For those of you concerned about my foot pain saga (there must be at least one of you, right, Mom?), I saw the podiatrist today. She felt up my feet, took some x-rays and told me I most likely have tendonitis and I most definitely have flat feet.

I knew I had a flat chest, but the flat feet thing is new to me. Can we complete the trifecta and get me a flat stomach, too? I’m not sure if I’ve always had flat feet or if my morbid obesity helped flatten them or if it’s a new thing unrelated to that. Regardless, I am no longer supposed to walk barefoot. Anywhere. Even if I’m just shuffling around the house I need to have sandals with a good arch support. She recommended some brands for that.

She also sprayed my foot with glue and taped it. I’m supposed to keep the tape on for the next five days and see if it helps with the pain, and if so that means an orthotic or just the shoe change should probably help cure it. (So far it does seem to help, so that bodes well.) The glue will help the tape stay on even in the shower, though now I’m wondering if I’m supposed to wear shoes in the tub too. That gives me flashbacks to my college days and how grateful I was that I couldn’t see anything in the shower stall because of my poor vision.

I’m also supposed to take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) every day (like ibuprofen) since tendonitis is basically an inflammation of the tendon. This presents an interesting dilemma because every single one of my headache doctors agrees that you should not take more than 2-3 doses of anti-inflammatory medication a week or else you will get a rebound headache. So, what do I do here? Do I take NSAIDs daily for my foot and put up with the headache? Or do I only take a moderate amount of NSAIDs, severely limiting the anti-inflammatory effects of the medication, and put up with a longer stretch of foot pain? It is a conundrum. I probably should have asked the doctor about this, shouldn’t I have? Maybe we should just cut the damn foot off and give me a robotic replacement with a can-opener attachment and increased ass-kicking functionality.

I’m supposed to go back to the doctor in three weeks to see how things are progressing. I hope changing my footwear solves the problem. If not, maybe I’ll just learn to walk on my hands.

I was so distracted by my cold yesterday, that I forgot to mention I also have an intermittent toothache, all in addition to that constant headache I’ve had for almost two years. (Our anniversary is only 6 days away!) Anyway, I’m not dead yet, but the toothache rather annoys me on a philosophical level, which my other aches and pains have failed to do. The toothache only arrived after I had a decaying filling replaced three weeks ago, which I only did because I thought it would prevent a toothache. Irony, I hate you.

The tooth only hurts when cold water or hot coffee gets on it. Then it will ache for 20-60 minutes while I think, “Root canal, root canal, I really want a root canal.” Which just serves as proof that the pain drives me temporarily insane. The rest of the time it’s perfectly fine and I forget it’s even a problem. I’ve been back to the dentist twice now and he hammered on it and blew cold air and cold water on it and x-rayed it and can’t find anything wrong with the filling itself. He said the nerve could still be irritated from the drilling, and that sometimes you have to give fillings time to adjust. He gave me toothpaste for sensitive teeth and told me if the tooth starts aching without any stimulus or wakes me up at night, I should see an endodontist for a root canal.

I did some Googling and it seems like hundreds of other people have had the same problem before, particularly with composite fillings, which are the white fillings shaded to match your teeth, not the metal ones. I’m torn about what to do. I suspect if I wait it out for another month or two, the pain will probably subside because that’s what happened when I got a crown last year. However, when a splash of hot tea or cold soda gets on that molar, OMG, I want to rip out the tooth myself with a pair of needle-nose pliers. I have dental insurance, but it doesn’t cover the full price of a root canal, so…I dunno. I suppose I’ll wait it out for now and keep my fingers crossed.

This experience has made me want to say two things. First, please floss! I know, it’s a pain, but it’s more painful not to. Seriously. You do not know what pain and suffering I could have saved myself simply by flossing and brushing more in my youth. Fillings don’t last a lifetime, and I’ve got over a dozen of them that I’ll be maintaining for the next half century or so. Secondly, what are your dental horror stories? I think the pain I’m in might be lessened if I knew that other people have suffered more than I have. Misery loves company, and I’m throwing a party. Come on in!

.

.

.

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 recovering from anorexia. I kept weighing in everyday and marked it on my calendar, as depressing as that was, but I was depressed anyway, so who could tell the difference? I would tell myself, “This really needs to stop,” but then my pain would say, “LOOK AT ME!!” and punch me in the face and I’d add another ice cream pint to the bill.

Thankfully, the medications have tuned down the pain level so it does not envelope my whole life anymore. I can drive past the Fresh Market, think of the vanilla chocolate covered crunch bin, and keep on driving without remorse. Which just shows it’s easier to deal with an addiction when you are not facing a trigger 24 hours a day. As a result, I’ve been maintaining my weight for the last few months and haven’t had to buy any new pants since December.

You are free to think what you want about all this. You can say it is proof that people cannot lose weight and keep it off. You can say it shows I am a human being and you like me even more because of it. You can say I got what I deserved for writing a blog and a book about weight loss and how happy I was. You can say you are proud that I am talking about it and you think I’m inspirational because of it. All I think it proves is that my head hurt and I needed the ice cream.

I know I should be horribly devastated by this, that I should be weeping that my weight starts with the number two, that I am such a horrible disappointment to everyone who called me an inspiration and blah, blah, blah, but really? Honestly? I’m fine. It is not the worst thing to happen to me. A chronic headache that would not go away for over a year is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and if someone said I had to gain another 20 pounds to make the headache go away completely I would say, “Hand me the Ho-Ho’s!”

You know all that stuff I said in my blog and my book about how my life had changed, but it wasn’t just because of my weight? The stuff I said about how it was doing things I was proud of and liking myself as a person? You know, all that bullshit thin people say when they’re not fat anymore? Well, what do you know? It’s true! I actually meant it! I am as full of myself as ever, but even more so because there’s more to be full of! I am flying off to Europe on two month’s notice even if I am up two jean sizes. I am running a blog and doing freelance design work on the side and earning book royalties like a real business woman. I am doing other stuff that I am proud of but can’t talk about on the blog because it’s private. Feel free to call me an arrogant narcissist in denial. I’ll call you back collect from Paris!

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah this week, and I tried very hard to avoid the show, but even though I don’t have cable I still saw a dozen ads for it and saw clips of it on of the nightly entertainment news magazines. Kirstie Alley is an American actress who got fat a few years ago, lost a lot of weight as the Jenny Craig spokeswoman, appeared in a bikini on Oprah, and then got fat again. She was on the show talking about all this and all I could think while watching the clips were, “I do not give a shit.” If Kirstie Alley wants to sit at home and eat nothing but Twinkies, more power to her. And if Kirstie Alley wants to set up a home gym in her dining room and pose on the cover of health magazines, more power to her. Neither situation makes her better or worse as a human being, it just means she’s making different life choices, and they’re her choices to make, so could everyone get over it already? It shouldn’t have to be “brave” to tell people that working out sucks and you like chocolate. It just makes you human. It shouldn’t be a story to be discussed on multiple news outlets, not when we could be talking about how cute the Obama’s new dog is.

All that said, Kirstie Alley seemed pissed that she hadn’t been taking care of herself, which brings up this question:

“But PQ, what about your health? Aren’t you concerned about your health?”

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Sorry, give me a minute to – ha, ha, ha! In the past year I’ve had two MRI’s, two CTs, and more blood tests than I can count. My blood pressure has been taken. My pulse has been counted. Literally dozens of medical professionals have examined me and all they can do is rave over how healthy I am. They say, “PastaQueen, you are a paradigm of good health!” and I tell them, “No, I’m not!” and then I go see another doctor and the cycle continues. So please, do not stare at your bedroom ceiling at night worried about my health.

That said, I am not 100% comfortable with my weight gain. I still get called to do book-related interviews from time to time and if I have to meet someone in person I worry if they will think I’m too fat to do a story about my book. No one has said anything to me, but I’m not sure if that’s because their mommas taught them manners or if they just look at the “before” photo like I do and think, “Yeah, she’s lost a lot of weight.” I’m still down 160 pounds, which is an entire person, which is another reason I’m not weeping into a spinach salad right now. It all depends on your perspective

Now that my headache is momentarily contained, I’ve been eating better and I’ve started walking during my lunch breaks. I’m getting back into it and I wouldn’t mind dropping 20 pounds. But…weight loss is not the most important thing in my life. It certainly was the most important thing in my life for the first two years when I was dropping dress sizes every few months. When I told people, “I want to be thin,” what I was really saying was, “I want to lead the life I want to live.” Losing all the weight has made me confident and taught me to believe in myself and has allowed me to live my life in ways that I never could before, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m living my life. That has less to do with being fat or thin than most people think.

I still weigh every day. I’m still mindful of what I eat. I still think, “I need to exercise today” and sometimes I do. But even if I weren’t doing those things, I would still be me and like I said in my book, the fat PastaQueen was a funny, kind, person too. I am still me no matter how inflated or deflated my fat cells are and I’d hope you guys will remember that about yourselves too.

You can judge me as you will, fat or thin or somewhere in between. If I got to change one thing about my body I’d fix my headaches first, give myself normal feet second, and attend to the weight thing third, because it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m so tired of writing about my body, but I’ve written about my weight so much in this place I felt an obligation to put it out there. And hey, how cute is the Obama’s new dog?

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 which enters awareness only at times when attention is devoted to it

2 – Headache pain level that can be ignored at times

3 – Painful headache, but can continue to function

4 – Very severe headache, concentration difficult by can perform tasks of an undemanding nature

5 – Intense, incapacitating headache.

When I started keeping the diary my days ranged from 2 to 4, most days being 3, the really bad days being 4, and the occasional “good” day where I had a 2. My neurologist adjusted my meds in January and there were no results. He adjusted it again in February and slowly I started to have mostly 2′s. Just as I was gaining hope of having a, you know, LIFE, again, my brain ratcheted back up to a 4 for a whole day, making me want to flush my seemingly worthless pills down the toilet. Then I went back to 2′s most of the time, except for a rainy day, which knocked me back up to a 3.

So the point of me spewing out more numbers than a bingo caller is this – my headache is currently dampened. It’s not gone. I still have pain. But I can do stuff now. I can come home and work on my blog without wanting to stab my eyes out with a ballpoint pen. I can go shopping on the weekends and not collapse on the couch in amazement that I’ve completed my tasks. When I drive to work, I do not spend 80% of my drive thinking about my headache and why did this happen and will anyone be able to fix me and oh my god when will this pain end? I think about what podcasts I should download and should I renew my lease and how much should I spend on my spring wardrobe and hey, I haven’t been thinking about my headache, how weird!

Out it goes, not with a bang, but a whimper. It slowly retreats, but does not completely give up ground. And gradually I have begun to get my life back, piece by piece, gluing it back together like that shattered oatmeal bowl that got broken in the mail.

I have been very hesitant to mention any of this for three reasons. First, I didn’t want to jinx myself. I’d hate to tell y’all I felt better and then get a level 4 headache the next day. Second, the pills could stop working at any time. For six years prior to the start of all this I took a pill everyday and it kept the headache away. Then it stopped working. Kapoot! And that could happen again. I am not cured. They still cannot tell me why I have this ridiculous, meaningless pain in my brain. Third, I made a vow to NEVER mention the headache on the blog again. I didn’t even mention the fact that I’d decided not to mention it because that would require me to mention it. Occasionally I have gotten emails that said, “Hey, you haven’t mentioned the headache lately. Are you better?” No, I was not better, I simply learned life was better if we didn’t bring it up anymore. But, I’ve been mostly all right for about a month now, so I’m going to take the risk and announce it publicly. I’ll cross my fingers that posting this won’t make the headache worse.

And since I know you will ask, the answer is 75mg of Nortriptyline and 40mg of Nadolol taken once at bedtime. My abortive of choice is 550mg of Anaprox, which is essentially industrial strength Aleve. If anyone has a time machine, please write down that information, travel back in time to February 17th, 2008 and slip it into my PO Box, will you? It will save me from having the WORST YEAR OF MY LIFE.

Yeah, sure, I’ve grown and learned a lot from this experience. I understand depression in a way I never did before. I have greater empathy for the old and disabled and the suicidal. I appreciate little things like a bright cloudless day without pain in a way I never did before. But seriously, screw that. It’s been fucking awful and no one should have to suffer like I’ve suffered. I’ll just hope the worst is over and savor ever second until that hope is proved wrong.

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 Clinical Medicine in the IU Department of Internal Medicine with clinical interests in treating those with persistent pain. I learned several new things about chronic pain from his talk and his multiple PowerPoint slides, and even more of it went flying over my head splatting into the wall behind me.

First, as I’m sure it’s made absolutely crystal clear by this diagram, chronic pain and acute pain function differently in the central nervous system.

The left half of the diagram shows how the body is supposed to react to pain, and the right side of the diagram shows how screwed up your body’s response becomes during chronic pain. Even more depressing is the fact that the brain changes after you’ve been in pain a long time, a phenomena called neuroplasticity. “Plasticity” refers to the ability to change and “Neuro” refers to your brain. Your body learns how to be in pain. The common English translation of this is, “Jennette, you are totally fucked.”

Other interesting things I learned:

• Portions of your brain start to shrink over time if you’re in chronic pain. (I doubt this will make the feeling of constant pressure in my head go away, but maybe I’ll get lucky!)
• Our brains contain mu receptors which bind to morphine to make you feel better and combat pain. Men have a lot more mu receptors than women, the bastards. Seriously, a lot more. I don’t have the slide to show you, but it was like the difference between a blizzard and a few flakes of snow.
• Not only do men have more mu receptors, but women’s mu receptor response varies during the menstrual cycle, making your body’s ability to gobble up feel-good morphine vary depending on the time of the month. Again, the bastards!
• Dr. MacKai spoke about the difference between pain and suffering, which is probably worthy of a whole entry in itself. Basically, even if you are constantly in pain, how much you suffer from the pain depends on your emotional state, your attitude, your environment, and how much the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) portion of your brain is lighting up to tell you to PAY ATTENTION! to the pain. This was driven home by the fact that listening to all this talk about pain made my headache seem worse.

There was another speaker after Dr. MacKai, but he was an OBGYN who was talking about pelvic pain. Thankfully I do not have pelvic pain, at least not yet, so I decided to grab a cookie and drove home in a windstorm that knocked out several traffic lights instead. After all, I had a headache, and there was only so long I could concentrate before I had to lie under the table.

During the lecture, Dr. MacKai asked the question, “How many people have been in pain for over…” and I started to raise my hand, “…10 years.” Then I put down my hand, turned around and saw several people with their limbs raised. At that moment I wanted to get up and give them all a hug and tell them, “I am so, so, so incredibly sorry.” Because I am so sorry for those people. Now when I see a man walking slowly with a cane in front of me, I don’t think, “I wish he’d walk faster,” I think, “He must be in a lot of pain.” At least I know there are a lot of us.

* BTW, I am not a doctor. I related this information as I best understood and remembered it, but it’s possible I made some errors because I do not fully understand the processes I wrote about.

People always said life is hard and I would nod and agree, but I did not understand. Weight loss is hard and college is hard and finding a job is hard. All those things are hard, indeed, and I’ve done all those things. I thought I understood when people said life was hard, but I didn’t, because you cannot understand suffering until you have suffered.

I have been suffering lately. I have been suffering since the evening of February 17th, 2008 when I got a headache that has never gone away. Some of you probably laugh a little and think, “Ha, that’s weird. But it’s just a headache. How bad can it be?”

It is bad. It is very, very bad.

It has made me cry so badly that my wailing has made the cats run into my bedroom. It has made me come home numerous evenings and binge eat as a temporary way to ease the pain. It has made me go out to the parking garage during work and cry in the back seat and idly think that I could jump off the roof of the building if it gets unbearable.

And through this all has been the knowledge that I may never get better. No one seems to know what is causing my headache. None of the pills work. None of the eastern or western medicine is doing any good. I read stories about people who have had headaches for 10 or 20 or 30 years and I know I may join their ranks.

So, I have alternately been seeking a cure and also trying to learn how to cope with this unknown disease that may be with me for as long as I live. (Hopefully a long time. I was not seriously considering suicide and since I started anti-depressants have not even idly considered it as an option.) Still, it is hard. It is very, very hard. I truly understand that word now.

I have also not been taking care of myself. I have not been eating well and I have not been exercising. I know these things are important and would benefit my overall health, but I feel so overwhelmingly miserable on a daily basis that food is one of my few comforts and exercise seems a chore as difficult as swimming around the globe. (Which, of course, would be great exercise.) I know I need to do better in these areas, but I am focusing most of my energy on just getting through the day, on keeping my job and my health insurance that I need so desperately right now. I would love to lose weight, but I just don’t have the energy for it right now and it is hard to make it a priority when so many other things need fixing first. I can’t move the furniture when the house is on fire.

I have been trying to keep my momentum and keep living the life I was living a year ago. I’d like to be that girl again. But I feel like I’m sleepwalking through my own life, that I’m just going through the motions, miscast as the lead in someone else’s play. I would like that sense of normalcy back. So I try. I do what I can. But I also have to remember I have the right to do less than humanly possible. Otherwise I go a little krazee, as was evidenced last night.

I haven’t been talking about my struggles too much on the blog for a couple reasons. First, I didn’t want a hundred different opinions on what I should be doing. I know they are just voices of the caring, but they pull me in a hundred different directions until only shredded remains are left. This place has gotten so big lately that I don’t always feel comfortable sharing everything anymore, knowing someone is bound to misunderstand me. It does not feel as safe here as it used to. There are hypodermic needles on the playground.

Secondly, I like to act as normal as I can, to live as much of my life that I can, although lately I have been living a half-life, unable to do the things I want to, to feel the ways I used to. This blog used to be called “Half of Me.” I am now (a little over) half my weight, but due to my illness I’m living half a life too. I fake it well. I greet people warmly in the elevator and I smile at my doctor’s appointments. I tell jokes and goof around. They would say, “Jennette seems perfectly ok! She’d never take a header off the roof!” It makes me look around at my coworkers, at the people in line at the grocery store, and wonder how many of them are faking it too. There is so much suffering that goes unnoticed.

It might get better. I’m seeking help. I’m still seeing doctors. I’m trying to get by. My family and friends have been awesome, cooking me dinner and doing my dishes and checking in on me and listening to my whining. But I don’t know what will happen. I might be sick forever and that will be that. I’ll have to figure out how to live with this chronic pain. I’ll have to learn to do the best I can with what is left of my life. But at least there was a year there, when I was working out and eating well and I was healthy, when I felt really good and the world was full of so many possibilities. I was happy then and it was nice. I’m glad I had that year.

And to anyone who thinks there is something noble about my suffering, about the way I carry on so bravely in the face of insurmountable odds, fuck you. There is nothing noble about this. There is just pain – meaningless, endless pain. There is no purpose to it, no greater meaning. It will change me and test me, no doubt, but I don’t want any congratulations for the fact that I still carry on. I do it because I have to and death is not an option.

So, on Friday I leave for vacation. I’m going to the Quaker Oatmeal Festival in Colorado because God knows I could use a fucking vacation. I will try to have a good time even if the high altitudes make my head explode. And by God, I promise to eat a shitload of oatmeal.

I was at the doctor because all the IV treatments and medications we’ve tried lately haven’t done anything except make me poorer. I could have paid off my car by now with the money I’ve spent. So, we’re adjusting my medications again, which means I’m going off of Topamax. When I talked with my doctor about going on Topamax a month ago, it sounded worth a try.

“What are the possible side effects?” I asked him.

“Yadda, yadda, yadda, (stuff I don’t remember), and possible weight loss.”

“Sign me up!” I replied way faster than I should have.

I started taking the pills, slowly upping the dosage to the target level as recommended by the doctor, not really sure what to expect. I’ve never done drugs, never smoked pot, never even puffed a cigarette. My only forays into altered states of consciousness have been doctor approved pharmaceuticals. As the pills eventually took effect over the following weeks, I wasn’t as hungry in the evenings. I didn’t feel compelled to raid the cabinets for granola at 9 o’clock. It was like someone had turned off the crazy switch in my brain that I never realized I’d left on. Sadly, they weren’t doing anything for my headaches, but they were doing pretty well as diet pills.

And I totally hated them for it.

I didn’t want the pills to work like that because I DESPISE diet pills. I think they’re evil. When I decided to put ads on my site over a year ago, I decided not to place Google Adsense ads in the sidebar because they are context based. Google ads search the text of your page and target ads “relevant” to your content. Other health, fitness and weight-loss sites that have Google ads inevitably are sent ads for Hoodia, Phentermine, Alli and other products like that which I don’t believe in (as well as some other truly crazy ads for anorexia or bulmia). You can try to filter out ads like that with the Google tools, but the people I’ve talked to say they always get through anyway. I could make money if I put those ads on my site, but I don’t, because when it comes to this particular issue, I put my money where my mouth is. That is how much I hate diet pills. I don’t think you should take pills. I think you should eat well and exercise.

To complicate things further, although the Topamax was making it easier to eat less, it was also making me stupid. It’s nicknamed “Stupamax” and “Dopamax.” It made it harder to speak right, like someone had placed the English language on the top shelf where it was just out of my reach. I could still see it, but I had to stand on my tippy toes to grab words, and even then I was just knocking them over instead of grabbing them firmly. I just felt…dumb. I found myself unable to focus as well. It put a damper on my mood. The crazy switch was turned off, but the stupid switch was turned on.

So, I knew I had to go off of them. I don’t like to play with my brain chemistry unless necessary. And I hate being dumb. But I started thinking, “I might just go down to 25mg. That would be okay, right? I’ll cut the pills into quarters and they’ll last longer.” At which point I started to wonder if the crazy switch in my brain had really been turned off after all.

What I had really hoped was that the Topamax would cure my headaches, and then the appetite suppressant would be a convenient side effect. I could traipse around saying, “La, la, la! I take these pills for my HEADACHES. My headaches! Not because they make me thin. But wow, the thinness is nice, isn’t?” Not only would my life be pain-free again, it would be a little bit easier. I wouldn’t have to fight as hard – all the time. But instead it just made me dumber, a little thinner and more broke, because Topamax isn’t out in a cheaper generic form yet.

So, I’m going off of them and they will be out of my system just in time for my trip to San Francisco next week. That’s good timing, because I love eating when I travel. Vacation calories don’t count! The weird thing about the Topamax was I sort of missed being hungry. I missed eating too many ice cream sandwiches at 20 minutes until midnight and feeling pleasantly full. Food is one of life’s pleasures and I missed having my desire for it. Wanting food I know I shouldn’t have can be painful, but not wanting it at all is empty and lonely.

My experience with Tomapax has also slightly shifted my perspective on diet pills. Before, I viewed them as an all-out evil, equivalent to anthrax as a substance that should be eliminated from society. I still think diet pills are a stupid decision for the majority of people. They shouldn’t be used if you just want to drop 5 pounds for swimsuit season or some superficial crap like that. However, I’m now open to the idea of using them to treat people with serious compulsive eating problems. When I think of women who’ve written to me saying they can eat a gallon of ice cream with a box of Oreos and follow it with a bag of potato chips, I have to wonder if there is something wrong with their brain chemistry that allows them to do that. In those cases, taking a pill doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Now that I’ve experienced what it feels like to turn off the crazy switch, it makes me wonder if some of my own wiring isn’t a little off in that area.

However, I prefer being smart to being thin, so no more Stupamax for me. (But if it had cured my headache, I’d settle for some stupid. Who need brain? The dumb not so bad. Ouchies worse.)

However, there have been times in the past couple months when I’ve not been grateful to be in possession of my brain considering how badly it has been hurting. It’s made my life suck. Oh, let me count the ways.

The emotional toll

When I started crying alone in the parking lot of the doctor’s office in the rain last April, I knew I was starting to lose it. There was so much snot running down my face that I had to reach into the back seat and grab a white t-shirt to wipe my nose on that I’d been planning to give to Goodwill. Later I cried on the phone to my mom who felt bad that she couldn’t kiss the receiver to make the pain go away. I’ve laid in bed wondering if I’d have a stroke in the middle of the night and die, which would suck, but at least would stop my suffering.

Several people have told me they admire my level-headed, sensible approach to weight-loss. So, the fact that I’ve been blowing snot on t-shirts for the poor should give you a sense of how far gone I’ve been in my worst moments. One day I was so befuzzled after two hours and three different attempts at finding an open lab to do my blood work, that I turned the wrong way down a one way street.

The eating

My headache is like being locked in a room with a TV that is endlessly looping a movie starring Tom Green or Adam Carrola. It’s absolutely awful and I can’t turn off the TV, but I can sometimes tune it out. In the same way, my headache always hurts, but I can sometimes ignore it. I’ve found that the best ways to distract myself are to 1) keep psychotically busy or 2) eat pleasurable things. (Hence, the weight gain in my sidebar this month. That’s seven pounds of pain, baby.)

The intravenous drugs haven’t done shit, but the cookies n’ cream milkshake from Steak N’ Shake sure did make me feel better. I mean that in all seriousness. After I’ve been in pain all day, if I eat a bowl of ice cream or a chocolate bar, I genuinely feel better for those few moments. The agony is drowned out by the other sensations, like turning up the radio to drown out the sound of your neighbors having sex. Last month I was chomping on some chocolate chips, knowing I should stop, but also knowing that as soon as I did the pain would come back. Chronic pain or extra calories? Headache or huge jeans? I really don’t know which is worse.

I started half-seriously thinking about starting a drinking habit instead of binge eating, but I didn’t know how alcohol would react with some of my headache medications, whereas blueberry bagels don’t seem to cause fatal drug interactions.

The laziness

It’s hard enough to get myself to exercise when I’m feeling fine, but when my head feels like it’s imploding, good luck getting me to pull out my weight bench. I record all my exercise on a wall calendar. Flipping back, I can see that my Pilates and weights sessions started to drop off in frequency a week or two after my headache started. After a month, they disappeared completely and I was focused only on completing my training runs for my half-marathon. After I finally ran the race, I barely exercised for three weeks.

Thankfully, I have exercised regularly for the past two weeks. It’s felt really good, getting back into the familiar routine, almost like I have my life back. I believe the exercise makes me feel better too (even though running two miles is never un-painful). Activity is good for the body and lying around wasn’t helping make the pain go away anyway.

Missing out on fun

A couple weeks ago, I could have seen a sneak preview of the Indiana Jones movie for free, but I had to come home to do a drug treatment. Last month the band Stars was in town and I wanted to go see them, but I felt tired from suffering all day and I didn’t want to be stuck in a smoky room that could inflame my headache. Several times I have been out with friends or coworkers and I can’t help thinking, “This would be a lot more fun if my head didn’t hurt.”

The hopelessness

I used to wake up and feel happy driving around town or running errands, but at my worst I was just trudging through as best I could and trying not to go more than two weeks without doing the dishes. I wanted to stay in bed all day or curl up watching TV on the couch. I watched the TV show House and I started cheering on his Vicodin addiction. (I fully support your narcotics habit, you crabby doctor, you!) My attitude to live life to its fullest became Operation: Just Getting By. It was shocking how quickly my life completely unraveled. It sucked the happy right out of life.

While I try to keep a positive attitude, living in constant pain beat me down over time. Some days I felt like fighting and other days I felt like lying belly up on the floor playing dead. I think of Jack Baur from the TV show 24 when he’s been tortured by the Chinese for years. Jack didn’t break, because he’s Jack Baur, damn it! But I was ready to tell the Chinese all our nuclear secrets if they would give me acupuncture.

On the bright side, I feel like I can now empathize with people who suffer from chronic pain and depression better than I ever would have been before. You really don’t know what it’s like until it happens to you.

The money

MRI’s aren’t cheap. When I was watching those episodes of House, he started ordering MRI’s and CT scans and I literally yelled at my TV, “OH MY GOD! Do you know how much that’s going to cost?!?!”

The medical system

Oh, yeah, this has been fun. Filling out lots of form, getting lost in medical facilities, trying to figure out who to see and what type of doctor could help me, hoping this would be the magic test that would diagnose my problem, the long delays between prescribing a test and getting in the schedule to take the test.

Retelling my medical history to several different doctors has been like playing that alphabet car game. You know, the one where the first person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple.” And the next person brings something with the next alphabet letter like, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels.” Then the next person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels and cream cheese.” Except in the medical system it goes, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics and beta blockers,” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics, beta blockers and I’m willing to try crack cocaine if it will help.” It’s gotten to a point where I don’t know who I’ve told what or if I left out a part of the story because unfortunately I did not try things in alphabetical order.

But now I’m feeling better, if not fantastic

So, that’s what was going on behind the blog for the past few months. During April I kept thinking, “Dear God, how am I ever going to get through May?” But as I discovered, being incredibly busy helped because it didn’t leave me time to think about my headache. At the end of May, things started to slow back down to a reasonable pace, which left me plenty of time to think about how I’d gladly bash my head against a wall a couple times if I thought it’d stop the God damn pain. 2007 was a really great year and every day I drove home from work happy and excited, but I’d also think, “You’d better enjoy this feeling because something shitty is bound to happen to you eventually.” And it did.

But, the last two weeks have been okay, partly because the pain has lessened and partly because I’ve stopping hoping that it will go away anytime soon. It’s me and my headache for who knows how long – maybe for the rest of my life. In my research I discovered there are people who’ve had headaches for decades. I might one day be one of them. I will still keep looking into fixing my headache, but I’m sort of tired of dealing with the search for the cure right now. I’m taking a break.

Chilling out the past couple weeks has helped. I didn’t think I was that stressed despite the fact that I was training for a half-marathon, promoting a book, working a full-time job and writing a blog, but looking back and comparing it to how I feel now I’m thinking, “Um, yeah, maybe I was a little bit stressed out.” I was just so used to being stressed that I didn’t realize how bad it was until it let up. Sort of like how now my headache probably isn’t all that less painful than it used to be, I’m just so used to it that I don’t think it is as bad as I did when I first got it. If it were to go away, I would probably be surprised to realize how crappy I feel, just like I was surprised by how much better I felt when I first started eating healthy and exercising.

One of the worse things about this experience has been the feeling that I had no control over my life. I was in pain, gaining weight, not exercising, and unable to work as hard on my promotions as I wanted to – and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was victimized by my central nervous system.

But I haven’t eaten any milkshakes lately. And I’ve been hitting the trail. And I can lift almost as much weight during my strength training as I used to. Things started spinning down into a tailspin for awhile there, but I feel like I’m pulling up on the stick now. We’ll be flying normal again soon, if with a bit of turbulence.

I hope the stewardess will serve painkillers.

The lyrics are:

My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy),

Wherever I go, he goes

My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy),

My buddy and me

Only I change the lyrics to:

My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache),

Wherever I go, it goes

My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache),

My headache and me

Remember that headache I had back in March? The one I thought had gone away? Well, it eased up for awhile there, but it never really went away. Which means I’ve been in pain 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ever since February 18th, 2008. (I still have a scar from that monster zit too.) I ran my half-marathon with my headache. I went to my book release party with my headache. I appeared on TV with my headache. I toured New York with my headache. *sing song* My headache and me!

It hasn’t been a series of headaches, just one never-ending headache that will not go away. (Like Iraq, or the presidential primary.) I’ve been doing a lot of reading on headaches, and mine is best described as a chronic tension-type headache. I feel a constant pressure or tightening around my forehead, behind my nose, and around my cheeks. Some days it’s pretty tolerable and I’m able to do the dishes and live a semblance of a normal life. Some days it’s really bad and all I can do is watch streaming movies from Netflix on my laptop in bed.

I decided not to talk about my headache here for several reasons. My medical issues seemed to be a topic to keep in the “Do not blog about” circle of my personal Venn diagram. When I did talk about the headache months ago, I got tired of people diagnosing me with everything from lupus to a dead twin in my forehead. I also wanted to have fun with my book release in May. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me and I didn’t want it to be a topic of conversation during all the talking I’ve been doing. As a natural introvert, I’ve learned how to put on a fake, extroverted exterior when the situation demands it. I’m sure many people in my life have had no idea that I’ve been constantly suffering since the end of February – except for the select few who have been kind enough to listen to my bitching and occasional crying on the telephone. Other than that, I’ve kept it between me and my neurologist. (Yes, I have a neurologist now!)

However, dealing with this headache has become such a gigantic part of my life that it’s starting to get weird not blogging about it. It’s like Godzilla has come to town, cutting a swath of destruction through my life, and I’m blogging about how nice the weather is. It’s getting to a point where it’s affecting my weight too, so I may as well come clean before the horrifying weigh-in at the end of the month. Blogging about my weight loss issues seemed to help me lose weight, so perhaps blogging about my chronic pain will help me manage that as well.

Tomorrow, I’m going to go over all the treatments I’ve tried, all the treatments that are still on the list to try, possible causes I’ve considered and all the tests I’ve taken (sadly none of which involved filling in bubbles on a Scantron sheet, which I kind of enjoy). So, please, please, PLEASE, DEAR GOD, PLEASE!!! hold off on diagnosing me with anything or recommending any treatments for me until that post tomorrow. It is a long, looooooooong, post and if I tacked it onto this entry your monitor would not have enough pixels to display it. The day after that I’ll blog about all the ways this headache is destroying the lovely life I have spent so many years building. My headache: A three-part series.

Also, from now on we can just consider this my health/fitness/chronic pain management blog, because really, they’re all linked.