Goals I Haz Dem 2

Fantastic Week Up to Now

Not only have I met my work goals so far, I have exceeded them! I was able to put in a 10 hour day yesterday and a 9 hour day today. Not up to my preheadache standards, but an improvement over the last six months. I don't know if I will do 10 hours straight again this week. Last night The Headache let me know it was displeased with me, and I had to medicate early on - ruining my weekly Antiques Roadshow watching experience. The only television show I look forward to watching and I was too medicated to concentrate.

We are such dedicated Antiques Roadshow watchers at my house that we watch shows that we have seen three or four times just as if they were brand new. I'm not sure what our fascination is with this show. The entire family watches it - no matter where we live it is on our schedules. Everything stops when the Antiques Roadshow is on! My little dachshund even knows the theme music for it, and will get out certain squeaky toys when it is on that he uses only for Antiques Roadshow time. I think he does it because it is hard to get my attention when I am enthralled by the parade of unusual possessions and appraisals.

I am feeling better than I have in months and months and months, even having to medicate quite a bit last night was better than having to medicate like that all the time. Could it be the occipital stimulator implant? Well, it is three weeks post surgery and I have improved my activity levels a lot in the last three weeks. Since it is a blind study I will leave you to speculate - is my stimulator actually working, or am I suffering from a placebo effect?

I definitely am still experiencing pain, and in the same pattern with still some extreme pain levels. Medication wise I have decreased amounts about 50%, activity wise I have increased about 35%. That's really the first improvement I have had on both fronts since The Headache started in 2007.

Hoping to reach the rest of my goals this week, and keep The Headache at bay. WooHoo!!! I'm back in the saddle again! Yippee Ti Yi Yo!!!

Three O'lClock in the Morning

Oh Well, Here I am again!

It's about 3 AM and I'm up with my head packed in heating pads. Gosh Dang the Ding Dong Ploinkity Plarn Kachoing. My eyesight is wacky and I can't find my glasses - guess you have to see the confounded things to find them. Double vision city, thanks to the almost 50 year old eyes.

I sure hope I'm typing this up OK because it's a little blurry (well maybe a lot blurry) for me without the peepers getting assistance from the glasses.

My faithful cat Wilson is here keeping me company. She is getting older (she is 19 years old this year) and gets lost between rooms. So i go into the kitchen and she meows because she's lost and I call her and she finds me, I go to the living room, she meows because she's lost and I call her and she finds me, ad infinitum. I hope when I am as old in people years as she is in cat years I will have someone to help me find my way from room to room.

I wish I had a crew of coconut monkeys to help me out here, but no such luck in the non-dreaming world. My mother and I had our weekly Monday night viewing of the Antique Roadshow, and a pleasant time was had by all. It is a ritual that is only spoiled by the fund raising weeks when "specials" replace the beloved Roadshow. If only my W.D. Purrucker paintings were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars! And I only paid Three Dollars for them! Sigh....I would find out that they weren't worth Three Dollars (which I suspect is true) with my luck.

Wilsy is complaining because the lights are on and I'm up and she thinks its morning again already and she wants her can of food. She wants to jump up on mylap because I am covered up in a nice red fleece blanket that she really likes. It isn't my attention she craves but the fluffy softness of the blanket. She is getting louder because I am ignoring her, and now she is trooping across my computer desk so I have to pick her up. She tries to snag my blanket and take it with her, but no way! She needs to go rest in her cushy afghan that is on the couch and leave me and my blanket alone. Since putting her down she is sitting with her back to me as if I no longer exist. Cats!

I may try taking some good old phenergan and Benedryl in a few minutes to put my head to sleep. Sometimes it works sometimes it don't. I have a big wood relief of the word RELAX on my desk. I will meditate on that, and see if my expensive biofeedback training can assist.

Bad Headache Day #17 2009

Two AM Blues

I thought I had toughed out The Headache yesterday, yet here I am at 2 AM sitting like an idiot in the dark with my head and neck wrapped in microwave heating pads. Sometimes it helps, sometimes ice helps - I never know. I've got the Popeye squint going on because of the left eye issue. Just need a pipe to "toot toot" with and say "I yam what I yam!" and maybe I need to eat a can of spinach. Blech my stomach is already riled up just thinking of spinach makes it worse! Although with tatoos so popular I would be very trendy to get a couple of anchors tapped into my forearms!

The Belly is turning flip flops not in a nice way. I am having spasms but am trying more trammadol to see if it helps. I ate meat this evening. Even with the pancreatic enzymes meat protein is very difficult for me to digest. My imagination has my pancreas humping around my innards like an inchworm on a tree.

I'm typing now in the dark just to distract myself. I'm having trouble tolerating glasses on my face, so some of this is done middle aged blind, so forgive any spelling errors.

I was having such a good evening too, since the highlight of our week is the Antiques Roadshow on PBS. I don't know why we find it so absorbing, perhaps it is a lifetime of collecting various types of things, or perhaps the vicarious sharing of others' joy at finding how valuable their bargains or inherited items are, or maybe its the historical aspect. We used to watch the British version also - it is amazing how much older the antiques are on the British version, reminds me that as a country the United States is pretty young.

I may go soon and try to sleep sitting up. Another headache veteran suggested this, and it has helped a couple of times. The Headache itself is too intrusive to sleep at the moment.

I have started following several blogs where the bloggers are keeping photo blogs. They are from all different areas and countries. It saves me from feeling so confined - I get to see what they think is viewable. Very interesting viewpoints sometimes indeed. My favorite this week was a picture of heart shaped salami cold cuts for Valentines day.

I had another vivid dream the other night, this time about a boy I graduated with. We were at a Mall, and he had hurt his back and one leg (the right side where I am weaker) in a football game. My cat tried to lick his hand to make it better. Why was my cat with me at the mall? Not the slightest notion. Everyone was going to the big game by jumping in huge circular inflatable rafts like they use to ride the rapids in the Grand Canyon, and going "Wheeeee" as they turned and road a giant white waterslide (this was as wide as the inside of the mall and very hilly going downstream) out of the Mall. The guy wanted to go sliding also, but I was afraid he would be bent all out of shape because of his broken bones - kinda like Gumby. But those rafts sure looked like fun. Then I woke up. Maybe I was remembering sled riding, as my brother in Iowa and I were talking about it the other day and how his middle aged bones weren't made to be flexible anymore.

Popeye ME