Thursday, October 25, 2012

Not Operating Heavy Machinery

I've had a splitting headache for the past two days. SPLITTING. HEADACHE. (Shhhhh, no yelling.) As I was explaining to JP, I read a book where one of the main characters had a terrible headache and then suddenly he felt like his head split open and then he went blind and his headache went away. Last night around 3 a.m. when my headache was so bad it woke me up through the haze of a double dose of prescription sleeping pills (and the special prescription headache medicine), I wanted that to happen to me. In the light of day I'm glad I have my sight over a pain-free head, but Claire's exuberant morning bounce onto the bed nearly killed me. I left a message for my doctor and went into work. I don't have many sick hours left and I realized went I went home early yesterday that I don't feel any better being at home- lying down hurts about a million times more than sitting up, so I might as well be in my office.

Now I have Vicodin to take every 6 hours until the pain goes away and an appointment with a neurologist. Excellent, both of them.

My grandpa is doing better but not awesome. Out of the SICU, but still in the hospital; sitting in a chair and walking a little, but with assistance and still in pain. It's as good or better than the surgeon predicted, but it's still hard to think of him as he is now. We were supposed to go to San Antonio to spend Thanksgiving with them, but we now may wait until early December when he's feeling better. Which means we may be spending our first Thanksgiving on our own, in Fort Worth, just the four of us. Which means there's a good chance there will be all starch and veggie side dishes and desserts (and wine) and no turkey, which sounds pretty fantastic.

I'm headed to DC for work in 10 days and will be there over election night. I'm pretty super excited about this. I will also be wretchedly nervous, but this site makes me feel better (odds are currently 71 to 29, Obama). I LOVE LOOOOOOOVE politics and election season. I've never missed a debate and I get unreasonably annoyed when people complain about them. I mean, come on, we vote for President every four years, and three times during this once-every-four-year period the candidates get on the same stage and (sort of) debate each other. Yes there's rules and moderators and canned memorized statements, but still, it's leagues better than the commercials and op-eds. The actual candidates are actually talking back and forth! I've had them marked on my work and personal calendars since the schedule was announced and JP and I are riveted the whole time. We have to pause it every time we start debating among ourselves so that we don't miss anything we can debate or mock later (these days it's mostly mock; we seem to agree on pretty much everything except I'm somehow a straight ticket Democrat and he won't vote for a Democrat for President ever (or a Republican from the last 30 years, so at least we don't cancel each other out)). The point is, yay elections, yay America, yay being in DC for my favorite event every 4 years. Will be fun.

My headaches, and the fact that this one is so bad I can't read, type, or watch TV (until now anyway, on Vicodin #2), have made me spend a lot of time thinking and reconsidering certain lifestyle choices and how, if these are in fact just severe tension headaches, I can make them GO THE HELL AWAY. My thoughts include: regular massage (awesome, with a proven track record, but pricey), actually doing yoga and not just barre class (scary; I'm terrible at yoga; would also require significantly more self-discipline than I seem to have to make myself go (because, again, I'm terrible at yoga)); taking up another form of exercise and doing it regularly (see last entry); cutting out caffeine (I don't drink that much and none after noon, but still, maybe?); eating better (I don't eat badly, but I can definitely eat better, also less); try a lot harder to learn to meditate and then do it (a winning suggestion, though I'm better at yoga than meditating, which is a sad sad statement). Anything to enable me to nod again; all my conversations in the past two days have involved me staring straight ahead without expression, eye movement, or nodding in any way.

I finished Claire's photobook yesterday. I have carpal tunnel from moving 1200 photos and stickers and text boxes millimeters up and back to make the most perfectly perfect pages that I will read 16,000 times over the next few years and my children will probably throw in a box labeled "Stuff" when they go to college. But I love them. I need to start Landon's but feel I should wait until I'm not on hydrocodone. (Blogging though, seems to be a go.)

And with that, I'm off to bed with a hope and a prayer that I will wake up without whimpering. It's going to be a new day! A new day of productive work, eye movement, and head nods! Also, Friday!

(Vicodin!)

20 comments:

  1. I hope so much that you feel better! I love that "Blogging though, seems to be a go"... : )

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gosh, hope you are feeling better soon!

    I have made a Shutterfly book for every month on my daughter's first year and I love them! Now I'm going to one a year...I can't imagine how thick that bad boy is going to be!

    ReplyDelete
  3. So sorry about the headaches/migraines. If you ever want to bounce ideas off of someone, I've had multiple neurologists/workups/have tried all the meds. The only thing that's made any appreciable difference for me is Botox. So yay no facial wrinkles and fewer headaches? :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha, after my work up I'm sure I'll have lots of questions! And botox? Hmmm, if you do it before the wrinkles appear does it mean you'll never get them? It would be a nice upside to the crippling head pain every few weeks.

      Delete
  4. I hope your headache goes away soon. I was in DC last time and it was soooo fun. People were honking their horns and hugging one another on the streets. Fingers crossed this is the scene again!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ugh headaches! I hear ya! I hope you feel better soon. I need to start my son's books. I just got an email from Shutterfly for the Halloween book, and I just might have to start breaking up the books related to holidays. What size books do you make for the kids?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do the 8x11 hard cover photo books. I adore them. Pretty soon I'm going to switch to doing a calendar year book ("Lag Liv Family 2012," etc.), but for now I'm still doing one for each kid for their birth year ("Landon's 5th year," "Claire's 2nd year"). I copy in excerpts from blog posts and other little stats among the pages of photos (which I work very hard to distill down to the very best pics- and very best outtakes so I average 3-4 book pages per month) and I just adore them. The only career I've entertained outside of being a lawyer is being a professional Shutterfly photo book maker... just can't figure how to make a profit with that one :)

      Delete
  6. I hope this doesn't feel stalkery, but if you want to grad dinner or drinks one of the nights you are in DC, let me know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jodi I totally would (not stalkery, which sounds vegetably, at all), but I'm going with a group of people from my office for training, so I think we'll be together most of the time and then I'm flying straight home after the last day. One day though I'd love to meet up!

      Delete
  7. What about acupuncture for the headaches?

    Also, just out of curiosity, who does JP vote for? I'm guessing he and I are similar (I'm registered Republican, but consider myself more of a Libertarian) in that we are probably fiscally conservative (hence the refusal to vote for a Democrat) and socially liberal (hence the reluctance to vote for a Republican). The past many elections, I felt like I was voting for the one I disliked the least... which is no fun, because I would love to actually be excited about casting my vote.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JP hasn't voted for President since 2000. Your description of your views pretty well aligns with his, but you seem to take my perspective on voting, which is: someone is going to win whether you like the choices of candidates or not, so you should vote, even if it's a vote against the other (or a "you don't offend/scare/bother me as much as the other guy"). But JP is an entrepreneurial idealist and can't vote for someone he doesn't believe in (unlike me, the cynical grounded pragmatist), so he withholds his vote in protest. He does vote for the Senate and House spots as well as all the local races, so the kids do see both of us vote every 2 years which I think is important. One day I'm hoping he has a president to vote for, it would make election season even more fun for both of us!

      Delete
  8. If this headache is not typical or came on suddenly- you should get more immediate medical attention- make sure it's not an atypical cause.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sadly, it is typical. Not common (thank goodness), but it's happened to this degree and duration several times before, the first time being in 9th grade. But I appreciate the concern!

      Delete
  9. For massages have you tried massage envy? It's still not cheap, but it's cheaper. I made my first appointment when I walked off an international flight and my neck was so stiff I couldn't turn my head (it was a tension thing--fresh off experiencing the 3/11 earthquake). Anyway, I stuck with massage envy for a year. Going just once a month did wonders for my wellbeing.

    For yoga, I think a lot of it is just finding a place that works for you. Another plus of experimenting--most yoga places give you unlimited classes for the first week for free :)

    Have fun in DC!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Acupuncture, like someone above said. I get bad menstrual headaches and swear by it. It's worth a shot, anyway.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JP suggested that last night, I'm definitely willing and looking in to it today.

      Delete
  11. Good luck! I get migraines and they are always very localized to one small-yet-debilitating-and-nausea-inducing spot in my head, about the size and shape that an ice cream scoop would carve out (not always the same location, but the same size of intense pain). So, the image that always pops into my head during those migraines is that if I could just take a scoop and remove that spot, I would feel so much better. It is not a very pleasant image when you think about it objectively when pain-free, but at the time of all-consuming pain, it seems almost logical.

    The thing that drives me crazy is the absolute waste of time migraines are.

    I hope you are pain free soon and that you come up with a solution that works!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Good luck with the migraines. I have heard good things about acupuncture and would be really interested in hearing if it works for you. I was going to go before I switched jobs and insurance. As to the election, as a resident of Ohio I just want it to be over. I voted already and I am so sick of all of the ads and mailings and traffic jams due to whoever is speaking near by that day. I went to a conference in New Orleans and was shocked that I did not see one tv ad the whole four days, such a difference!

    ReplyDelete
  13. You may speak to your doctor about a very low dose blood pressure medication if this happens at set times of the year. North Texas is the allergy capitol of the world and causes me horrendous migraines during the Spring and Fall, so I take the meds Sept-Nov and Feb-April. That little pill has saved my sanity.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Here's some unsolicited yoga advice, lol. Dude -- I sucked at it for the longest. I could barely touch my toes (ouch!). And meditation -- forget about it!! It's sort of astounding how my body as changed. I'm shocked. I recommend a hatha class with a cool bunch of peeps.

    Have you considered reiki? It does wonders for pain management.

    Feel better!!!

    ReplyDelete