I have had headaches almost as long as I can remember. As a tween/teen/young adult, I saw general practitioners, neurologists, dentists, rheumatologists, and gynecologists. I got X-rays and MRIs and answered, ad nauseam, the question “on a scale of one to 10, how painful is your headache right now?” I was variously diagnosed (and then undiagnosed) with conditions ranging from TMJ to lupus. There was nothing to see or quantify objectively. I was treated with painkillers, antidepressants, and biofeedback therapy.
Nothing really worked. Things got a little better, life went on. Until I started having babies. With each successive pregnancy (and with every cycle in between), the headaches got worse and worse, and were enhanced with a heaping dose of nausea, lightheadedness, exhaustion, and heartburn (you know, the fun stuff that pregnant women get to enjoy anyway). My doctor smiled ruefully and handed me some T3s. Those don’t work, by the way. Neither did acupuncture.
Nowadays, my head hurts during PMS week and then any other time that routine deviates even slightly from the norm: a little too much work/not enough sleep; travel beyond a 100-mile radius from home; two glasses of wine instead of one. Today I’m at the tail end of a 10-or-so-day span, and that’s after I took one of those aforementioned T3s and slept for 11 hours straight. (Sleep usually is the only remedy.)
I’m not sure what the point of this whine is except to say that it’s hard to think of much else when I’m in the clutches of one of these headaches. I wasn’t going to write about it, on Captain Obvious grounds. Then I heard about this. Son of a …. scooped again. (And no, I haven’t tried Vicodin, only because I know that narcotics make me feel even crappier than I started out feeling.)
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Bummer about the headaches. I used to get frequent migraines, and then, they just stopped. No clue.
I’m sorry about the headaches! Yuck.
You should write yours too – Hollywood always has two of everything going at once – two meteor movies, two Alexander the Great movies. Why not two headache memoir movies? As marketers like to say, ‘it validates the market.’
Ouch. Sorry. Yuck.
Eloquent today, aren’t I? You get the point, though, right?: wish you didn’t have ‘em!
Bummer, I was just going to mention the vicodin. Good stuff she is!
Hope your headaches subside soon.
My SIL used to get them with her cycle all the time. She was diagnosed with diabetes and once she got her sugars under control she hasn’t had them since.
I’ve been wanting to write a post asking, So how many Advil do YOU take every day? Seems like everyone I know has a — what? an illness? — that can’t be cured, and won’t kill ya, but which can be debilitating. (I get dehydration-induced migraines. I live in the desert, so I am almost always slightly dehydrated. I have an array of Nalgene water bottles I take with me everywhere!)
I’m sorry you’re suffering. And I am pissed on your behalf that you got scooped on the book deal : )
I could have written your post. The only thing that worked for my headaches was going to a dark movie theater, which was an unfortunate luxury………..I did, however, stumble across something that helped them completely by accident; I blog about it here: http://www.cheapisexpensive.net/?p=112
Don’t know if it would help anyone else on the planet, but it’s worth a mention!
I’m so sorry! I hope you feel better. XO