Thursday, March 30, 2006

Who am I?

I'm a headache sufferer.

And many other interesting things...a daughter, a girlfriend, a friend, a photographer, engineer, writer, reader, cat owner. But the bleak reality is that my life has become unravelled, overtaken by chronic daily headaches. Sadly, headache often supercedes all those other fine things.

The type of headaches from which I suffer are called "chronic tension type headaches with pericranial tenderness." The latter means that my neck, upper back, and shoulders ache constantly, day in, day out. I experience headaches 30 days out of 30, hence the "chronic". There is no rest. I've had the chronic variety for about 2 years now, but my headache history stretches back 9 years. I am now 36, and my headstrong headaches started a few months before I turned 28. They haven't remitted in 2 years, but at least I had breaks for the first 7 years.

My headaches are the "non-migraine" variety. Tension headaches are the less glamourous cousins of migraines, meaning they aren't studied as exhaustively, and there aren't many drugs and strategies for dealing with them. I'll tell you more about them as I go along.

I am writing this blog to share my thoughts on headaches, and other things. To illuminate my world for friends and family. Headache, the disease, consumes a lot of my time and thought. I decided it was time to capture some of what I experience day-to-day. It might be easier that way.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:26 pm

    Do you think your headaches and your profession (chemicals) are connected?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm so sorry you've been suffering so long. I'm glad you stopped by my blog--I'm off to read the rest of yours, and will definitely be back on a regular basis!

    Hang in there!

    ReplyDelete