Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain

Think about where you are right now in your life. Maybe think about your job, your relationships, friends and hobbies. Think about your health.


Now think about where you'll be in 5 years time. Whether you'll be in the same job, be with the same person. Whether your health will still be the same. 


My acupuncturist today talked about how, 5 years into the future, my headache won't be such an important part of my life. 


But how can he know that? How can anyone know that? How can I dare to hope that? 


When you have chronic pain, you forget what life was like before it. You forget what it feels like to move without things aching, to wake up and spring out of bed. You can't remember the last week you went without trying some sort of pain relief, whether it be conventional medicine or otherwise. It still feels like regardless of any improvements over the last year, I still cannot envision a day without my headache. Without at least once a day going "ooof that hurts" or "urgh that aches". 


But my headache HAS improved in the last year. I've gone from needing deep heat on everyday, to every so often. I take painkillers less than once a week, when it used to be a miracle if I went a few days without them. 


I still crack and rub and generally wish away the pain, but I can't deny that there's been some change.

But some change doesn't feel like anything when you've been putting up with this for 8 years. And when a general improvement is punctuated with moments so dark, so distressing and so deeply agonising that you can barely gasp for breath, it doesn't feel like anything has gotten better really. 


As I write this, my head aches and my neck is so sore. When you've read this, and you go back to whatever you were doing, my head will still ache, my neck will still be sore, and I will still be thinking about 5 years time. 


Maybe, in 5 years time, I will be free.

Hello headache, my old friend

For more than eight years now I've woken up every day and had a headache. Eight years is a long time for my paltry memory to reach back, so I can't remember if it would be there when I opened my eyes right at the beginning. But in the last 5 or 6 years, it generally has.For a few bleary moments, approximately a second and a half, when I first open my eyes, my mind adjusts to the situation, and the context in which I base myself. This context of young woman with constant headache. Often, unless I am instantly hit with an inescapable thud of pain, those few bleary moments are a few bleary moments of freedom. It's as though my headache is waiting in the wings, a Pantomime villain, and my temples, my neck, my skull, my nerves and blood vessels are all about to join in a chorus of "he's behind you!"

And then out from the wings he leaps, cackling evilly and all the pain arrives trailing behind him like small minions. The headache orchestrates the minions, directing them to where he needs them most - lying across my forehead like a wet flannel, resting in my temple like mini Buddhas, ohming a tingle of agony. 
All this in those few bleary moments. 

I thought my headache was getting better. But this morning, as with yesterday too, my pantomime villain was barely containing himself to the wings before I opened my eyes.

And at 2am he snuck his new favourite pal in too: hello nausea, you sneaky bastard. I thought I'd had enough of you. 

When my alarm went at 7am, they were both there. Picnicking. Dining out on my nerves and blood vessels and pushing on certain bits and pressing on others. Feeling nausea lying in my throat; my headache lolling around above my eyebrows.

Dine away, villain. Push and press away. The context into which I awake everyday might include you, but it isn't solely about you. I am more than my pain. Good always defeats evil. Go back to the shadows with a boo and a hiss. You won't be missed. 

Deserving

At the first consultation of a new treatment Tuesday, after turning me into a human pin-cushion and hearing my life story, the acupuncturist said he didn't believe there was anything psychological to my headache. The solid mass that pretends to be my muscles gives him the hint that it's physiological. 

But at last weekend's hypnotherapy session I was asked about focusing on why my headache started. I spoke about how I often feel that I did something to cause this headache. The medication overuse, stress and anxiety, going on too many roller coasters. 

When you walk into a room for a Chiropractic appointment with someone who is not your usual chiropractor and they say that you're giving yourself mini-whiplash every time you flick your fringe out of your eyes and that's probably the cause of all your problems, you're inclined to believe them. They are the expert after all.

Except I didn't have a fringe when my headache started. Sure my mini-whiplash probably doesn't help, but it didn't cause my headache in the first place.

And the cause, the why my headache started, is likely to always be a mystery. Yes it could have been the stress of moving schools. Yes it could have been the roller coasters. 

Yes it could have been the medication overuse. And whilst I know that biologically medication overuse comes from taking pain killers too often, and not from huge quantities in one sitting, there is part of me that will always think I am to blame for this headache because of the things I have done, and because of the pain I have caused. It's karma. Except I can't cross it off a list like Earl. 

Trance on Saturday focused on emotions, and how they can cause pain. And how pain can manifest itself as an emotion. 

When I try to describe how my headache makes me feel, it's along the lines of frustrated, powerless. When I try to describe how my headache feels, if it were emotion, it would usually be anger. An anger that assaults my muscles, my skeleton, my senses, my organs. An anger that courses its way through my veins, pools in the temples, strikes behind the eyes, lies at the base of my skull, coiled like a snake waiting to spot its prey. 

When treatments don't work, I usually think it's because I haven't tried hard enough to make it work. When my head gets worse it is easy to point to the things I'm doing wrong, and not the things I'm doing right. The eating pastries as a snack, not the 2 litres of water I drink every day. The times I sit on my Xbox for hours not the runs I go for, the walking I do or the daily stretches. 

We only have one life, and sometimes it can be too short. I need to let go of this feeling that I did something in this life or lives past that mean I deserve this pain. I need to focus on making the best of the life I have, and make sure that I get the right balance to enjoy the life I deserve. 

The Problem With No Cure?

I haven't blogged here for a while not because my head has been good, but because I get so bored about talking about my headache, and I imagine so many people get tired of hearing about it.

What I would really like is a clean slate. For someone to take all my muscles out and replace them with new ones. To give me fresh blood vessels. To straighten out or curve up my spine so that's normal again. 

How much difference can you make to damaged goods? 

I can't see a future with this headache. Or is that my headache can't see a future with me? 

Waking Nightmare (aka 2nd migraine in 10 days)

I can't stress to you how much I know I could be worse off. 

But headaches, they affect your mind, and your perspective. 

Even as I cried in my dad's arms last night, there was a guy on the news who had been on the organ donor list for years. He's really sick. He's worse off.

I'm not dying, but sometimes it feels like I am. And sometimes it feels like it would be better if I did. 

Headaches are underestimated. You can't see them. If you don't suffer from headaches you can't understand the pain. If you've never experienced a migraine, then be grateful and pray you never do. 

The pain that can sometimes be a waking nightmare. A pain that stops you from moving, because every movement feels like the searing of flesh. 

It encourages a state of mind where nothing exists but the pain. Where you can't get to sleep because it hurts. Where you wake up early from the pain. Where you could be eating cat food for all you know, because your taste is dulled and the repetitive chewing motion you're putting yourself through feels like it'll go on forever. You're not in control of it, you're on autopilot. 

This headache, the constant dull tension headache and the throbbing migraines alike, they rob me of my control. Control over my movements, my actions. Control of my head. 

And especially control over who I am.

I emerge from my dark bedroom and my sick day still in pain. The remnants of yesterday's migraine linger on. 

And I soldier on. 8 years of pain. 

But I think I might be beaten. 

There's only so much a person can take.

Sour Patch

I have a spot on my neck, at the base of my skull, that gives me a lot of grief. 

From now on I'm going to call it my sour patch.

It hurts. It aches. It burns. It stings. It weighs me down. It feels like a pool of poison that spreads through the veins into my head. 

I woke up with a strong pain in this sour patch yesterday morning, and I knew it would be a bad day.

And it was. It was unpleasant, but anything that isn't a migraine I'm getting better disposed to cope with.

But I find my commitment to my treatment suffers when my head is worse. I stretch less. I'm more inclined to try and crack out the pain. And cracking my neck (and back and knuckles) is something I've been banned from doing. 
But still do. And I do it especially when I have a bad head because I feel like surely cracking that horrible area will release the tension and therefore the pain.

It doesn't work like that. I know it doesn't work like that.

I really wish it did.

But instead, I carry on. I try to remember to do my stretches and my breathing. 

And I'll try to remember not to crack.

And the most important thing, and the hardest thing to remember when you have a bad headache, like yesterday or like Friday's migraine, is that not every day is like this. Not everyday is this bad. Yes I still have a headache today, but it's a different headache. It's like tomorrow won't be as bad. 

Unless of course I'm brewing a menstrual migraine. Then it'll be 3 days til tomorrow won't be as bad.

Wearing Sunglasses Inside

Because lights make you feel sick.

And every noise is a sonic boom.

And you feel like your brain is burning up inside. 

No, that doesn't even begin to describe it. Is there ever any way to describe hell?