Brilliant Product Idea #3 - Headacheless Headache Medicine

I am changing meds and I have a mega super strength headache as a result, and it occurred to me... someone needs to design a bottle for headache medicine that is padded on the inside so that when you roll over and fumble for it on your side table, because you are blind with pain and cannot bring yourself  to open your eyes and ascertain where the bottle actually is, the terrible din of rattling pills doesn't make you want to kill yourself.

Use our MRI or DIE!

I went today for an MRI on my brain to prove, once and for all, that I do not have either tumors, or a woodsman in my brain causing my headaches.

When I met my technician I didn't catch his name, but let's call him Chip, he looked like a Chip. I told him, as we walked to the MRI room, "I'm gonna try not to freak out, but I cannot promise anything." Chip assured me that he would do his best to hurry and was super nice about explaining to me what would happen, though I knew because I can't go into a situation without researching it thoroughly, especially when it might tell me I have a woodsman in my head. Plus, I watch a lot of House. I was then told I could listen to music while they did the procedure. I, of course, chose the 80s music channel and Chip offered to turn the music way up so it would drown out the sound of the machine. Thanks for the thought Chip; it totally didn't work.

And then, and I had considered this, it played a song by Van Halen that my stupid idiot jerk boyfriend from high school used to cry through because "It was SO meaningful and deep." No, idiot, "When It's Love" is not deep, you're just a tool. Plus, seriously, Sammy Hagar sucks, I mean compared to David Lee Roth... He was alright on his own, but Van Halen totally fell apart when they replaced David Lee Roth. I wish they had played Panama, or Ice Cream Man, or anything that didn't remind me that I dated a stupid jerk for way too long, but it was amusing, being stuck in a tube with sub-par Van Halen and my memories.
Then they played "Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band which I loved, clearly, because if you don't love that song, you suck*, or haven't heard it. And then "Tenderness" by... who the heck sings that song... General Public? Who knew... probably people who really like General Public.

Part way through "When It's Love," Chip called into me to make sure I was okay and then told me there were only 6 minutes left. He didn't, however, tell me that those were the six loudest, most terrifying minutes of the procedure. Towards the end, the machine started shaking and beeping like there was a nuclear melt down happening. It crossed my mind that the Yellowstone Caldera had finally blown and that Chip had fled for his life and I was going to die wedged in a tiny tube.

But, I have already gotten the results back and my brain is, apparently, completely normal. I think that their definition of "normal" may be a bit skewed but my headaches are just headaches and I can finally say for sure:



IT'S NOT A TUMOR!


*sorry for telling you you suck if you hate this song. I've just been through something traumatic, you'll have to forgive me.

Ow.

This post is brought to you by my migraine. It's a grumpy post.


This is what I have:

This, is what I want:

Only quiet, with no sounds of humming computers, or TVs, or friggen birds, or traffic, or people breathing... 

and sleep... I'd like some sleep too... 

Spring is for the birds!

This morning it was bright and warm outside when I woke up, around 50 degrees F, which is pretty spring-like. As a result, I'm fairly certain every single bird in Montana was perched outside of my open window tweeting their effing heads off.
I don't like tweety, squawky birds. Totally fine with hooters (heh, heh), and screechers, and cooers, and I can deal with some clucking, and quacking, and warbling, but dear lord, I can't take the chirpy, chittering, ear-bleeding din of happy little birds. I have no problem with them being happy; I'm happy that I shall no longer have to consider self-immolation thanks to warming temperatures, but I'm not outside with my friends yelling about it.

And stay tuned.  I shall have a special post for when I reach 700 followers which I hope shall be tomorrow. Feel free to peer pressure your friends  into following on my behalf. All the cool kids are doing it!

The Woodsman

Sorry for my sporadic absences, but I'm fairly certain there is a crazed woodsman with a hatchet in my brain cavity.  He looks a lot like "Texx with two Xs" in my mind.  My nephew warned me about him after watching Scooby-Doo, but I told him I was impervious to woodsmen... which seems to be untrue.

I actually have a long history of migraine headaches, and have tried many things to get rid of them.  The first prophylactic intervention was a blood pressure medicine, but seeing as I have low blood pressure usually, it basically made me sleep 18 hours a day... after which I usually woke up with a dull aching in my head.

And then there was the Topomax, which was one of the worst experiences of my life.  I trogged through days of crying hysterically at insanely stupid things (like not being able to find my keys in my purse and then realizing that my husband had used them and I would have to walk back inside to get them), not being able to drive at all because I was too spaced out, scaring the hell out of my family with aggressive behavior that I don't recall at all, and then the proverbial straw on the back of a overloaded camel, forgetting how to walk.

I guess you would call it forgetting how to walk...  I came out of the bathroom walking just fine, I abruptly stopped and then I was standing there, a few steps from the end of my bed, trying to will myself to walk forward and lay down and my brain's answers was, "Nope, I don't believe we will be doing that."  So I stood there, swaying, while my husband tried to figure out what the hell I was doing, and had a silent conversation in my head trying to convince my brain to let me move, that sounded like this:

Me: Uh, I'd like to lay down now...
Brain: Nope...
Me: No really, let's lay down.
Brain: Yeah... no.
Me: But this is really easy, just go forward, bend at knees, plop onto bed?
Brain: Yeah... not gonna happen.
Me (thinking): I could just flop onto the bed and be done with this foolishness...
Brain: You know I can hear you, right...?

Somehow I indicated to my husband what was happening and he came and helped me lower myself onto the bed.  At that moment, an executive decision was made that being able to move at will was really important to me and I would no longer be taking devil drugs to prevent migraines.

At the most now, I lose several hours a day to sitting in dark rooms and crying that my brain is being hacked apart while I wait for my medications to kick in.  I find though, that it is a far sight better than being completely useless 24 hours a day from drugs that are designed to stop me from having a few hours of pain.



Note: My doctor is convinced it is just migraines though I've had no MRIs or CAT scans w/ contrast (because I have no insurance so they avoid those expensive tests, though I think I'll be forcing the issue next month when I see her)... but it is not vision problems, or blood pressure. And it is not caffeine or lack of caffeine, or diet, or exercise... changing all of those things makes no difference at all... my brain is just an asshole... or there is a crazed woodsman in there.