Pin Cushion

It’s been a hell of a week.

I went in to the doctor on Friday last for a Occipital Nerve Block, hoping that it, unlike the infusion treatment, would end the now two month long headache from hell.  The normally kind and non-torturing physician’s assistant took out a huge syringe with matching needle and shot me four times in the very base of my skull.  He claimed it wouldn’t hurt.  He lied.

The block was inordinately painful to receive.  I was swearing halfway through the first injection, blubbering through the second and by the third was sobbing quietly while trying desperately not to move my head.  He felt really badly for hurting me so and got to the point where he was murmuring my name and patting my shoulder awkwardly between shots.

Sadly, the pain was for naught.  The nerve block didn’t work at all.  I didn’t get a single minutes relief.  The headache from hell, which at this point really should be given a name and address, is still here.

On Monday I called and freaked out on the doctor’s poor receptionist.  My mom suggested I not be the ‘patient’ patient anymore and instead see how responsive my doctors are if I become the ‘crazy’ demanding patient. Unfortunately for my doctors’ future interactions with me, crazy demanding worked. I had tests scheduled the following day and a new treatment scheduled for today.

Today I get to have 34 botox injections in my face, head, and neck.  I am scared they will be as painful and as ineffective as a the nerve block.  Today I should also get my test results back.  I don’t know which to be more frightened of, a response telling me there is nothing they can find wrong with me, or a response finding the source of these headaches.

I certainly don’t want to have a brain tumor or odd swelling head disease or anything, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life being turned into a human pin cushion and guinea pig because no one can figure out how to cure me.

It seems deeply unfair that I would reach 38 and already know what it’s like to be really old.  Sick, unable to do what I want, always conscious of how much energy I don’t have to expend.  I should still be conquering the world, not trying to figure out how to survive it.

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