Friday, May 31, 2013

I Hope June Is Kind

May has been hard on me. Which is messed up considering it's my birthday month. The headaches lasted most of the month and truth be told haven't fully gone. They just haven't been as bad as earlier this week. I'd probably still be cowering under a pillow if it weren't for the shot at the ER since my neuro wasn't any help. Maybe I should research and print some stuff off that way next time I go I'll be better prepared. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike her, she's not bad, she could just use some improvement. She's better than some of the doctors I've had, not as good as some/not as good as I'd like. She's a step above the ones who treated me like there was nothing physically wrong with me. Oh she knows I'm sick, just not with x since we've already said it's y, or it couldn't be anything serious blah blah. Honey, have you LOOKED at my medical history lately? Every time you (general) assume it's nothing/simple, it's the opposite.

Woosah.

I got off on a tangent. I can NOT stand to freaking be ignored or treated like I'm ignorant/overreacting/etc.

Anyway. Other than The-migraine-that-would-not-quit™ I've been feeling like crap this week. This month in general but more so this week. Sunday around 2 it was out of control so I took some meds and decided to head to the doctor. By 3 it was dulled but I was determined to get seen anyway so we left. Of course they stuck me with a NP (have I ranted here about my dislike of most NP before) since a migraine for 2.5 weeks isn't emergent apparently. Which I suppose they're usually not but they can be dangerous. I feel kind of sorry for her getting stuck with the silly cases but really. Anyway. She misunderstood me. She asked what happened and I said I guessed it'd been triggered when I accidentally ran out of my migraine meds because I have a week supply I carry with me in my pill box thingy BUT THAT I WAS BACK ON IT AND IT STILL WOULDN'T GO AWAY and no amount of OTC meds helped much either. I guess she missed the big I put in all caps because she ordered the shot and wrote me an rx for my migraine meds. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't there for drugs, I appreciated the shot, would've been fine with no rx but I was KIND OF hoping to find out why it wouldn't go away. And what caused it. Still better than my neuro so I can't complain haha. (Disclaimer: I know testing is my doctors job, I'm not mad at the NP for not running tests).

I guess that's my problem. My neuro doesn't seem to want to do that. She (or her nurse, to be fair, I just spoke with her nurse) just assumed I was taking too many meds and it'd stop once I quit. I'm sorry, tell that to the pseudo ice pick embedded in my skull. Even without taking meds sometimes I'll get migraines several times a week. Is it normal to treat the migraines without finding out WHY they exist to begin with?

Perhaps it has something to do with the broken blood vessels in my head I had as a newborn. Perhaps the fall I had onto my head off the top of a slide when I was 4. Or when I fell down the stairs when I was 2. Or some damaged nerve. Or maybe it's connected to one of my conditions. Or maybe it's a symptom of something more. Seriously, though. Is it normal to just treat symptoms without knowing the cause? Especially when the symptom is pain so severe it makes a grown woman with a reasonably high pain tolerance cry and want to bash her head against stuff.

Got side tracked again. After the shot I still felt minor pain. I don't usually take pain meds so I'm not sure if I was supposed to still feel it but it was mixed with phenergan so I slept off and on until 2 AM when it returned with a vengeance. I woke Big Daddy up and we discussed going back out there but by 5 AM phenergan won (plus a little counter pressure) and I was able to fall back asleep. I slept most of that day and really part of the next. The first day if I tried to sit/stand for 5+ minutes I'd get weak and dizzy. Second day I could manage a little more. I've felt aches but no where near pre-shot. About half. Plenty of dizziness, heat exhaustion, racing heart. Wednesday I drank more water in one 3 hour period than I drink in most days.

I guess my body got semi used to winter and the migraine/shot combo plus heat drained my "spoons" so this week kicked my behind. BAD. Or the alternative I don't want to think of. My body is not ready or capable of facing summer (yet?).

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Summer

So it's been 4 months since I've written. I've started to a time or two but decided against it. Ultimately there's only so many times I can say the same thing over and over before it gets old, only so many posts in which I can whine before even **I** get annoyed.

This month has been somewhat difficult for me. I had a migraine that just would NOT quit. It lasted nearly 2.5 weeks before I broke down and went to the ER. I'd called my neurologist but they brushed me off and assumed it was just a rebound headache from taking too much medicine. Only I wasn't. The bottles say no more than x in 24 hours and I was always under or at that, I just broke it up differently. Instead of 2 ever 6 hours I took 3 every 12 so I'd still be in the safe zone. And that was because the 2 weren't touching the pain. And I wasn't taking the same medicine the whole 2.5 weeks. I switched it up. You know how the bottles say discontinue if it lasts more than x days. Yea. So it's not like I took twice the recommended dosage every day for 20ish days. I took THE recommended dose or LESS for a few days then switched and took the recommended dose or less and so on and so forth.

I'm more than a little tired of doctors not believing me. Big Daddy woke me up the other day and said I was acting out a dream where I was in a club with some people, not just talking. Actual acting. He's also mentioned I've kicked him and pushed him out of the bed numerous times. My neuro just said sleep talking is normal and refuses to investigate since I'm not actually physically lashing out in my dreams but like I told her, JSmiley (or any of my kids) lays on my arm and I don't move as much. When it's just me, or me and Big Daddy, I move a LOT more. What pisses me off about that, is that is classic REM Behavior Disorder (hi, remember that's what she thought I had before the other guy said if it wasn't that it was definitely narcolepsy). See, I don't remember how much I talked about it but since I had so many other issues she thought I had RBD instead of Narcolepsy (the pulmonology sleep specialist said narcolepsy) so she sent me to the neurological sleep specialist. He asked if I'd ever acted out dreams and I didn't know if I did so I said no. So he said until proven otherwise, based on that and my sleep studies, that it was narcolepsy and not RBD. Now I'm trying to tell her I'm kind of acting out dreams (let's be real, it's embarassing telling your neurologist your husband woke you up because you were acting like a stripper in a club while you slept) but all she would say is it's normal to talk in your sleep and unless I'm hurting people it isn't an issue because the meds they use to treat RBD go against one or more of my other conditions. Story. Of. My. Life. Ok but while sleep talking is normal I'm pretty sure the rest isn't. I wish she'd take me seriously. For once.

To be continued.