Not a moment too soon

Finally. An ER visit that worked. Partly coincidental, but I ended up with doctors who trusted my word. I don't know what's up with the documentation, but suddenly UCLA hasn't been able to find the note on my file that tells them about my dosages. At the best of times I hear a hushed "Six milligrams of dilaudid? I've never given anyone that much IV at one time." from the nurse's station. This visit was the fourth since my sister came into town--just over a week. The previous visits involved too little meds, or spaced too far apart.

This time, the second doctor (it was a risk going in when I knew there was an upcoming shift change, but I couldn't wait much longer) cut me off. Didn't care about my history. Wanted to know what I thought would work for me, and that's what he gave me. Pure and simple.

That was yesterday. Today I've had twinges of a headache, but nothing serious. Acupuncture this morning, and a massage scheduled for noon tomorrow. This is so much better than it was two days ago.

"You have chosen not to be admitted; therefore you should resume your outpatient medications. Good luck with your migraine and merry christmas."

I didn't have the energy to be angry. This was the third ER visit well within a week, and no one seemed willing to do what usually works for me--giving me 8-10mg of IV dilaudid in reasonably short order (less than an hour) and sending me home to sleep. They spaced the dilaudid out, or wouldn't give that much, or just something.

So a 9 headache would go down to a 7, I'd go home, go to sleep, and wake up with an 8.

I didn't want to spend all of Christmas eve in the ER, but I was trying to avoid going back to work on Boxing Day looking like the recently dead.

So much for that plan. They offered to admit me and give me 2mg every 8 hours. And then they treated it like a bargaining table. And brought DHE infusions up again, despite them never having worked. I don't get it.

I have no idea what to do next. I've sent an email to my GP (out of office until the 3rd) asking for a referral outside of UCLA, to Cedars-Sinai, and left a voice message with my migraine specialist asking him why all the ER stuff went down how it did--he was paged for two of the visits, after all.

If the meds I used to get will kill me, someone needs to tell me. If this level of pain is something I'm supposed to keep functioning with, someone needs to look me in the eyes and say that to me.

[365days01]

 

Not a standard post by any means, and I'm a couple hospital/doctor's visits behind in my documentation. But in another internet life I just started a portrait-a-day project to try and jump start me back into photography.

Day 1? Migraine.

More photos as they apply.

But before that

There's a hospital entry that needs to be made, but I don't yet have the energy. Instead, an article that popped up in my RSS feeds, about migraines from the strangest source:

Migraines That Erase Color. It's not so much about that, but interestingly enough has a number of palettes following it that people submitted as migraine related.

Want to know how I hurt? Like this:



Want to know how to give me a migraine? This way:



And this is all too familiar: