Jinx

I've been afraid to post that I'm feeling better because I don't want to "jinx" it!

I did go to the doctor, on headache day 15. He was very thorough, asked lots of questions, but ultimately could not give a definite diagnosis. One of the most gratifying aspects of the visit was the lack of focus on stress as a possible cause of the condition. I guess I feared it was really all my fault, and that if I could just relax enough I would be fine. But all he asked was "Has your level of stressed changed recently?" Great question! Because I would say that my level of stress is regularly moderate to high, but it never gave me a 15 day headache before!!

So the doc gave me two samples of a migrane pill called imitrin(although he agreed it was not technically a migrane), with instructions to take one, followed by the second if the headache wan't gone two hours later. If that didn't do it, he would refer me to a neurologist for further testing. The pill worked (but was nothing to mess with...side effects include heart attack and death, and the insert says not to take more than four per month). I felt great all day. Then, 10 hours later, I got a whopping headache...in a different part of my head. I think it was a "rebound headache" from the medication, something I've been reading about on the internet. The next morning my origial headache was gone, but I still felt twinges of pain now and then from this other headache. By the end of the day, I was achy and congested. I had a cold.

We went to the cabin for the weekend, and I curled up in a corner with my tissues and read 250 pages of The Historian, a great read, by the way. I'll take a little head cold any day over a mild but never ending headache. In comparison to the last two weeks, I felt great! Then, yesterday, I woke up with a headache. I was so depressed I could hardly function. The thought of the headache coming back is just unbearable. I decided to take some sinus medication for it. After all, I'm still at the tail end of this cold. It took care of it right away, and this morning I woke up feeling great.

I've always found people who talk about nothing but their health condition so irritating. Don't they realize that at some point it becomes old news, and they are hard to be around because of their inability to focus on anything else? And now look what I've become. I've also never understood that very irritating comment that comes after you finish sharing the ups and downs of your life "Well, at least you have your health". To me this comment seems to say "As long as you're healthy, your life's ups and downs are trivial, so quit complaining."

I may still have a hard time being patient around someone who talks of nothing but their health, but at least I'll understand it a little bit better. I guess there's something to be said for walking a mile in someone's shoes.

Same Old...

I still have a headache. It's been so many days in a row now, I've stopped counting. I've tried every remedy, but nothing is working. Some days it's better, but I either wake up with it, or it starts to come on at some point during the day. If I stay in bed, it helps, but I can't do that forever.

At this point, I don't know what else to do except learn to live with it. The hardest part is that the constant ache makes me feel grumpy, and I feel really bad for my kids. I'm trying to behave normally, but I know I'm not always successful.

Headache Day 5

It started as a mild headache on Tuesday morning, and kind of came and went throughout the day. It was never severe, so I just chalked it up to lack of sleep and figured it would be gone in the morning. Wednesday and Thursday are my crazy days, and again the headache came and went. I decided stress and busyness were contributing factors, and figured it would go away when things slowed down.

Friday included three separate trips to town, with office work sandwiched in between, as I tried to catch up on urgent paperwork that I'd gotten behind on during the week. Usually Fridays are relaxing days for me, but with Clint out of town I have business responsibilities. Friday night, by the time I dropped kids off at their activity and headed to "mom's night out", my head was aching. Still, sometimes there would be minutes where the ache seemed to disappear altogether. I headed straight to bed when I got home, determined that a good night's rest would take care of the problem. Saturday it was still there, but mild enough to ignore. But after two more trips to town chauffeuring kids and handling business stuff, and 3 hours of errands to kill time between child pick up and business, my head hurt ferociously. I went to bed even earlier than the night before. I'd found that when I'm resting in bed, my head doesn't hurt at all.

This morning I arose sooo carefully, hoping the ache wouldn't start, but it hit again as soon as I was up and around. I desperately needed to work on paperwork this weekend, but office work is tough with a splitting headache. So I resorted to codeine. Up until now, I'd been sticking to ibuprofen, without success. The codeine made me so nauseous I ended up back in bed, and spent a nauseating but pain free couple of hours watching TV. This afternoon, holding my head gingerly and walking carefully, figuring if I avoided any sudden movements I could keep the thing from coming back, I headed to the office to work on the finances. My head is pounding now. No suprise though. The taxes would've given me a headache anyway, so it's just as well.

I'm not sure what it's going to take to get rid of this headache.