05. concussions — the count and what it might mean
Baseline: Nov 10, 2025 · Peak Brain · QEEG + IVA-2
Retest: Dec 19, 2025 · Peak Brain · QEEG + IVA-2 · Dr. Hill Zoom readout Dec 31
Amen: Jul 9–13, 2026 · SPECT ×2 + Total Brain + Conners CPT 3 · Dr. Creado
this is my own account of the bell-rung history — the only recurring thing that has happened to my brain. no drug issues, no alcohol abuse, only bell-rung events. it's on the site because it's the only chronic exposure, and readers of a site called openmybrain will look for it.
it is not a "traumatic brain injury" page. it is not a "cte risk" page. those terms only show up here when a specific instrument's output or a specific citation uses them, and when they do, the instrument or source is named in the same breath.
[ 00:05:36 ] — kevin, what i remember"i remember distinctly a couple of concussions. one — i was young. i was on a horse. this is not a story anymore, just fact. and it was probably — that was probably fourteen or fifteen. and i bumped my head. not from the fall or the running of the horse, but the horse was moving so quickly it was actually a lower branch of a tree that hit me on the top of my head, and i lost consciousness on the horse. so then i fell off the horse. when i fell off the horse, i hit the ground pretty hard too.
[ 00:05:36 ] — kevin, what i remember"another time playing football, i got hit — not from the front but from the side — in a football game. it was that thump on the ground. then there was another one when i was in an accident — an air bag went off in a car accident, and it hit me in the face pretty good, and that certainly rung my bell. that was in probably twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. so those were three big ones. there has been minor ones from just living life — growing up on a farm, playing sports, farmwork — just doing regular stuff, and things where you know, in one moment you might have rung your bell, but nothing that anyone would have said, 'oh, you had a concussion.'"
what the qeeg's tbi discriminant said — and what it doesn't say. the score crossed the discriminant threshold between nov 10 and dec 19, 2025. that is a data point. what it does not do is diagnose anything. the qeeg pdf says so in its own indications-of-use: "they do not serve as a primary basis for a diagnosis."
the literature i found relevant, quoted only for what it actually says: on 12-month post-concussive symptoms, the track-tbi study (nelson ld, temkin nr, dikmen s, et al., jama neurology 2019;76(9):1049–1059, pubmed) found 53% of patients with mild tbi still had post-concussive symptoms at twelve months.
on how often concussions go unreported, the range across studies is 12–80% (craig di, lininger mr, vomacka mm, tiscareno r, "concussion reporting behaviors of athletes: a systematic review," athletic training & sports health care 2020;12(2):81–88, journal link).
[ 00:06:32 ] — kevin, the question i was carrying"i was really curious — all right, put those three big ones, put a stack of minor ones that were minor from the time they happened, and how do those things then aggregate into some type of a concussion issue? and then, did that leave any residual? did that impact the brain? did that leave a scar? did that lead to trauma? all of those things i was interested in. so going back and — you know, when this bell got rung on the concussions, was there some type of a trauma to the brain that we may have carried along the way? that's what i was curious about."
what i've come to think after everything: i don't know, and i can't know for certain, and i am okay not knowing for certain. the instruments give reads; the instruments don't give verdicts.