If you have symptoms from a traumatic brain injury, you should generally expect them to get better as your brain heals. If they are instead getting worse, it may be time to talk to medical professionals. It could indicate that there is a much more serious injury.
For instance, even a mild concussion can give you a headache. In the weeks following that concussion, your symptoms should clear up and you should feel more like yourself.
If your headache persists or even gets worse, or if it develops into a migraine, this shows that the type of healing you expected is not occurring. That could mean that the TBI is more serious than a concussion, and it could be something like a subdural hematoma.
Why do the symptoms get worse?
With a hematoma, symptoms get worse because there is bleeding in the brain or in the tissue surrounding the brain. There is a limited amount of space within the skull, so this unchecked bleeding causes pressure to increase.
Additionally, bleeding in brain tissue means that blood flow is not necessarily getting to all of the parts of the brain where it is needed. This can reduce the amount of oxygen that those parts of the brain receive, which can cause your symptoms to worsen.
For these reasons, it is very important to keep an eye on your symptoms after you have suffered a head injury. Never assume that it is minor. If it is getting worse, talk to medical professionals to find out the underlying cause. This type of medical care can be expensive, but you may deserve financial compensation if someone else was responsible for the injury.
