Head Shots

How I Cope With A Chronic Headache

My unrelenting excessive painful headache started in the fall of 2007.  I started this blog in January of 2009, after experiencing more than a year of an extreme headache on a daily/hourly basis.  Yes, that is one headache.  It started in 2007.  Not a series of smaller headaches.  Not one day without a headache.  Not one hour without a headache.  Even now with much better control of my pain I still have a headache.

The Headache is only on the left side of my head (thank Heaven!) and besides the pain I have a puffy left eye, runny nose on that side, almost non-stop nausea and the only medication in the world that actually is effective to control it pretty much put my pancreas out of commission.  My understanding is once in a great while this type of headache (hemicrania continua) will go into spontaneous remission but for most sufferers it is a life long problem.  If I live 30 more years, I can look forward to 30 years of constant headache. Sigh.

Once upon a time I was a fine arts major.  Life intervened and I was forced to make a living with something practical and I didn't really do much artistic work for years.   Now that the headache has woken some unfulfilled need in me, I have found artistic expression is a great outlet for me.   I think in the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs I am at the bottom after once almost being at the top, so hoping art work will assist in the climb back up.  The art work that takes up most of my time lately is digitally manipulating photographs.

Coping with The Headache and other myriad ailments is difficult.  For my own amusement I photoshop pictures of my ouchy head and post them as illustrations for the fractured meanderings of my prose.  I find a perverse pleasure in cutting and pasting and layering all kinds of things onto my head in order to illustrate what The Headache is.  It is my revenge on The Headache and a way for me to find a bit of humor in the grimness of it all.  I know its strange but it seems that the process of illustration frees up some part of me that would be very very angry and sad otherwise.

I've had Japanese ceremonial drummers pounding on my head, jackhammers drilling into my skull, devils glowing in the dim embers of my brain.  I've circled my head with sayings, light bulbs, lightening, electricity, animals, and at least one clown.  I've illustrated hot spikes poking into my brain, thought bubbles popping out of my head with strange thoughts, and sometimes simply the way I look when I am tired and hurting.  I have some happy pictures, sad pictures, wacky pictures, and ugly pictures.  They all make me laugh to some extent.  This disease is absurd and I am the type of person that either laughs or cries.  I'd much rather laugh!

Everyone reacts to life's crises in different ways.  The never ending stress of  my headache disorder has taken its toll emotionally and physically.  In photographing my noggin, uploading it to my PC, and putting my bonehead through illustrated torture I hope it helps my psyche in putting the kaputz on The Headache.  Hoping everyone has some sort of similar outlet, because it serves me as an excellent relief valve for high pressure stress and pain.

Montage of Head Shots 2009-2010

Haunted Head

The Headache Remains

Paid very close attention this last week at the client's to see what was making the nausea so overwhelming.  Was it medication?  Was it my pancreas? Was it The Belly?  Was it The Headache?  Was it simply traveling?

I've come to the conclusion that the culprit is mainly The Headache, with a sprinkling of The Belly thrown in.  I found if I didn't walk much, and I sat very very still, I was able to manage the nausea although with some difficulty.  If I moved around, walking down corridors, standing and assisting others, then the nausea quickly (within five minutes of the activity) got much much worse. 

The pancreas when inflamed can be irritated by body movement, but this time I'm pretty sure it is The Headache.  I have had trouble with my left eye swelling and being light sensitive, pain in the left side of my face, terrible physical coldness, and congestion in the left side of my nose.  The Headache even became painful despite the occipital stimulator.  My hopes of regaining some physical activity in my life are sorta fading, as the level of activity was similar to what would send The Headache through the stratosphere of pain last year.  I am glad the pain is not nearly so bad but the other symptoms seem to not be changed at all by the stimulator.  Bummer.

I have started taking a anticholinergic medication again called methscopolamine bromide or Pamine.  It is supposed to help with stomach spasms in addition to helping with nausea and stomach acid production.  It is an older drug that my pharmacy has to special order for me, as apparently no one else in the area takes it.  It seems to be somewhat more effective for The Belly pain than any non-narcotic I have taken.  I had quit taking it last fall due to side effects, so will wait and see what the next few days bring.

I have started a new blog called Illustrating Illness.  There will be no narrative, just personal artwork/ illustrations about illness.  All pictures that are on there now are mine, but I hope that others will submit theirs for posting also.  I find that finding a way to visually express how I feel is therapeutic for me and I would love to experience how others voice their illness through art.  I have a niece that is majoring in art therapy and I am sure somewhere in her curriculae there is an explanation as to why this works for me, but I am not going to analyze the how it works, I am just happy it does work!