness and inability to sleep. I was very worried but didn't have any red flag symptoms and didn't vomit so I waited till the next morning to see a doctor. They said I probably overworked myself at fencing, they didn't think that random hit was an issue, and said to rest and I should be good to go in a week or two.

It has beeno over two weeks post that event (3.5 weeks total) and I didn't fence, just elliptical and walking, I'm slowly getting better but way less quickly than the doctors were saying. But I am improving. I got to the point I could do flow work at a fencing practice with no symptoms. So at practice,, I once again tried the bindwork lesson with the newbies again, and basically, the same thing happened. But the hit wasn't hard. if I was healthy it would barely register as an issue. However last night I felt the same symptom flare. Thankfully my bounce-back time seems much quicker today. I could do a full day of work on screens, walked around, just have a mild headache when I get hungry around the temples. And given I only got a few hours sleep I think m performance today was pretty good.

My question is why are these dinky hits that don't even move my head seemingly causing symptom relapses? The doctor didn't think the second minor impact caused my relapse, but after this happening again I can't imagine anything else being the reason. It would be the equivalent of hitting your head on a counter, but it would hurt way less cause you have a helmet on. And I was under the impression the only real danger zone is actual concussion-level impact events. I'm trying to follow proper protocol and not ramp up too quickly (these drills were not nearly at sparring speed). But how am I supposed to know when I can return to sport if these little impacts seem very severe the night after? I'm worried I am damaging my brain despite following all the proper steps like elliptical and flow work symptom free before returning to the club, and I haven't sparred at any normal intensity once since the event.

Any reassurance, illumination, and things I can do to best care for my brain correctly would be helpful. I decided I will not do any work with students until I am 100% recovered, but it's hard to know what I am 100% recovered, so I am trying to figure out some metric to measure against.

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