Tuesday, September 13, 2005

that old chestnut

for some reason I’ve been battling again with headaches for the past four or so months, culminating this week in one every single day for two weeks. Today’s the first day in a fortnight I haven’t had one, and I feel terrific to be able to function. I thought I had them licked two years ago when I stopped drinking orange juice – immediately they stopped for almost a year. but recently it’s gotten bad again, and combined with a general feeling of unwellness, I finally succumbed to the idea of going to the doctor. A big step for me with this, because I’ve been dealing with it for a long time.

About 4 years ago I went on migraine prevention medication, but that lasted only a week, after I found that they made me so sleepy I could not physically stay awake. After falling asleep in class a couple of times (which is really embarrassing when you’re one of about 6 in the class), the last straw came when I fell asleep while doing 100 on the Eastern Freeway. Luckily I woke up in time to avoid an accident, but it was clear I couldn’t function on them.

Lately (as in the last 4 or 5 months), it’s been accompanied by a general feeling of constant tiredness, like I have no energy at all, and frequent nausea too, usually accompanying the headaches, but not always. It’s clearly not stress, because I am loving my job, and it’s not particularly taxing. Nor can I put it down to changes in my eating habits, or any other changes I can think of. It just doesn’t seem to make any sense. even the doctor called me a puzzle, which is not an overly encouraging thing to hear from your doctor. I’d much rather hear her call me any number of other things that imply that she knows what’s wrong and how to fix it. So anyway, yesterday I finally went to get it all checked out and was sent to get a blood test this morning.

I don’t do well with blood tests. There’s something about the idea of having something sucked out of you that’s meant to remain in you that doesn’t sit well. I mean, I understand why they need to do it, but that’s why we have skin in the first place – to keep it all in there. So after my usual “why is the floor rotating around the ceiling?” routine, I stumbled out of there.

I get my results next week. it’ll be nice to have a resolution to this, even though you could (quite accurately) say it’s my fault that it’s taken so long so get one since I haven’t sought one till now. Personally I’m hoping they tell me I don’t eat enough junk food, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope.

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