Tag: Cluster Headache

I’m ill. I’ve been ill very often over the last two days. A little disturbing. Anyway, I’ve been watching some of Steven Spielberg’s Taken, about aliens and abductions and such. It’s a mini-series, with 90 minute episodes, and I’m on the third episode, and it’s pretty good. One thing that came to mind is; what if my cluster-headaches are the result or side-effect of some alien experiment that has been preformed on me?

I suffer from clusterheadaches. If you don’t know what they are, think of the worse migraine you’ve ever had, multiply that by a hundred then you’ve got its intensity. They show up in small clusters, hence the name. The clusters usually last for about one or two weeks for me, in which I’ll have a headache attack about once every two days. For me they don’t last very long, perhaps 30 to 45 minutes, but for others it is known to last up to 3 hours. Sometimes I pass out. If I don’t, I throw up. I haven’t had one in a long time, and for that I’m glad. The first time I had one and where I understood what I was suffering from was in the spring of 2001. My doctor asked me to find out if, as a child, I had suffered headaches like this as well. My mother told me I had spells in which I was nearly unhandlable and crying all the time when I was very young and unable to explain what was wrong. We think that they might have been clusterattacks, too. It goes away for months, sometimes years at a time, and they really don’t know what causes it, nor do they know if there’s a cure. The only thing I have is Immitrex, which is like horse-tranquiliser, that I can administer by pen-injection, but I lost that thing, so I’ve got some pills around. They keep me from passing out, but they make me more nauseous once the pain is gone.

Anyway, while I’ve been actively dealing with that for a few years now, why, oh why can’t I just endure a two day normal, vanilla-icecream, jetlag headache without getting cranky?

I’m in pain.

This morning, I had four cavities filled. It’s my own fault, I hadn’t been taking good enough care of my teeth for a while, and something had to be done about it.

The dentist I go to is very good at what he does. At least, he makes me feel comfortable enough to keep coming back, which is something that, from what I hear from others, isn’t always the case with most dentists. He doens’t have much of a sense of humour, but then again, that’s not what he’s paid for. He does his work well.

Today, after 45 minutes of drillin’-n-fillin’ he told me that I was a good patient. I accept that I have to go through a procedure that is widely regarded as painful, and I do it without bitching, moaning, threatening or becoming violent, which aparently is a novelty in the world of dental care.

I can understand someone becoming violent or threatening the dentist, though. I mean, I have a fairly high pain tolerance level and I always keep in mind that the pain is only temporary, and that my being there and undergoing that, is an investment. But sometimes it’s a really uncomfortable feeling, one that invokes really primal aggressive feelings. Certain people come in and tell the dentist “Hurt me and I’ll break your fucking legs.” which I can again understand, on a very basic level, but if you are going through the procedure, let the man do his job and accept the consequences of your decision.

One of the things I cannot stand is when pain seems to be a permanent thing. I don’t have permanent pain, but at times certain things have seemed like they would never go away, and when I feel that, then I’m inconsolable. I have always been able to trust my body, and I’m very happy with it, it has hardly ever let me down. I say hardly because I have some failures, like my cluster-headaches. But God forbid I should ever get permanent back problems or something similarly inescapable.

I once saw a documentary about a radical new treatment of back problems where a small sliver of metal would be implanted close to a nerve-point near the spine and manipulated using magnets. The sliver would press up against, and thereby cancelling out, certain nerve-points and thus relieving the pain. There was a man that went in for the new treatment who was successful in business, had a wife and two children that loved him, was in good shape, but he said that if this treatment didn’t work for him, that he would commit suicide because he simply couldn’t live with the permanent pain.

Permanent pain. No relief.

I’m in pain…but the pain is termporary.