maybe I need a phrenologist

So I’ve had this headache. For, like, six weeks. It’s been on and off, and has been very mild all along, but it has been annoying and relentless and has sometimes crossed over into light sensitivity and malaise and weakness.

At the beginning of December, I went to the doctor. She prescribed no more Bikram, continuous aspirin, and trying to get a handle on my stress. I did these things to the best of my ability. She saw me two weeks following, and although I had more heartburn I had fewer headaches and so when she asked if I was feeling better, I answered yes with honesty. Since Christmas, though, the headaches have returned and changed in quality. So my referral appointment with a neurologist two days before New Year’s seemed like a great idea to me.

The appointment itself was weird, for a number of reasons, including the doctor not hearing me at all when I talked about my diet and exercise habits, inadvertently making me feel that I was inventing my hypoglycemia, giving me such an efficient exam that I wasn’t sure I’d really been examined, and his secretary going home during the appointment and leaving me alone in the office with him. (I read this terrifying novel when I was a kid, The Trouble with Wednesdays, about a girl getting molested by her dentist, and since then I’ve been seriously wary about being alone in a medical office with a male doctor.) He diagnosed atypical migraines. He recommended vitamins and ibuprofen, gave me samples of two migraine medications, and referred me for a brain MRI just in case.

Something he said has really stuck with me. He told me that there can be many reasons for a headache, involving brain chemistry and cranial nerves and whatnot, but the basic premise is that the headache occurs when something in the system gets overwhelmed. I wanted to respond with “Well, that would be me.”

I have been overwhelmed. At my original appointment in early December, the doctor asked me if I had been experiencing any more stress than normal. I thought for a moment and said “Let’s see, the holidays, my job, my other job, getting married, estranged from my father, my mother’s moving here…yeah, I guess so.” Hearing all those things stacked up and coming out of my mouth like that made me feel…overwhelmed, as if I can’t believe I’m really living it all. All along I’ve been telling myself that this is nothing compared to people who have children to deal with along with all the other stuff, or chronic illness, or dying parents, or whatever else. That’s how I live a lot of the time: feeling like a whiner for not handling my mild little life as well as I could, while people with bigger stresses are more graceful and don’t complain.

This time, I’m kind of not feeling the self-derision. I am struggling. I am hurting. As with my parental issues, denying the struggle and hurt and how it’s affecting me is doing me no good. I’m just…so afraid of being like some of the examples I’ve seen, from people who whine endlessly about their petty troubles to my mother who has this bizarre cycle of martyrdom and downplaying her illness and martyrdom again. I am admitting to myself that my head and my jaw legitimately hurt, that the pain is interfering with my quality of life, and while it’s not cluster headaches and hence could be worse, it could…you know…not be there at all.

The two medications he gave me were not winners, for different reasons. So I’m taking extra ibuprofen, taking the vitamins he recommended, trying to ignore the pain in my jaw, and moving along. No whining! But…a little bit of acknowledging. I think that’s the right balance.