My name is Ali and I got three concussions, three diagnosed concussions from hockey. I probably had a couple more and then I had a concussion from cross-country,
of all things. So yeah, I've had quite a few concussions and just have had chronic migraine headaches every day. It's been three years up until this week and homework took way longer than it had before. I couldn't remember things as quickly as before. My short-term memory was not good, my long-term memory was even worse, and I just felt so slowed down and kind of like I was moving in slow motion while the world was still at the same pace and I was just constantly trying to keep up with that, but every day I just couldn't because of all the concussions and all of my symptoms, and then trying to push through that and how it just gets worse and worse. And so, I was, kind of, going through that every day, kind of like a cyclical wake up, try and get through the day, but I would just have headaches, and I'd be tired, and it wasn't fun, like, I wasn't having as much fun in life as I had before. I had gone to almost every doctor that you can name, all those different kinds of doctors and nothing was really working. There are maybe things that would take my headache away, maybe take one of the symptoms away for a week, a month but then all of a sudden, it would just...I'd wake up and it would all be back.
And so, I never really found anything that would help me get completely better. And then, it was kind of an accident how we heard about Cognitive FX. It was my dad's co-worker, their friends or something like that. So we checked it out online and we watched the tutorial videos of all the people, we did our research, we read the reviews and were like, "Okay, we need to, like, check this out," because I was literally...I was like, "Hey, this is the last big thing that I'm going to try," and in one week,
like, literally one week from today, I'm going to be taking college classes and I'll be a freshman in college, so this whole summer, I was so nervous about that because... I came to Cognitive FX all the way from North Dakota and Day 1, I had my scan, the functional scan, and they showed me, backed up by science, that, like, I'm not crazy. There was things that were just off with my brain that I could feel as I was going through everyday life, but I couldn't really explain like doctors here can, but they showed me, they were like, "Hey, these certain parts of your brain are getting way too much blood. You're spending way too much energy in these certain areas and that there are these parts of your brain that aren't doing anything at all." So, I was like, "Okay, good. At least I know that it's not all, like, 'in my head.'" And what was amazing to me is that Dr. Fong, she sat down and she, like, looked at me, and she saw how worried I was seeing those bad numbers, but she looked at me and she said, "Ali, we can fix this." And I'm going to [inaudible] cry.
So, after that meeting with Dr. Fong, she kind of laid out the schedule for the week and she said, "Now, it's not going to be easier, but I promise you that it's going to be worth it in the end." And so, I was like, "Okay. This is the last thing I'm trying. I'm going to go all in, 150%." And so, there's just all these different kinds of things and it's, "I'll put you go from appointment to appointment," and it's all day for five days. So throughout the week, it felt like I learned how to remember again but in this whole new way where it wasn't so hard. It was "Okay, you can remember these 25 words for tomorrow morning if you can put them in an order and put them in a story," or just each therapist would give me these different tools on how I don't have to work so, so, so, so hard to remember things again, and that's only one example. There's so many different things that they've helped me with. And then, so I just kept doing that every day throughout the week. And then this morning, I had my... today is Friday, so this morning, I had my "end-of-the-week" scan just like the beginning of the week to compare. And so, I did the scan, and then Dr. Fong came in and showed the results, and it was, like, exponentially better. I was in the moderate-to-severe range and I was brought all the way back down to a healthy, just almost perfect brain, in the green again. It was crazy because I was like, "Okay, it's been like three and a half years and I've been dealing with this. How can it be fine in five days?"
Of course, everyone should be skeptical about that especially if you've gone through, like, the symptoms and stuff for so long but, like, it's science.
Like, it's weird. I don't know how to explain it any other way than that, but they're testing your brain and the blood flow to those areas and they can tell you, "Yes, this is how much better you are in these certain areas that you were before." But if you've had these symptoms and you're just kind of like looking for a way, like, out of this box, that this concussion or the traumatic brain injury has put you in, it's like, take a chance and come here, because I don't know, I'm like living proof. I've been dealing with things for three and a half, like, almost four years, and I came here and now I'm like, I'm excited for college now. I'm ready to go. I'm excited for my classes and to go learn, and because I know that I can. Like I can remember things, and it's not going to be headaches all day, every day, and I'm going to be sleeping a lot better, and just my life is going to be so, so much better after five days.
