MARILYN'S STORY

*Marilyn Nielsen's life was abruptly shattered by a serious car accident when she was 48 years old.

Although she walked away from her accident, neither she nor her doctors realized then that the debilitating effects of an undiagnosed closed head brain injury and whiplash would begin to destroy her and her family's lives.

When the brain is injured, a chain reaction of failures takes place, because all body functions begin and end with the brain. It is different from a physical, visible injury such as a broken bone or open wound, where doctors are faced with a simple, fixable injury. Family and friends come to see you in the hospital wishing a speedy recovery.

Not so with a closed head brain injury. Friends and family start avoiding the victim who "looks" normal but is acting a little weird. The victim starts withdrawing as his interaction with his "normal world" starts breaking down all around him.

As brain functions break down, a victim's entire life is compromised and degraded because brain function controls all five aspects of life: 1) mental 2) physical 3) spiritual, and 4) social and 5) emotional.

Frustrating, devastating feelings of self-doubt increased after Marilyn was told time and again that doctors could find nothing wrong with her. She began to wonder if it was “all in her head.”

Five agonizing years passed before the Nielsen family finally found the team of professionals that changed the course of Marilyn's and her family's lives. Working in concert, these professionals and their therapies made more of a difference to her recovery than any other drug or treatment prescribed by her physician.

In addition to the years of mental, emotional and physical anguish, the Nielsen's spent thousands of dollars.

They accumulated over $150,000 in debt, mostly due to unsuccessful medical and chiropractic procedures. They drained their savings, sold stock, refinanced their home, and sacrificed whatever it took to find the way out.

Now the Nielsens are dedicated to helping closed head brain injury and whiplash victims and their families return normalcy to their lives without wasting valuable time and resources.

The Nielsen Recovery Group offer a comprehensive program of four critical therapies:

Precise Geometry-based Upper Cervical Chiropractic , Craniosacral , Neurofeedback and Hyperbaric Oxygen. These therapies are responsible for Marilyn's successful return to the life she enjoyed before her accident.

Don't wait another day…give us a call today and start on the road to recovery.

My Story

by Marilyn Nielsen

One evening, I was sitting in a counseling circle at a Brain Injury Association meeting with 25 other victims. I realized that if I didn't find some answers quickly, I would soon be living in a drug-addled daze like many of them.

That meeting made a profound impact on me. I felt profound sorrow for them and vowed that if I ever got back to normal, I would help those suffering miserably in that condition.

How It All Started—The Accident

In November of 1999 at age 48, I walked away from my first car accident feeling very lucky to be alive…

Driving down a country road at about 50mph in my Ford Explorer, I was struck from the left by a woman who ran a stop sign. My car veered to the right, ran over a road sign and stopped abruptly.

The distance between the initial point of impact and where I stopped was about 30 feet. I was quite shaken but managed to get out of the car and call my husband on my cell phone.

The top of my head hurt as well as my neck, but there was no bleeding and nothing seemed to be broken. I turned down the offer from the policeman to take an ambulance to the hospital and went home. As the afternoon passed, I was hurting and went to the hospital. The emergency room doctor took X-rays of my neck but saw nothing she considered very serious.

Mounting Confusion--Chiropractic Part 1

I had a lot of neck pain and numbness in my arms… so I went to a chiropractor. It hurt my neck to adjust it. I then tried an osteopath for a year--he was a specialist in gentle cranial adjustments. He helped somewhat, but his treatment had no lasting effect. My arms were still numb, my energy was gone, I couldn't think clearly and my life was on a downward spiral.

I had grown up on a large farm and had developed a great work ethic and a problem solving mind. Now I was beginning to panic. I couldn't solve my problem and neither could anyone else and I was no longer able to work. We had been involved for nine years in an executive position with a large food science company. I was accustomed to organizing and presenting seminars. Now, sometimes I would say things out of context or be rude to the distributors. It became increasingly difficult to be around significant activity--it felt like my brain was blowing electrical circuits and I started to isolate myself from people and usual activities.

I was working with a wonderful group of 18 girls at our church, but had to resign because I couldn't endure their talking, laughing and activity level. My life was falling apart--where was the help I needed?

Thought-processing breakdown

I was vaguely aware that something was different with my thinking, but I couldn’t think well enough to describe it. I felt like I was in a glass prison—I could see out but I couldn’t get out! It was though someone had scattered all of the files from my brain on the floor. I couldn’t bring up the file I needed with all of the surrounding facts to explain myself when I talked. I could communicate at a superficial level but could not organize or multi-task. I cried when someone asked how I was doing. Anxiety and insecurity over all of this confusion was my constant companion. I would look at a dirty kitchen and not realize it needed to be cleaned up, let alone know where to put the clean dishes from the dishwasher. What I was looking at did not register normally in my mind.

Sleeplessness and Drugs

I had severe difficulty falling asleep and then staying asleep. Shutting off my mind wasn’t what was keeping me awake. It was like little electrical circuits going around my body like the chasing lights you see at Christmas. I was so tired all the time, it seemed impossible that my body could stay awake every day and most of the night. I knew I could not survive for too much longer without sleep. Every night had become a long ordeal.

Drugs would work at first but only for a few nights and then they produced only 2-3 hours of sleep. Then I was wide awake again. Every cell in my body felt like it was screaming. It was an agony I will never forget. Weeks turned into months and months into years before there was any real help.

Besides working only 2-3 hours a night the drugs produced horrible physical and emotional side effects. Some drugs made me feel like a robot, some gave me dry mouth and dry eyes, clogged my sinuses and some seemed to change my personality, even more than the injury had.

My eyes had become extremely sensitive to light and movement. I spent most of my time in a quiet, dark room in the basement with blackout drapes over the window. Reading books or working on the computer was something I could hardly do and TV or movies were not an option for several years. My eyes hurt when I tried to focus them. The eye doctors could not give me glasses that didn’t hurt when I focused my eyes.

The MD's

My family doctor and endocrinologist checked my hormone and menopausal symptoms first. My adrenal glands were exhausted but I had no other hormone issues. The endocrinologist said it was highly unusual to go into menopause overnight (though very possible when a body is traumatized I found out later).

I went to a doctor specializing in sleep disorders. He told me he only worked with people who had a “hard time” sleeping, not with those who “couldn't sleep." He sent me to a doctor at the Elks Rehabilitation center who did biofeedback. This too was a dismal failure.

Our family doctor suspected a neck injury and sent me to a neurosurgeon who discovered a slightly bulging disc in my neck. He thought it was from the accident and told me that I probably had a slight concussion. My family doctor agreed with the neurosurgeon to a 6-month course of physical therapy. The physical therapist massaged my neck and shoulders vigorously and designed a work out program for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. My sleep difficulties became worse and the exercise took any energy I had left.

I continued to have more tests, go to more doctors, and try more drugs—all to no avail. I had x-rays, a brain MRI, spinal tap, blood tests of all sorts, hormone tests, physical therapy, biofeedback, hypnosis, herbal and holistic remedies, and different types of massage.

Nothing helped correct my lack of sleep—my health was slowly deteriorating.

Chiropractic Part 2—Upper Cervical

I started trying upper cervical chiropractic. The end result of a correct upper cervical adjustment is to reposition the weight of the head properly over the neck. This removes any brainstem compression by moving the first vertebra, (called C1 or the Atlas) back into place.

There are several different styles of upper cervical adjusting and, unfortunately, I started with an inaccurate adjustment style. The doctor took 3 dimensional x-rays and used a neck scanner. He had us convinced it would take a long period of time to fix my neck, since it had been out for two and a half years. When he made the correct adjustment I could sleep better, but most of the time the treatment was not done properly. Two years passed and I became more frustrated—my condition was not stabilizing. We began to wonder if the sleep and cognitive difficulties might be due to something else.

Pet Scan shows Brain Injury

A PET Scan that I had done showed brain injury from front to back on the right side and a severe visual processing problem. We were grateful to have this piece of the puzzle identified even though the doctor said that the injury would likely be permanent.

I didn't want to accept that my current state could be permanent. I wanted my old life back.

Finally! Help with the Injury

It took nearly five years to find the therapies that corrected my whiplash and closed head brain injury. Now, I am sharing the hopeful road that leads back to normalcy for other closed head brain injury sufferers. My road to recovery started with these four different therapies.

1. Neurofeedback

My family doctor suggested neurofeedback. It helped a great deal with my memory, focus, and navigational issues. I could handle my emotions and talk better, being able to use more cognitive skills.

2. Hyperbarics

When the weather changed I became worse. Thinking it could be related to barometric pressure led us to investigate hyperbaric oxygen therapy and brain injury on the internet. Hyperbaric companies popped up as well as many traumatic brain injury articles extolling the benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We had two choices: group tanks or individual tubes. We chose a 6-person chamber in Chico, California.

After finishing 40 sessions or “dives” in the hyperbaric chamber my eyesight had improved dramatically, my brain was able to handle visual and auditory stimulation much easier and my thinking became much clearer. My lack of energy from sleep deprivation dropped off dramatically, even though my sleep was still very irregular.

3. Precise Upper Cervical Chiropractic Adjustment

During my hyperbaric treatments we discovered Dr. Chris Kemper, a geometry-based upper cervical chiropractor. He took detailed 3-D X-rays and found what he called a type-3 misalignment, which compresses the brainstem (and in my case constantly stimulated the nervous system). My compressed brainstem had already been diagnosed but no one had been able to make the proper adjustment to correct it. After Dr. Kemper’s adjustments I started sleeping better and we knew we had found the answer even though it would take my nervous system a long time to heal.

4. Craniosacral Therapy

Dr. Kemper suspected some other brain injury issues that needed further correction and referred me to a specialist in craniosacral therapy, Dr. Russ Kalen. Unlike the three other craniosacral specialists I had seen, Dr. Kalen alleviated much of the pressure in my head. The rhythm of the craniosacral fluid around the brain and tailbone should be 10 beats per minute. Mine was 15. He gently treated it until it was back to normal. He further relieved the issues with my eyes. Dr. Kalen is also a specialist in visceral manipulation, which helped undo the damage of the sudden collision on my internal organs. Getting to the right craniosacral specialist was another big piece of the puzzle.

Resolution and Recovery

It has been a long, difficult ordeal. As I look back on it, I don't know how I lived through it, or how my family was able to be so patient during such a trying time. We are very grateful to have found the treatments, which have corrected and normalized almost all of my symptoms and their underlying causes.

The damage that was done to my body as a result of my untreated injuries caused the chronic issues that surfaced days, weeks, months and even years later. The sooner victims can get the treatment they need the less damage their bodies will incur.

The brain is the most complex and delicate of all organs. So called "soft tissue" injuries are hard to diagnose but when that soft tissue is the brain it becomes a very important diagnosis to make. Doctors are trained to treat symptoms if they can't find or fix the cause of the injury. Drugs suppress “brain function”, they DO NOT correct brain injury.

My family and I were able to find the treatments that could resolve the underlying causes of my symptoms. We invite victims of closed head brain injury to have access to the treatments that ultimately gave me my life back.