Yeah, well, I do

She Still Will Not Complain

Another woman who calls her migraines a friend--but at least she seems to do it in a smack-talking sort of a way.

she now gets by with 16 prescription medications, 9 over the counter pills, and weekly shots at the Diamond Headache Clinic of dolophine (Methadone) for pain and promethazine (Phenergan) for nausea. On the afternoon I saw her, she described the sharp headache behind her left eye as about average for her — a “6″ (10 being the worst). But because of the dramatic weather changes outside, she rated her second, more diffuse, headache — which emerged in 2001 on the back of her head and down her neck — as higher-than-average, a “7”).

Ha! I'm lucky--I don't take as much medication as she does, and my hospital visits aren't as regimented, but it sure looks familiar. Not to mention the simultaneous headaches. I haven't tied mine to the weather yet, though.

All in all, she sounds like a tough old broad--tougher than I am, for ill or not.

Sometimes not looking like you're in pain isn't about being tough or strong--sometimes it's simply about not wanting to go into any sort of detail.

Finger licking good

I think I'm going to attack diet.

It might seem weird that it's only coming up now, but it's not, really. I've made adjustments to my diet but they weren't arcane in any way, or requiring of any detective work to suss out. I can get a migraine from the Nutrasweet in a stick of gum before it loses its flavour, or be sunk by the nitrites in a sausage before finishing the dog. Nice and simple, easily avoided.

What if there's more? In stuff I mind giving up, or which is kinda hard to ignore?

So I'm going to go terribly LA and do a cleanse, and then embark upon a couple weeks of a restricted diet and see what happens.

Thing is, my last cleanse had me incredibly pissy and migrainey by day 2...I have to make sure I'm not running that risk again. So I'll probably opt for something embarassingly chi-chi and expensive in terms of a cleanse, and then buy out half of Wholefoods for my restricted diet afterwards.

As for restrictions--where to start? Wheat, I think. Let me see if I can do without that a while.

"Ictal"

I learnt a new word today.

Medical Dictionary: ictal
(ĭk'təl)
adj.

Relating to or caused by a stroke or seizure.

Really, I was just looking to know what interictally means--it pops up a lot in the articles Google Alerts throw at me, and it seemed the simplest of the new words.

I don't read all of these articles, and I certainly don't read them all to understand, since they're at different levels of medical intricacy. But once upon a time I had a brain, and maybe I can pretend right now.

Why can I pretend? I think I may be in a moment of stasis. I don't want to shout it from any rooftops, since it's only been a few days. But since my ER visit on the 14th and the lowering of my morphine dose to 30mg/8 hrs, the world seems clearer and less painful. I've been able to stave off every migraine with Stadol, although its side effects aren't fun. Still, I can take it and go to bed, and all's well when I wake up.

I don't know if this is it. I'm on Namenda, Elavil, Depakote, Lyrica, and Sansert as well as the morphine and various nutritional supplements. It's like soup in there. I tremble, I tire easily, I'm light-headed and I'm way too close to sleep at every moment. But it's a lot better than a week ago.

I have to say, Siri Hustvedt blogging at the NY Times is more sensible than the last one I linked to. I think she's a bit whack when she ascribes some marginal positivity to the affliction by considering them as a regulating force in her life, preventing her from overdoing and overfeeling.

I'm so far from over- right now, it's not funny. I just want to do, and to feel.

Morphine No More

I'm quitting morphine today. In the two weeks during which I haven't posted I've been floating on a cloud of side effects: the continual urge to sleep which bested me more than once when it shouldn't have, the impaired memory, the loss of hand/eye coordination, and the poor balance.

Oh, and about a migraine a day.

Even if it had cleared me of migraines totally, if these are the side effects I'm going to have forever, it's not a solution.

I asked my GP if I could just go cold turkey, since I'm eager to get it out of my system. He's pretty adamant that I should not, so I'll be going in to get tapering-down prescriptions from him as well.

Also started taking Sansert in this hiatus. The timing kinda coincided with the pronounced edema in my legs (which has extended to my hands as of this morning). Is there a correlation? We shall see. At least it's not a blood clot. Blood clots are bad things, and worse things for me what with that hole in my heart.