By the way, I’ve gained 35 pounds in the past year. Have a nice day, everybody!

.

.

.

Oh, you want me to say something else about this? All right.

After spending most of 2008 in pain, I began to bottom out in September, eventually started yelling at my readers, and went on anti-depressants because life was a meaningless pit of shit with no drain. I also stopped exercising and started eating more, like those chocolate covered nuts from Fresh Market and the Dove ice cream pints with a solid layer of chocolate on top and an entire Papa John’s pizza and a box of breadsticks on Oscar night.

I didn’t mention any of this because 1) Duh, it sucks to talk about and 2) The times I did start to write about it I had to mention my headache and I wasn’t going to do that again, so I never hit “Publish.”

Regardless of your views on obesity and what a healthy weight is, gaining a pound a week for months on end is not a good thing unless you’re [...]

• Continue reading "So, about my weight"

Last month I was standing in line at Kroger, just like I’ve spent days of my life standing in line at Kroger. I was tired, I didn’t want to be there, and the lady in front of me was paying with a check.

As I shifted my weight from foot to foot, I was surprised, not by Jessica Simpson’s weight gain flashed on the tabloid covers, but by how I felt. My headache isn’t that bad right now. Weird. The same constant pressure was in my skull as it has been 24 hours a day since February 2008. Normally a long line at the grocery store and a bad mood would make it scream, but it was just holding steady at its normal background hum.

The headache clinic I have been going to since January (and not blogging about for my sanity and yours) makes me keep a headache diary. I record the level of my headache in the morning, noon, evening and night. They use a 1-5 scale where the numbers mean:

1 – Low level headache [...]

• Continue reading "A different kind of before and after"

As many of you know, I have had a constant headache for over a year. After contacting countless doctors, healers, and Internet crackpots, I have finally discovered the cause of my headache!

As I was lying in bed last night, the normal tension in my head became particularly intense. I tossed and turned as the pain became unbearable. I got out of bed to plod to the bathroom when suddenly I fell to the floor in agony and heard a loud popping sound. I blacked out, but when I regained consciousness, lying there on my chest was…a rare Portuguese tree frog!

“Hello, my name is Bob,” he said in Portuguese, a language I speak fluently after my year abroad as a Brazilian tango instructor. “Sorry to have been such a pain this past year,” Bob said. He then explained that he had dropped onto my head when he was only a little seedling, and had spent the past year incubating in my nasal passages until he was ready to spring forth out of my head like Athena, [...]

• Continue reading "The cause of my headache revealed!"

Every year the National Institutes of Health gives money to researchers so they can put on their lab coats and mix up strange concoctions and cure us of all disease. (And genetically engineer unicorns, perhaps?) The Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy sent out an action alert today asking that people sign an easy-to-email form letter to their Congressional representatives which asks for more money for headache research. So, if you have the time and the inclination and currently live in the US, please go beg Congress for money on my behalf. Then maybe a researcher will get some cash which will allow them to run the experiments that one day will figure out what the fuck is wrong with my head. Thanks!

If you live outside the US, your concern is appreciated, however since you don’t get to vote here or pay taxes here, Congress doesn’t care what you think. You may as well write them and request research into how to make more pink dolphins.

• Continue reading "Beg the government for money on my behalf, will you?"

When I walked into the room, I immediately categorized everyone who was sitting and waiting for the lecture to start into two groups – bright young medical students and old people in pain. I could have been wrong since I myself was a young person in pain, but regardless, as I looked into the audience I thought, “My people! I’ve found my people! Let’s turn off the lights and moan together!”

I attended a free seminar last Wednesday at the IUPUI student center called “Myths and Facts of Pain: Is it all in your head?” that is part of the IU Mini Medical School 2009. I heard about the series on a local radio show, Sound Medicine, after they did a segment about chronic pain. The lecture was free, and I work downtown anyway, so I decided to stop by. Plus, they had free snacks! The caterers were even considerate and included a veggie tray along with the brownies and cookies, a true rarity in modern society.

The first speaker was Dr. Palmer MacKie, Assistant Professor of [...]

• Continue reading "A lecture in pain"