A Good Day. A good day is a day where I can manage my pain by taking my 'weak' narcotic and muscle relaxers, Fioricet and Flexeril. It's a day when I can go about most things as usual only gripping my skull in incapacitating pain a couple of times. A good day is when I can get relief from an ice pack on my head.
A Bad Day. A bad day is a day like today, where I'm taking 4mg of Dilaudid every 6 hours just to survive. It's a day when my pain is so intolerable that it makes me vomit, even when I've just vomited so much that my throat is raw and bleeding, my body still convulses and acts as though I could possibly heave up another chunk. When my skull feels like it's being squeezed in multiple ways like I've got my head in a trash compactor. Where the mere act of standing up can make the pain 100 times worse.
The last time I had a day this bad was a little over 4 months ago. I was in this same apartment in Boston getting ready to fly home within 48 hours, just like I'm planning to do now. I've discussed with my doctors the possibility of altitude playing a roll in my headaches, but there's so many factors to take into consideration I can't pinpoint anything. I want to go home so badly. This vacation to see some family has turned grim and stressful, and I so don't want to make it worse by having this turn into an ER-visit-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-country-so-I-can't-get-home-and-see-my-own-doctors-and-recuperate-in-my-own-bed thing. Timing seems to always make things complicated, and honestly I'd rather have to have this pain twice as long but do it in my own confident hospital and be able to sleep in my own dirty bed with my stinky dog than have it all happen here again.
On that note - time to go throw up again...
It feels like I can hear and feel my pulse in my own head. Like the whole thing's pumping and ready to explode. I can't even take more medicine because at this point I'll just puke it up. Sitting, standing, laying down, hunching over a toilet, I can't get comfortable.
I call up my neurosurgeons office and ask to speak to one of the nurses. The receptionist says "Is this Julie?" She can't see my number so she must be recognizing me by voice. How sad is that.
I've been so miserable so much for so long that I can't wait to have this surgery. Even if it helps a little so I have more 'Good Days' than bad ones, that's something.
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