The Two-Week Headache
As of today, I have had a headache for two weeks. I've come to the conclusion that 2015 is just a BAD health year for me. Long story short, I started getting a migraine/headache on Thursday afternoon that persisted into Friday. My mom and brother were driving down Friday night, so I left them a key outside so I could knock out earlyish and try to sleep off the headache. I figured I should be mostly better by Saturday, but no, it was still lingering. Sunday, I woke up feeling good actually, but by mid-day I was feeling more off and was hit by a bout of anxiety I couldn't shake. The headache obviously persisted into the following week to the point where I made an appointment with a doctor who was anything but helpful. He basically asked me if I were looking for a specific prescription, something my friends had tried that had worked well for them? I told him that I'd done some research, and it looked like some of the commonly prescribed migraine medications like Imitrex, I wouldn't be able to take because of my heart condition. After that realization, he confirmed that that would rule out that whole class of drugs, so he did some research to find something that might help. He ended up prescribing me promethazine to help with nausea and butalbital/acetaminophen/caffeine that he described as very addictive and to only take for the headaches that aren't responding to other treatment. After the two Excedrin I took did nothing, I tried one each of the new meds that night to no avail.
Last Saturday, I detoxed and took no medication, and just one super pill on Sunday. But I would still feel the pain breaking through. Thankfully, it's not horribly debilitating - I've been able to make it to work everyday, although I have had to leave early a few days and I did put in a work order for maintenance to remove some of the light bulbs in my office, because the glaring fluorescent lights weren't exactly helping. It's one of the strangest headaches I've ever had in that it comes in waves. I spent some time tracking it on Sunday and over the last few days. On average, I'll have a headache of varying intensity for 3-5 minutes and then have a span of twice as long (7-12 minutes) where I feel okay. Sometimes there's nausea, and sometimes the headache feels like a full-blown migraine, but I keep trying to reassure myself that it will pass.
But it's like I've lost two weeks of my life, two weeks where I've just felt drained with no enthusiasm for life. That means my family came down for their first visit this year, and I wasn't able to fully enjoy it. Their visit coincided with Pi Day, so we went out early to celebrate at Pi Pizzeria.
I was worried the weather was going to be awful and rainy all weekend, but we actually lucked out and it turned out to be gorgeous. We stopped at Mt. Airy for some fresh air and some time to play at the park. :)
Sadly, this also means that we sacrificed our anniversary weekend to this awful headache. :(
The soonest I could get an appointment with a neurologist wasn't until April 13, so I guess it's just a matter of making it till then, keeping myself distracted and not letting it drag me too far down, and really hoping that I don't have a headache for the next 2.5 weeks. :(
Last Saturday, I detoxed and took no medication, and just one super pill on Sunday. But I would still feel the pain breaking through. Thankfully, it's not horribly debilitating - I've been able to make it to work everyday, although I have had to leave early a few days and I did put in a work order for maintenance to remove some of the light bulbs in my office, because the glaring fluorescent lights weren't exactly helping. It's one of the strangest headaches I've ever had in that it comes in waves. I spent some time tracking it on Sunday and over the last few days. On average, I'll have a headache of varying intensity for 3-5 minutes and then have a span of twice as long (7-12 minutes) where I feel okay. Sometimes there's nausea, and sometimes the headache feels like a full-blown migraine, but I keep trying to reassure myself that it will pass.
But it's like I've lost two weeks of my life, two weeks where I've just felt drained with no enthusiasm for life. That means my family came down for their first visit this year, and I wasn't able to fully enjoy it. Their visit coincided with Pi Day, so we went out early to celebrate at Pi Pizzeria.
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