Chris Boyce’s CTE & The Brain Injury Global Support (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) Facebook group, recognized by the Concussion Legacy Foundation, is committed to implementing them. They focus on educating parents, athletic leaders, and the athletic community about how concussion trauma has contributed to or caused long-term brain health problems.
Parkman shares his story about his son’s depressed and distant behavior. Boyce shares similar symptoms, including dizziness, anxiety, insomnia, short-term memory loss, anger issues, and sensory overload, which occurred after two back-to-back concussions, among other things. He summed it up in a surprising statement.
“It’s a big psychological game… The anger is huge.”
Listen to the full episode with host Bruce Parkman and Chris Boyce here.
Does the medical community support?
Finding the cause and treatment of Boyce’s symptoms has been a challenge. Finding doctors who recognize that contact sports at an early age may be the cause of mental health problems contributes to the lack of answers and successful treatments. Boyce explains that he has taken 78 different medications and is told by the therapist to see the neurologist and the neurologist says to see the therapist.
“Doctors don’t know what to do with people like us,” says Boyce.
But his determination to become better for himself and his family and to help others in the same situation brings change. “You have to be your best advocate,” Boyce says adamantly. He found a doctor who offered him a DTI-MRI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Magnetic Resonance Imaging). According to Boyce, “It showed an upper frontal lobe axonal shear injury, two microbleeds with white matter loss. If I hadn’t been persistent in telling those doctors that something was wrong and the first MRI had failed, I never would have known I had brain damage.”
What advice can you give to others?
As he continues to seek medical attention, Boyce discusses other key components…
