Category Archives: Migraine

grief, health, Migraine

Pin Cushion

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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.

health, Hysterectomy, Just me, Just me, Migraine

The wall.

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It’s been nine months since the final surgery that removed my uterus and remaining ovary.  I have been getting more active, more energetic, better.  Sometimes better enough to forget that it’s only been nine months.  Often, better enough to forget that my doctor told me it would be, at minimum, a year before I felt completely better.

So I get busy. I work, I work out, I play with the kids, I see people, and the whole time I am thinking “Woo hoo! I am getting better!” I feel energetic and great!  Even with migraines I feel miles above where I used to be.

Then I run smack into the wall.  BAM!

Yesterday I hit the wall after I saw the doc for a nerve block for my migraines.  I got home, blearily handled the kiddos while I waited for their dad, and then went to lie down because I could not keep my eyes open.  I am not exaggerating.  I could not stay awake any longer.  I hit the bed and I slept for three and a half hours.  Then I ate something, went back to bed, and slept ten.  I am exhausted and distracted today, unable to focus for very long on much of consequence.  My energy level is super low.

This has happened before.  It’s like I have used up all my spoons, and have to recharge before I get any more.  It’s not unusual, in fact I should expect it, but I never do.  I did when I was super sick, when I had to spend all my energy just not screaming at the kids or Lee or crying all the time because I hurt too much to be a human being much less a wife and parent.  Now that I am much better I forget how much farther I have to go.  I get greedy and impatient with myself, eager to return to the levels of energy I had before all this madness started.  Eager to leave behind the woman who watched the world rush around her while she lived in a quiet little room, too hurt to participate.

Unfortunately, the wall has no pity.  It is relentless.  I run into it and there is no running past it, no getting around it, no breaking through.  All there is are days of sleep, rest, and the feeling that I can’t do anything.   The feeling that I am right back in that room.  The wall will not let me by until I have taken the space and time I need to recover.

So I dial it back.  I spend less energy.  I try to regroup and build myself back up.  I hope this time I will have more energy than last, that I will be that much closer to healed.

That this time I will finally get completely out of that room.

health, Migraine

Don’t worry, I don’t know how I do it either.

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Sometimes when people find out I have been living with chronic pain, they say “I don’t know how you do it.”

I want to tell them “Don’t worry, I don’t know either.”

I don’t have some secret method of handling pain that makes it less painful for me than it does for you, I don’t have some super power that makes me better at dealing with it.  I basically just get up each day and live, which considering the opposite choice, is one of the most basic decisions a person can make.

I suppose I could say something inspiring about how I get through due to prayer or meditation, that the relationships I have sustain me, that my children keep me going.  All those things are true, but they aren’t true in the simplistic way people seem to want them to be.  I get up because I have to.  I keep going because to stop is to die.

I am not saintly about it.  I cry and bitch and whine and moan. I complain about how bloody unfair it all is.  I feel selfish for complaining and then angry that I feel selfish.  I am certain most of my friends are tired of hearing me bitch and so I withdraw inside myself (or now, here.) I give up regularly.  All the time.  Several times a day.  I can’t express how much I wish I had some magical mechanism I could employ that would turn me into a strong, stoic chronic pain sufferer who inspires everyone to shoulder their burdens more willingly.

I think if I had such a mechanism, I would want to meet that me and ask her how she does it.