Friday, February 7, 2014

The Waiting is the Hardest Part


The most persistent symptom of my brain injury is migraine headaches.  I’ve had the same headache, of varying intensity, for 231 days.  A couple of weeks ago, my neurologist changed my headache meds because they weren’t working well enough.  That meant discontinuing the old meds, waiting a few days, and then starting the new meds.   The new meds have to be increased slowly over four weeks until I reach the therapeutic dose.  That's 4+ weeks without adequate headache management.  The way my brain responds to this transition is that there are no limits on how bad a headache can get, or what else it can throw at me...seizures, hallucinations, whatever!  All bets are off, baby.

Most people are familiar with a 0-to-10 pain scale, with 0 being no pain, and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine.  On my prior meds, my headache pain was usually a 2-3, with occasional spikes to 4, 5, or 6.  Anything above 5 puts my brain in protective mode, not allowing for rehab or my home exercises that are meant to challenge and repair my injured brain.  Headache pain above a 5 also wrecks my speech, impairs reading comprehension and problems solving, and interferes with sleep.  It's a nasty cycle.  Not enough sleep = worse headaches, speech impairment, poor reading comprehension and problem solving.  See how much fun that is?

The 0-to-10 pain scale isn’t descriptive enough for me anymore.  It lacks dimension and detail.  Sure, I could say that for the last 3 weeks my headaches are a 5-6, with occasional spikes to 7 or 8, but what does that really mean?  I’m already in the non-functioning zone. 

Yesterday’s headache was hatchet buried in my skull, with the occasional fist to the face.

My current headache is head caught between two boulders with a pencil shoved in my left ear. 

I considered an historical pain scale, but quickly realized that was too subjective.

Remember that time I had meningitis and couldn’t get off the floor and cried all the way to the hospital because my head hurt so much and then I passed out from pain during the CT scan?  Well, that was a 9…because there might be something worse and I’d need that for a 10. 

So if that was a 9, then today is a solid 6.

That kind of pain scale doesn’t help anyone.  Well, it kinda helps me because I know I can survive that kind of pain.

It also helps me pass the time while I wait.  I have 7 more days until I reach the full dose.

No comments:

Post a Comment