A new trip to the hospital

I am on day 15 of having the same migraine I have been calling my regular doctor and also trying to make an appointment with a neurologist. My regular doctor prescribed pain killers and told me that if *I* was worried that I should go to the ER. I was very frustrated by this... How the heck am I supposed to know if its a dangerous situation? I honestly expect to be told what to do by the experts I have trusted my care to. I suspect that due to our litigious society and costs of insurance they have a strict set of rules on how to dole out advice.

It's been many years since I have gone to the emergency room due to headaches. I know the drill, they run me through a cat scan, give me some drugs and tell me I'm not going to die and thats it... But with this most recent change in the pain and duration, and with the stress that it seemed to be causing myself and my wife I decided to go and make sure that nothing was dangerously wrong inside my head.

It was mostly a positive experience, the emergency room was not very busy and all the staff seemed concerned, professional and attentive. It was the first cat scan have had in maybe ten years and as expected, it showed no dangerous growths or problems. I have sort of mixed feelings about this however, on the one hand it's wonderful to have my mind put at ease that I don't have a tumor or some other situation, but on the other hand it's frustrating to think that I can have a 14 day long constant headache that has no detectable cause. A small part of me just wants them to find something... something that can be fixed, repaired, taken care of.

It was interesting that Stuart Black was the nurologist that they instructed me to follow up with and that he was this same doctor that I recently have been trying to get an appointment with but was booked up for over year. When my wife called for the follow-up they seemed disinterested in my case and repeated the line that he would not be able to see me anytime in the foreseeable future.

I'm not really sure what the hell the follow-up was for and why I was directed to speak to him if he in fact had no time for a follow up with me. Once again the structure of the medical business confounds and confuses me. I do have an appointment in three weeks with an associate of his and I'm assuming that its someone who has access to the same resources and knowledge he does, so I am hopeful that this new doctor may have some good news for me although honestly I think I am just going through the motions. I don't want drugs that ease the pain at the expense of my already limited cognitive ability and energy... I want a reason, I want a cause and I want it to get fixed.

Unrealilistic goals I guess.

10 days? 11? whos counting...

I still have the headache... Each day it seemed to feel a little less painful and for a few hours yesterday I could still feel it but it felt like it might be finally leaving, but then I fell asleep downstairs and when I awoke at around 3:30 It was awful. I felt like all of me was gone... I was a simpering weird little half human. I couldn't really wake up and I couldn't fall completely asleep. I crawled up to bed and tried to relax but with all my twitching and moaning I eventually woke up my wife and she started rubbing my head. I cant really explain how good the contact felt the "simpering half human" felt very alone and confused... when I say I "feel dumb" when I get headaches I literally mean I feel like I lose cognitive ability. It is very frightening to me.

My wife must really love me... I cant imagine what dealing with me when I am really "out of it" must be like.

This morning I woke up felling like 2 big guys had beat the living crap outa me. Looks like it wont be over as soon as I had hoped.

Still have the migraine

I know it sounds weird to say but I almost miss the familiar pain of my clusters which are at the moment, mostly absent. They can turn me into a screaming dysfunctional wreck but at least they usually stop for a few hours between attacks leaving me feeling mostly normal...

Its funny just how different the 2 kinds of headache feel from each other. Like 2 cousins that live on opposite sides of my head. One has a hammer and the other has a monkey wrench and they take turns beating me up like some twisted nintendo game... "Hey Mario! this aside she is tenderized its your turn!" "OK Luigi! I'll start over here now!"

A weeks worth of pain crammed into an hour and a half cluster attack every day or a headache that lasts for days and days on end? Lucky me I don't have to choose, I get to experience both....

3 day long strange feeling migraine

I'm a little freaked out at the moment, a few weeks back I started getting migraines that would last for several hours. I was getting them almost every day and then around five days ago they seem to to stop and I had a couple of days off from them.

Well, when they returned, it was in a bad way. I have had a headache now for about three days solid. The odd thing about it other than the extended duration is that it feels weird not just in the way that a migraine feels different from a cluster, but this seems to feel strange to me even for a migraine. It feels like something inside my head is bruised. Directly find my left eye moving up over my forehead and back across my scalp towards the center of the back of my head is a strip of sensitive skin and throbbing pain.

I know you're not supposed to have a headache for this long and I think the only reason I have tolerated it he is that I'm so used to having headaches that it's hard for me to consider that it might mean something more. I am afraid to go to sleep right now.

I'm definitely calling the doctor tomorrow...

Finding an all-night drugstore isn't easy

Last night Doc and I spent nearly an hour driving around after midnight attempting to find a drugstore that was still open. We were looking for some sort of over-the-counter medication for his raging migraine.

Yes, he's now getting migraines in addition to clusters, sometimes at the same time. It's unbelievably sucky. Seriously, can the man be in any more pain? Pain piled on top of pain on top of pain.

I would not let him drive himself around at the level of hurting he was at, so I pulled on some pants and my glasses and hopped in the driver's seat. We went to six places before we found one that was open (note to self: Remember, CVS at Walnut Hill and 75 is open 24 hours).

Next task: to find out if Excedrin really IS "the headache medicine."

Who is in my glass?

Yesterday evening I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I was taken aback for a moment at the  reflection that stared back at me. I appeared youthful and happy and I have to admit that it seemed odd. I am so used to seeing myself with the furrowed brow, sunken half shut eyes, and slumping posture the come along with headaches that the image of myself when I feel pretty good seems to be the foreign one.

It occurred to me that one of the reasons I have been feeling so old recently is that I so rarely se myself when I'm not in pain.