Tag Archives: headache

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Never say Never

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Yesterday I woke up at four in the morning puking and with the same headache as I had this past February. Looking back, it had been brewing for at least two weeks just like last time. My arm was even acting up with the numbness. I finally caved in around one and texted my friend for the number of her chiropractor. Yes I crossed over to the dark side and once again was burned by the word never.
Last time my headache did not respond to anything that was effective for migraines. It was only after I went to my primary doc who is a DO and demanded he adjust my neck that I had any sort of relief. A couple months ago an article about cervogenic headaches showed up in my Facebook news feed. (Sometimes I think Facebook can read my mind. Haha) After reading up on it I had every single symptom with one sided headache and left arm numbness. I decided that day if it ever came back I’d risk being disowned by my daughter Emily DPT and go have my neck adjusted. I would have went to a DPT if I didn’t need a referral from my doctor. In other states it is open access for physical therapy and a referral not needed but as usual the backwards state of Missouri is behind the times.
So when I texted my friend she said the DC was at a funeral today. My first thought of course because that’s my life. But the DC got back to me later and could see me last night. After trigger point release, deep tissue massage, and adjustment my headache was 80% better. I could sit up without feeling like my head was going to explode and the tingling, numbness in my arm was gone. She gave me exercises to do as well. And then Emily called me but she didn’t disown me for now.
This morning my headache is gone but my left neck and shoulder is killing me. She warned me it would be sore. But I actually have better range in my neck and my shoulders are not tense balls of steel. She said I should be good after four treatments which works for me. She reminded me of my counselor nazi who told me if I wasn’t better in a year at the very most, she had no business treating me.

Mole Moral ~ My entire life I said I would never go to a quackopractor and low and behold I have once again eaten my words! I will NEVER learn!

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The Headache Clinic Visit

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I didn’t write this yesterday because I was annoyed. I know me annoyed that’s super shocking. Anyway the nurse practitioner was super nice and I really liked her. However she didn’t really know what to do with me either. She was trying to ask me the questions about my headache but since I have never had a migraine they made no sense. For example, how many migraines do you have a week. I’ve never had one except this one for five weeks. Do you have an aura? No, it just started hurting at this work meeting and never went away. She was fine with not taking the preventives and took them all off of my chart. We were reviewing what medicines i was on and I found out my Vicodin dose was 10mg and not 5mg so it’s a good thing I only took a half of one at a time. I also had no clue how much Indocin I was taking. I told her I felt like an old person who would say I take a little white pill for my heart. She felt that because my headache has been slowly getting better that it was on its way out. However no real explanation of what caused it. So I am going back to work on Monday which I am looking forward too. She also gave me a different migraine medication to try if my headache comes back. Should I make a spread sheet of which weird side effect it will give me and take bets? Nothing could be worse than the chest pain Imitrex gave me. I seriously thought I was having a heart attack. I am headache free today and going to the eye doctor to get new glasses. I’ve been wearing my back up ones since the cruise because my mom accidentally knocked them out of the back of the airplane seat and the arm broke off. This was before we even landed for the cruise. She of course denies this and I didn’t care because I was planning on getting new frames this year anyway.

 

Mole Moral ~ I am sticking with my diagnosis of NURSE CURSE and no one can convince me any differently.

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How He Loves

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How He Loves is by far the very best and most important song ever written. There is incredible meaning and a story that goes along with it that I will get to a little later in this post.

Most people do not know that I have had a headache for over a month straight. It all started at work during a meeting. I did write about my visit to the ER eight days later.(CR visits the ER) I remained headache free until the day after I finished the steroids and then it came right back. It finally got to the point that by five or six in the evening I could no longer function at work and the supervisor would have to watch my patients while I slept before I could even drive home. The last day I worked I realize now that I could barely function and people would talk to me but I could hardly register what they were saying. On a Saturday I started having numbness and tingling in my arm and face so I had my sister drop me off at the ER. This time they did not give me compazine because of the twitching and what they gave me did not touch my headache. They decided to admit me to do a MRI/MRV to check to make sure I did not have blood clots in my sinuses. All of that came back normal. I was in the hospital for six days and even had a lumbar puncture. Every single test was negative. Nothing they gave me got rid of the headache and I slept a lot more than I realized. So they sent me home on a Friday and said your headache will go away eventually. That weekend was horrible. I started throwing up on top of being in the worst pain of my life. I asked God several times to just take me to Heaven to be with my grandparents, but apparently Jesus isn’t ready for CR because I am still here. Finally on Tuesday the nausea left, the pain cut in half and I could sit up without feeling like my head was going to explode. For ten days I could really only tolerate laying on my right or left side I couldn’t even lay on my back without feeling like my head was going to explode. It was just awful.

Tonight I went to the Edge (our youth service) and its the first time I have been out of the house in over two weeks. I mean I have left to take short walks around the neighborhood but I have not been anywhere else besides the hospital. Tonight the band played How He Loves. It’s been a long time since I have sung that song at church. The first time I heard it was 2008 at Big Stuf camp. That was the first year I went to camp and it was a game changer for my life. During the camp for the first time I ever I could feel that God loved me. Prior to that I never felt anyone really loved me. I knew in my head people loved me but I couldn’t feel it.  This kind of talk did not go over well with my husband who told me basically that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard and I was wrong. I was already in counseling and that was the final straw, I started looking at apartments because I was finished with him. (A friend of mine told me about the movie Fireproof and we did The Love Dare and all things changed.) However for the next two years or so every single time I heard that song, I would end up crying by the time it was over. Well tonight that song started and the tears started full force. God was with me during one of the most difficult times in my life back then and I knew he was here with me right now. It was like he was saying hey CR I’m still here and you will get through this as well. I thought I could explain this experience in words but it’s just not working out.

My headache has greatly decreased which is how I am even able to write this blog. Usually when I try concentrating it starts ramping up but so far so good. I have an appointment with a headache neurologist on Thursday. They are calling this an irregular migraine. I am not really buying this as I have never had a migraine in my life. These headaches usually start in the teen years. Brian has had migraines since he was a kid and he said he has never seen anything like the way I have been. They wanted me to take a bunch of drugs to prevent the next one. I could not stand the drugged up way I felt so I stopped taking all of them. Plus why am I trying to prevent something that won’t even go away. We shall have a nice discussion at this appointment. I want the cause of the headache discovered and resolved, not sit around in a semi comatose state for the rest of my life.

How He Loves

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

Oh, how He loves, yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves

And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking

And heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way

Oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all
How He loves

Yeah, He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh how He loves
Oh, I love

Yeah, He loves us, yeah, He loves us
How He loves us, oh, how He loves us all

 

Mole Moral ~ My final diagnosis will be NURSE CURSE!

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CR visits the ER

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It’s been almost two weeks since I was at work and started getting a headache around four in the afternoon. I took motrin which did not help and took an excedrin as well an hour or two later. I had a meeting after work and by nine my headache was so bad I threw up and got sent out of the meeting. I went and laid down on the couch in an empty room because there was no way I could drive home. After sleeping for about an hour I was able to make it home. I had to work the next day and the headache was there when I woke up but I took medicine and knew it would be gone. Yeah, no that didn’t happen and by five I had to clock out and go lay down again. I also proceeded to vomit. I was off for the next four days and I thought to myself in the morning this headache will be gone. It never went away during this time but it was never so bad that I had to lay down or throw up. So Tuesday I went to work with the same headache but it was tolerable.However I wasn’t my normal get on everyone’s nerves usual self either.

This past thursday I am at work again and the headache is still out of there and out of control. I have now googled brain aneurysms, stroke, and other neurological conditions and am convinced I have a brain aneurysm. I really didn’t want to go to the ER because if it was that I would not be able to do my fifty mile run. (True story!) We had a bunch of unexpected discharges and they said I could leave at five so I agreed to go to the ER since everyone had been bugging me to go since Tuesday. The ER was crazy busy and has been since right before Christmas so I had a bit of a wait. They offered me a stretcher in the hall and I said sure because I just wanted to lay down. I was right by the nurses station but my head was bugging me so badly, I couldn’t even enjoy watching the nurses at the station.

My nurse wasn’t even born when I graduated from nursing school. Apparently the ER has a grant to draw HIV tests free of charge so I said sure draw one. You all will be happy to know I am negative. The doctor came by and he was nice looking but my head hurt so bad I couldn’t even enjoy the eye candy. He felt I had an intractable migraine but since I have never had a migraine in my life, it would best to get a CT scan as well. So the treatment for that was twenty-five milligrams of Benadryl and ten milligrams of Compazine. The Benadryl counteracts the twitching from the compazine. Ok every single nurse knows that drug seekers want dilaudid pushed followed by Benadryl pushed super fast. When that nurse pushed the Benadryl I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs and then started coughing uncontrollably. I informed my nurse I’m “allergic” to Benadryl because it caused coughing. She started laughing. I am at a total loss as to why anyone would want that feeling. So then they sent me to the scan in a total drug induced state. I barely remember the scan. But let me just say bu the time I returned my headache was half as bad.

The doctor comes by and sees I’m still twitching and orders cogenten. I look at him like he has two heads and he tells me its a safe drug. Because of my drug state I couldn’t respond with I’m not concerned about its safety, it’s old as dirt. But it worked. Then they show up with sixty milligrams of prednisone and ten milligrams of percocet. I tell my nurse no way am I taking ten of percocet. I will take five only. After all this picture was taken of me after taking a five of percocet so I can’t imagine what my kids would capture with ten milligrams on board.

They let me sleep for a bit and I am finally headache free so they give me a prescription for five days of steriods and some percocet. The doctor told me it’s very unusual to get your first migraine at the age of 49. I said yeah no kidding it’s called “nurse curse” and it’s alive and well for me. So now the headache is gone but I’m experiencing “roid rage”. I don’t know why anyone would want to take this stuff and buff up. I have not slept more than four hours for the past three nights. I haven’t been up to four in the morning in forever. I did manage to find The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on Nick at Night. Someone was wanting to buy the house they lived in and that someone turned out to be none other than Donald Trump! I was dying. Tonight i am taking fifty milligrams of Benadryl and if that doesn’t work i am taking more. I have to sleep tonight, I am working tomorrow.

 

Mole Moral ~ Leave it to mama mole to have her first migraine that won’t go away with over the counter drugs but takes a cute doctor in the ER to make it go away.