Phone App
Why use a phone app?
If you knew that recording all head injuries could help your child’s future mental health – would you do it?
Your child has fallen and hit their head, you’ve heard an awful crack, then thought “how bad could it be”?
Hours later you’ve looked at your child and worried that you could have missed something?
You are probably right!
4 serious head injuries to my children Samuel and Hannah have changed the way I view concussions.
The only ones we went to emergency for were the 2 with visible symptoms!
I have since learnt that the 2 we ignored could have had the worst concussion symptoms.
As parents we are tuned to feel our child’s pain, but movies and professional sport has desensitized us and conditioned us to NOT question headaches and dizziness from head impacts.
This is WRONG!
I should have been keeping records of any injuries, so I could have shown the record to the emergency staff.
Then they couldn’t have ignored me when I told them Samuel had previous concussions.
I should have had a baseline test, so when the Doctor said “watch for any abnormal behavior” I would have something to base that on!
Samuel has had speech difficulties, Hannah was diagnosed on the spectrum and both are showing improvement with careful management.
I now believe both sets of symptoms were related to head injuries they have had and were misdiagnosed. Unfortunately without a baseline test I will never know.
Minder Foundation is changing that, we are providing free baseline tests and online data storage. If you or your child has a head injury you can show the emergency staff the history and they can base their diagnosis on FACTS!
Concussions are difficult to recognize, studies estimate that 15% of the adult population have undiagnosed concussion symptoms, some from childhood incidents.
With over 40 symptoms, concussion can mirror ADHD, Depression, Anxiety and other well known conditions.
Concussions symptoms can be misdiagnosed and have a huge personal, social and economic cost.
Some sports teams now have baseline testing for athletes, or you can buy a test for $20+ but why only test sport when;
- Head injuries are the biggest killer of people under 20
- 87% of total concussions are children.
- 90% of concussions are NOT sport related!
#ConcussionDiscussion
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