Elle's story: Life beyond post-concussion syndrome

Isolation and brain injury

When Elle was just 19, she sustained a mild head injury due to an accident. This went on to develop into Post Concussion Syndrome which she still navigates symptoms from, eight years on. 

For the first few months, Elle told us her symptoms felt immobilising. She went on to experience common brain injury symptoms such as severe headaches, dizziness, fatigue, memory problems and increased sensitivity to light and sound.

After her diagnosis, the doctors informed Elle of a three to six month timeline of when her symptoms may begin to improve and luckily, after the initial first few months, things did improve a lot for Elle, to a point where she can live a normal life, which she tells us she’s extremely grateful for. 

Sadly, the main thing she has battled with has been her mental health. Elle told us “It has been an extremely isolating experience. Especially in those initial months, when my symptoms were so extreme I couldn’t work and I couldn’t socialise in the ways people around me would, for example partying and drinking.”

Elle describes that this kind of isolation felt different, especially after seeing countless doctors and medical professionals but none of them were able to provide her with any further information of possible full recovery or further improvements.

For a long time, I felt like I was broken, which led to some pretty bad mental health struggles.

“I’m still not sure how to navigate certain things. For example I have gone back and forth many times about getting a sunflower lanyard which may help let people in airports, shopping centres and transport know that I’m struggling.”

When returning to work, Elle described that she struggles to disclose to new employers about her brain injury, hoping she can work through it and not ask for any further support. Unfortunately, this has led to burn out.

However, as we know with brain injuries, recovery isn’t linear, despite this, Elle is still learning how to navigate her life post brain injury, and feels much more positive.

"I am in a much better place. My mental health has improved. I no longer feel like I’m ‘broken’.

“I’m learning to love my brain for exactly how it works. Today at work, it crashed hard, instead of getting down on it for not being able to handle more. I thanked it for the message that it was time to stop for the day and rewarded it with a brain-boosting 8km run.

Almost a decade on from her accident, it's taken a lot of patience and support from her family and friends, and finding solace with other brain injury survivors through online community groups, to help with her recovery journey.

Elle has been rediscovering life since her brain injury and feels grateful anytime she tries something new and it’s successful, from returning to full-time employment to her first night out where she cried happy tears all the way home, and other activities such as swimming and sudoku. These new experiences have impacted her life tremendously. 

Recently, Elle overcame what she calls her ‘longest awaited hurdle’. She started reading literature again. This was a hobby Elle wasn’t able to partake in due to experiencing headaches and vision problems within the first six years of her brain injury.

She first started slow with reading books with large fonts and minimal writing, then eventually she worked up to reading lengthy educational books.

Running 500km for Headway

Now that Elle feels her recovery is going from strength to strength, she's taken on an ambitious fundraising challenge where she’ll be running 500km across the winter months for Headway.

"I've had it in my mind for years now that if I'm going to do a fundraising challenge, I want it to be for Headway.

"Headway helped me a lot just to have further information and access to reading other people's stories. It made me feel a lot less isolated because I didn't have anyone around me who was going through the same thing. So to read these stories from other people felt validating to what was happening. 

"I am doing this to raise awareness about brain injury and the effects it can have. I’m doing this for my 19-year-old self who felt isolated and alone. I’m doing this out of love and appreciation for my mind and what it can achieve.”

When asked why she decided to embark on this running challenge, Elle told us: 

Because of the long effect this has had on my entire adult life it didn't seem fitting to have just a one-day run.

"The anniversary of when I hit my head was coming up and I figured out how much can I run in what amount of time. 500km was a nice even number, and I worked out I could do it in the same time frame of when I hit my head to when I returned to work full time, because that was a really tough period of my injury."

Elle has been documenting her arduous running journey through a series of video diaries on her YouTube channel. She hopes to get to the magic number 500 kilometres by the 25th March 2025.

If you would like to support Elle and donate to her epic 500km running challenge for Headway, you can do so by heading over to her Just Giving page.