Maritime Vacation May 27th-June 10th

Hurrah! Our vacation's almost here!

David and I are leaving on Saturday morning at 7am for a two-week maritime trip. For non-Canadians, the "Maritimes" refer to the three smallest eastern provinces in Canada, which border Maine to the east...they are New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (PEI). Newfoundland isn't actually one of the Maritime provinces, although many Canadians think it is. However, the four are also called the "Atlantic" provinces, as they all border the Atlantic Ocean.

Anyway, we'll be visiting my family in central New Brunswick, as well as travelling through Nova Scotia and hopefully Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick is a small province, from which you can reach the ocean within 250km in any direction. Good for lovers of the sea!

Although David is well-travelled, he hasn't been east of Quebec City in Canada, so I'm excited to see the maritimes through his eyes, to have him meet my family for the first time, and to see the place where I grew up.

We fly through Toronto to Fredericton, and arrive Saturday evening. I can't wait to see my lovely Mom, who is busily preparing the house for guests, and is excited that her lilacs and apple blossoms are in full bloom to delight her visitors. Their property is nestled in a little valley full of trees and greenery with a lovely view of the river across a giant meadow. I love it there, but the best part is seeing my Mom. She's my No.1 fan and best friend, and I am hers. She's just a lovely lady, so interesting and interested in people. I know David will love her.

After a few days of visiting the family, we're driving to Nova Scotia to visit Cape Breton Island and drive the famed Cabot Trail. Since David is of Scottish descent (and I am as well), it will be neat to visit the Cape Breton highlands, and the Scottish towns of our ancestors, all bearing Gaelic names. I also want to visit Fort Louisburg and the Alexander Graham Bell museum. On the way back from Cape Breton, we're thinking of driving along the coast and catching a ferry to PEI for a quick tour and some lobster. I've visited PEI only once, but recall lobster suppers at church halls that were to die for.

The second week we spend with my family, with day trips planned to St.Andrews, an old touristic coastal town near the Maine border. On the way, we'll visit the Ganong chocolate store at St. Stephen. Then we're hoping to visit the Fundy coast and see the Hopewell rocks, Fundy National Park and the Irving nature reserve. All places I either haven't been to, or visited long ago as a school kid.

So I won't be blogging after today for a couple of weeks.

After my Great Headache Escape of the past 2 weeks, I had a brutal headache yesterday and today. I missed work and slept all day today. Not what I wanted to do as I prepare to leave for vacation, but necessary to break a brutal headache I guess. I always feel so bad missing work. I want to be there, want to get stuff done, and hate being the person who misses days with her health. But it is so, so hard to work effectively with a bad headache. Most days I can white-knuckle it through the moderate ones, and the bad ones, but when they get severe, I am simply unable to function, let alone work on heady intellectual tasks. I am also exhausted often, from the Elavil, and from living with pain, that I find I can sleep all day and still not feel rested. It's a constant struggle to maintain "normal".

I'm working tomorrow morning and then taking the afternoon off to do laundry and pack. We need to go to bed very early, as we'll be getting up around 4am. I am dreading that, fearing I will have a brutal headache to contend with. I often have terrible head pain when I fly, and a long day of airports and airplanes just kills me. It is about 10h in airports by the end of the day, and I am usually spent. But the reward is at the other end....visiting my Mom and showing David a quiet, lovely place I still miss to this day.

Relief

I keep looking at that fantastic photograph in my previous post (below) and hate to make a new post which will push it further down the page. What a great shot. The artist says he took it whilst aiming his lens into a mirror in a shop window across the street from the brasserie. Brilliant! I wish I had the streets of Paris to inspire my photography.

But post I must, for I am a blogger. And there is some good news to share, some surprisingly good news. After almost 2 years of chronic daily headache (every single day), and 9 years of plain-old chronic headache (more than 15 days a month) I've recently had some relief. Praise the Lord...things seem to be improving in my head. At least for now. I will take the gift as it comes...one day at a time, and dream of a headache-free week...

For the past 10 days or so, my headaches have "let up". This didn't seem possible, still doesn't seem possible. Headache has been my full-time, 24/7 "normal" for the past 18-24 months. I've had a headache, of some degree or another, all the time. In fact, lately they seemed to be worsening.

So I don't know what to make of this magical state. Why all of a sudden have the headaches lifted? For days in a row, I've felt much, much better. The shadow of headache hasn't fully lifted. They get into your bones, and I realize now it's taking a while for the fog of pain to disappear, for my spirits to lift and find home in this new pain-less place. It isn't entirely pain free, but it's a dramatic shift in the right direction.

Since the mother's day weekend, my headache journal indicates that I have had rather low-level headaches compared to usual. Looking back, I see several days of 2's or 2's and 3's. I've had a few mornings where I woke up with a 6, which then dissolved into a 2 or a 3. Or evenings that have been down-graded from a kindly 2 to an evil 6 or 7. There are even a few zero's and one's! But for the past 10 days, the headaches, the daily 3pm-grind kind of headaches, have subsided. I've been on the low side of the "mild-to-moderate" instead of high side of "moderate-to-severe" as I usually am.

What's the secret? Nothing terribly exciting, I'm afraid. I'd like to say I've found the One True Remedy that has resolved my headaches, so I could share it with you all. But I haven't. I've worked harder and tried more things in the past and been more driven to heal myself and got no relief. So now that I feel I've done so little, here comes relief. What's changed?

My formula for success: 50mg of Elavil and lots of sleep.

Sleep is an issue for me. I'm a night owl. I have trouble getting to bed before 11pm. But since mother's day weekend, I've been going to bed earlier, or at least trying to get 8-9h of sleep, regardless of when I go to sleep. This works on weekends, but during the week I've been trying to get a bit more sleep, just a little earlier to bed. Some nights have been later than 11pm, but I guess I've done enough compensation the following nights. And it seems to be working.

So I will keep this post short and get my chores done and get to sleep. Maybe I should just thank the Elavil, and not count my lucky stars just yet. But at least I'm getting a taste of normal, a taste of the life I once lived, a life where 3pm feels good, not like torture. It is such a joy to have a clear head, yesterday and today. And tomorrow?

Paris Daily Photo

I recently discovered a lovely photo site....Paris Daily Photo. www.parisdailyphoto.blogspot.com

I lived and studied in Paris for a year during my graduate student days. This site brings back fond memories of that impossibly lovely city. As a starving student, I didn't get to experience the haute cuisine and haute couture that makes Paris famous. But I did walk her streets endlessly and haunted the many museums, cafes, and galleries as often as possible.

This timeless photo is reminiscent of the Paris street scenes shot by photographers like Brassai and Kertesz.

Three Days of Heaven

Over the Mother's Day weekend, I managed to get 3 days of heaven! Translation: 3 days without a significant headache. I don't really know how it happened but I am thankful it did!

On Friday night, David and I drove up to Stettler to visit his Mom for the Mother's Day weekend. My own darling mother is in New Brunswick, a long way from me, but I missed her dearly and thought of her constantly (and I'll be seeing her in less than two weeks when we go to the maritimes for vacation).

Leaving work was a rush on Friday since we're super busy on a proposal for a big engineering project. I rushed home. David had kindly bought dinner, which we rushed through, and then I packed in a hurry. Little did I know leaving town (with my back and head aching) that I was in for a pleasant surprise.

On Saturday morning, after lots of sleep, I woke up virtually headache-free. Even that small thing is a miracle in my world, where I often awaken with a killer headache.

The headache stayed away all day, which both amazed and thrilled me. We drove down to Dry Island Buffalo Jump, a provincial park west of Big Valley. I shot a roll of photos on my big old SLR of David, his Mom, and her pooch Lizzie. I got lots of nice shots with my polarizer. We went for snacks in Big Valley and then we came home, rented a movie, prepared a nice supper, and relaxed while watching "The Last Samurai" (a rather good, if improbable, story).

On Sunday, after a restless night of sleep, I managed to sleep well into the morning, and again awoke without a headache. I spent all day Sunday headache-free! I called my Mom and we talked and I missed her. But I felt so envigorated without a headache, so happy to be alive.

Despite going to bed later than planned Sunday night, I also had an excellent day on Monday. At work I was full of energy. I was alert, awake, intelligent, engaged. I haven't felt so well at work in months and months. All I could do was think of how effective and happy and blissful I would be if I had fewer headaches. Everyone noticed my peppy mood and I felt a little sad that I can't always be this way.

Well, the fun had to end somewhere. I went to bed a little too late last night, and woke up feeling like I was dragged under a moving train: brutal headache, extreme sinus congestion, a facial headache, a head full of cement, and a badly aching back and neck. Today totally, entirely sucked. My headache is simmering around a 6 right now and threatens to ruin my evening.

But I'm so happy to have had some freedom for 3 precious days. It was positively blissful to feel so intellectually alive. I even noticed during the weekend that I was chatty and engaged instead of tiring of long and varied conversations, straining to stay involved like I usually do. Having headaches is so much intellectual work. You don't feel fresh. You strain to make conversation, to be creative, to be funny, to be interested. You just feel half-dead and your conversation and level of involvement reflect that. It takes so much work to *act* normally and life does feel like an act.

So it was a simple joy to feel alive and well. Conversation was easy. I felt witty and charming. I felt bright and alert, interested and interesting. I think the "interested" part is key. When your head aches relentlessly, your joie du vivre goes missing. You feel so spiritually and intellectually drained that nothing seems interesting. Life is grey. Casual repartee, chatting with others, joking around, having fun...it takes energy, concentration, work. It isn't natural and automatic. So it was a great delight to feel "normal", to find the world fun and comical, to revel in simple conversation, to savour the company of others.

Now my albatross is back. But I have a fond memory of 3 good days to dream about.

And the knowledge that lots of sleep (9h per night) plus my new dosage of 50mg of Elavil is possibly starting to help.

Is Chemical Engineering giving me headaches?

I have been asked more than a few times if working in the chemical industry is causing my headaches (by exposing me to noxious chemicals). Every time I see a new doctor or neurologist and tell them I'm a chemical engineer, they ask about exposure to chemicals.

Well, the short answer is no. I work in an office in Calgary, far away from our many and varied industrial sites. The last time I visited our petrochemical complex in central Alberta was last summer.

When I started my career in 1995, I worked in an office in Toronto. That in itself might make some people sick (Toronto, the largest city in Canada, has a reputation as the city most Canadians love to hate) but I was rarely ever at a plant site. Occasionally we'd do a plant visit, meaning I was on-site walking through an operating chemical plant (a site that looks, from the road, like a big refinery), but it would only be a few days every 6 months or so.

When my headaches started in 1998, I was actually living in Calgary, where I'd been seconded for a few months to work on a project for my Toronto company. During that year we were designing a new billion-dollar petrochemical complex so I was never anywhere close to a plant site. After that I moved back to Toronto, where the headaches continued, again with very few plant visits.

Upon moving to Calgary in 2001 (year 3 of my headache debacle), I worked at our petrochemical complex near Red Deer for almost 2 years. The headaches continued, but I was working at a modern plant-site with little or no exposure to noxious chemicals. I spent most of my days in an office near the plant site. We do process hydrocarbons (like a refinery), so there are health-hazardous chemicals involved, but they are all contained within modern piping and equipment, and unlike in the old days, there are no direct vents of chemicals to atmosphere.

The only source of chemicals to the air is from our thermal oxidizer and flare stack (which burn chemical vapour and liquid streams with 99.9% efficiency before expelling to the environment), or from equipment leaks, which can occur but are repaired. There are flares and thermal oxidizers on thousands of plant sites around the world. There are thousands of refineries in the world processing chemicals just as health-hazardous as ours. All those people don't have headaches, nor do the people I work with.

And as an engineer, I rarely work "hands-on" with equipment containing chemicals, as an operator, technician, millwright or pipe-fitter might on a regular basis. All I do is walk through areas with big industrial equipment, look around, observe, take readings from instruments, etc. but rarely am I involved in "breaking in" to a piece of equipment. Usually I am sitting in an office analyzing data, talking about technical problems, trouble-shooting, doing calculations or modeling a system on the computer. My hands never get dirty. My work boots are still clean. So I have less exposure than our operators, maintenance staff, lab technicians, etc. and none of those people have headache issues that I'm aware of.

After my 2-year stint at the plant I've been at the Calgary office ever since, with fewer and fewer visits to the plant as time goes on. So, luckily, I don't think my career chemicals are the source of any problems for me.

I wish it were that easy to identify a cause.

Stronger pain meds?

In my last post, I mentioned OTC pain killers not working for me. Katy and Jackie both mentioned "stronger" pain medication. Sounds like something to investigate, but I'm not sure what drugs belong in this category.

Can you guys give me some examples of what "stronger pain killers" I should ask my doctor about? Jackie mentioned T3's...which I assume means Tylenol 3 (with codeine)? I recall taking Tylenol 3's back in 1998 when my headaches started, but they had zero effect on me. What are the other options?

I also liked Katy's comment that chronic tension-type headache may well be as intense as transformed migraine. Since I've never experienced *migraine*, and its subsequent transformation into chronic daily headache (for the unfortunate ones), it's hard to say if what I feel is the same as what they feel. But from descriptions I've read of chronic daily headache that stems from migraine (and includes migraine episodes), it seems that I do experience a similar level of pain on a daily basis, fortunately without the migraine episodes.

All I know is my head aches badly. All the time.

Mine can go from moderate to severe over the course of a few minutes, and they're rarely "mild". Once or twice a month, I need to stay home in bed because they're so bad. Many other days a month, I function and work with a rather severe headache and wish I could be home in bed. My good fortune is that mine never evolve into full-on "migraine."

On another note, I have experienced migraine *auras*, but infrequently. On about 3 occasions over the past year or so, I've had visual auras in my right eye....holes in the field of vision, scintillating, zig-zagging lights, etc. They all passed within 20-30 minutes of starting and were replaced by a rather sharp pain over my right eye. But they never evolved into a migraine. On all occasions, I took ibuprofen (600mg or so) as soon as they started (as instructed by a fellow migraineur), so I may have curbed a migraine. But I really think I just don't have a migraine in me, thank God! They've had plenty of chances to come out! So I may just be someone who has chronic TTH and infrequent "aura without migraine". Yet another dimension to my headache personality.

I also frequently experience sharp pain over my right eye...again uncommon in TTH. But who knows?

It makes me wonder if a similar process is happening inside my head as in the heads of migraineurs. Some things are similar, but others aren't. I have intense muscle pain all the time in my neck and shoulders. Most migraineurs don't have this type of pain (although I've talked to people who have neck pain during a migraine episode, but not all the time).

There is great debate as to whether tension-type has the same modus operandi as migraine.

My neurologist thinks it doesn't.

He thinks that TTH stems from a muscular component outside the head which then manifests itself inside the head. This helps explain why Botox sometimes works to reduce headache by being injected in muscles of the neck and shoulders or why marcaine-like (muscle-freezing) medications may also work. The only problem is...they don't work all the time (and never for me). He believes the neck/shoulder muscle component drives the TTH. I often agree as Robax may work for me. And to answer Katy's question...Robax sometimes works to relax the muscles of my back and neck. With it, my headache subsides. The effect seems indirect (via the muscle relaxation). This also goes with the fact that if I sit improperly, pull a muscle in my back, work out with weights, or otherwise start "tightening up" my neck and shoulder muscles more than usual, I develop a killer headache. The muscles are triggering the headache. Or so it would seem.

But other neuro's think that TTH is just part of the spectrum of migraine. That it is the "same" mechanism, just a "lower level". This "lower level" insults me a little, but it's what they say, and I guess they are right if they mean a lower level than a full-blown migraine that sends you to the ER. In his book "Heal Your Headache," David Buchholz, a Johns Hopkins' neurologist, describes TTH as the same as migraine...but there is a line that gets crossed when you have full-blown migraine which isn't crossed with TTH. I seem to be hovering at or near this line, or often slightly above it, but not as far above it as during a *migraine*. All the same, just a different level.

Truly perplexing.

In the meantime, I'll have to investigate the stronger pain meds my fellow h/a sufferers are suggesting!

OTC's: Nothing works for me

Over-the-counter pain relievers don't work for my headaches.

I've tried acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Advil, etc), and aspirin. There's never even the vaguest relief from these drugs, although occasionally I take an ibuprofen or two to "take the edge" off. I don't know if it really works, but the effect is psychological.

Occasionally a muscle relaxant like Robax Platinum (methocarbamol, a muscle relaxant, plus ibuprofen) will help a little, but more often than not, it merely makes me sleepy with the same headache.

Last night, I bought Tylenol Liqui-Gels, which other headache blogs have mentioned. On the label, it said "for treatment of mild to moderate tension and migraine headache." I don't know who these work for, but it ain't me.

What else is there to try? I guess I am left to depend on my doctor for fancier drugs.

Once in a while, I do the caffeine route, but I usually end up with a worse headache afterwards. The rebound effect I guess. I gave up coffee long ago, but occasionally a Diet Coke will take the edge off a bad headache, even lessen it a bit. The trouble is, once it's worn off, I am left with an even-worse headache. Today I had a Diet Coke at lunch, my first in probably months. It definitely mitigated my headache. It went from an 8 this morning to about a 3-4 this afternoon. But as I blog, around 5:30pm, I am back to a brutal 8 or so.

So I will go back to drinking water and going to my doctor. I wish I had an arsenal of OTC's or other tactics to rely on, but nothing ever works. It isn't very encouraging...

Vent: I HATE HEADACHES!

For months now, my headaches have been consistent. I have an omnipresent, dull, sickening, droning pain in my head. This is often accompanied by a sensation of incredible pressure, like my brain is swollen and wants to burst the heck out.

Tonight, David and I were discussing trepanning (pronounced tree-panning), the medical procedure whereby a hole is drilled in the skull to relieve pressure in the brain. The procedure is still done for people with brain swelling from trauma, except they now remove a section of the cranium instead of drilling a hole. But in the old days, people suffering from head pain, likely unrelieved migraine, drilled their own holes, standing in front of a mirror with an ice pack and a bottle of whiskey, no doubt. I can't imagine being that desperate, but sometimes...sometimes I wish I had a heavy-duty drill.

Recently my headache cycle changed a tiny bit, just to torture me. The frequency and the intensity of pain were the same, but what changed was that on so-called "good" days (good hours in my case), I felt better. Healthy, fresh. I became optimistic that something was changing. I was healing! I actually had a few hours each day a week or so ago where I felt positively *fresh*, mentally clear...feelings I rarely experience. The way normal people feel. I felt a weight lifting from my body.

So I went for a massage last Thursday, and my therapist said my body felt great; my neck and back were relaxed, pliable. My shoulders and neck muscles, usually a seething cauldron of knots and tenderness, were calm and responsive. This seemed to fit with the mental clarity I'd felt briefly and intermittently throughout the week. I felt superb after the massage, came home and slept. Finally I was experiencing a change.

But that pleasant, hopeful state didn't last. On Friday, I was sore from the massage. This is typical: the following day, I usually feel like I've been beaten up. I was stiff and achey that morning, but the headache was mild, about a 2 or a 3. At noon, I went for Physio session #4. What a mistake! I had acupuncture in my neck and shoulders. Then she dry-needled me aggressively around the neck, shoulders, and low back. I haven't recovered since. That evening I was in misery, pure physical distress. Everything was seized, knotted, and sore. My headache returned with a vengeance.

On Saturday I don't know why, but I decided to go for a workout. Mistake #2. On a good day, my body is hyper-sensitive to weight training or cardio activities. It seems to think I'm hurting it, and responds by causing me immense muscle tension and head pain. I can have a great workout and a few hours later, I'm in physical hell, locked up with tension, barely able to move, tortured with pain. It seems to be saying, "you're killllllllling me." A brutal headache ensues.

What is this hyper-sensitivity phenomenon? It seems my muscles (and probably those of many headache people) are grossly over-sensitive to pain. They respond aggressively to very low levels of stimulus. My body overreacts to the slightest physical stimulus, going into this self-preservation mode. My pain circuitry runs on higher voltage than everyone else's. The least little thing, and my body reacts violently, muscles tensing, head aching like there's no tomorrow. My body seems to be saying "for God's sake, stop what you're doing to me!!" But the problem is...I haven't done anything. I haven't abused my body. I've treated it well and this is what I get in return?

It's distressing, to say the least, to have my body so over-reactive to the least stimulus. It's been almost a week and I haven't felt well since Friday morning. I'm sore all over, spent, exhausted, not sleeping well.

And I feel something I haven't felt in a long time...completely and totally pissed off.

I've grown sick of this body. Sick of its relentless complaints when I haven't done a darned thing to it. I'm not a complaining person, nor a hypochondriac, nor someone who wants an excuse not to live life.

What I am is a person who is sick and tired of my body's ridiculous, exaggerated over-reaction to every single little thing. My Headache Control Center is on overload before I even wake up. I can't control it. I have given up trying to figure out how. Imagine a world where getting out of bed is enough to send your body into a rage.

I hate excuses. I hate being a person who makes them. Who is forced to make them. I want my life back! I never wanted it gone. I never asked for some lame excuse to gripe and complain all the time. I don't want this and I hate every minute of it. Every single headaching minute of it. I want to be me again. I haven't been me in 9 years, and my absence is beginning to drive me slowly crazy. I feel like I'm living in some kind of weird undeserved hell. I was on this great course in life, a smart, capable woman, and now I'm reduced to a person who can't do anything without suffering, who has to diminish her life to quieten her headaches.

I'm sick of nursing myself, coddling my body, always "taking it easy", always having to Do The Right Thing every minute of the day. How do you have a normal, active life when you have to be hyper-vigilant every day that you don't walk too fast, sit in a bad chair, tilt your head the wrong way, forget to drink 500 glasses of water, have two thoughts at the same time, multi-task, or not get your bloody 8h of sleep?

My body responds negatively to everything: too little sleep (even 8h isn't enough), intellectual overstimulation, even the slightest physical exertion, not sitting perfectly straight, too much computer time, too much light in my office, noise, busy environments, air travel, walking down the street, getting out of bed. Everything seems to bother me, make me ache and hurt. I walk home from work and I'm practically paralyzed with head pain when I walk in my door. God forbid I have an efficient hour at the office! My brain suddenly decides it's being over-worked and transforms itself into a boiling cauldron of pain when all I did was glance through an article, write an email, and answer the damned phone within a 10-minute interval.

Everything needs to be slow, steady, deliberate. God forbid anything should be done fast. Not thinking. Not moving. If I walk home, I must do it slowly, saying calming mantras all the way, coaxing my body to relax. If I have two people come into my office at work, I must be sure to sit calmly and stay mentally relaxed and not engage too much, try not to talk to two people at once, listen to two people at once. It is hell trying to be an engineer in a technically demanding office while trying not to use my brain at more than 1 thought/minute.

My life has ground to a halt, and I'm pissed off today. I haven't blogged because I hate everything. Ok, I don't, but it feels like it. And anyway, I'm too tired at the end of the day. I look like crap 90% of the time. I feel like crap all the time. All I do is think about headaches, think about pacing, think about every little teeny tiny thing that might set me off. I try to ignore it, but it won't let me. How can you ignore a relentless protocal of do's and don'ts that all the headache books give you?

I'm sick of being hyper-vigilant, hyper-careful, hyper-cautious. I'm sick of living inside a body that clearly hates me. A body that over-reacts to everything. You can't live in a body like that. You can never make it happy, no matter how much you try.

And I'm even more sick of trying to be cheery and positive. I'm fed up with positive thoughts and all that horseshit. It doesn't help. Yoga, meditation, Buddhism, self-help, headache books, trigger-food elimination diets, exercise, rest, drugs, self-discovery, aphorisms, God, mantras, self-love, the Life Journey, enlightenment, relaxation, pacing, Oprah, sleeping, not sleeping, hydration, hatha yoga, raja yoga, healing circles, chocolate, love, no chocolate, massage, doctors, therapists, psychologists, rolfing, acupuncture, injections, silence retreats, books, chiropractic, vacations-by-the-sea, "new definitions of success", zen-anything, ancient healing stones, relaxation CD's, organic foods, ayurveda, Warrior weekends, naturopaths, magnesium, riboflavin, therabands, Chi balls, $100 cervical pillows, neck exercises, ergonomic furniture, positive self-talk, cranial-sacral, stretching, pilates, visceral massage, shiatsu, aromatherapy, hot baths, melatonin, happy cheery thoughts...none of it helps.

None of it helps. Because none of this is within your control. You have a disease that is eating you alive and you may as well stay up late and drink red wine all night. You can't feel any worse tomorrow.

And with headaches, they make it all your fault. You have this mile long list of things to do and try, and if you don't succeed you feel like a failure. It is a character flaw to have headaches, and all these lists do is make it your fault, make it something you really can control if only you try hard enough. If you are good enough, your head will stop killing you. Well, I am sick of taking the blame for my headaches. Oh maybe a little more sleep helps, or not eating certain foods, but the fact is, no change to your character or disposition or soul or posture is really going to help a clinical condition. No more than positive thinking will cure your cancer.

And what's worse is that I'm not some slob. I take great care of myself. As someone at my headache clinic said, we'ree probably the healthiest people on earth...headache sufferers. We stay hydrated, get good sleep, eat regularly, exercise, relax and rest a lot. Oh, and the other thing we do is live an absolute shit life.

I'm fed up. Fed up with my head aching. I can even deal with the pain. What I can't deal with is never feeling fresh, never feeling clear-headed. That's the real bitch of this...the dull ache that takes your life spirit, your mental clarity, your sanity. For anyone who doesn't know what I feel like...imagine staying awake for 72h straight after a 3 day drinking binge, and you will get what I feel like on a normal day. You feel like absolute shit every single minute of every single day. Imagine your worst night of sleep and how you felt the next day. Imagine your worst hangover and how you felt the next day. Imagine your worst flu headache. Imagine the most stressful day you've ever had and how brutal you felt. That is what I, and many others, wake up to every day...24/7/365. And with that fried brain, I need to go out into the world and function.

But it could be worse. And I feel better already because sometimes you need to cut through all the happy thinking and just tell it like it is. It sucks, and tomorrow will come, and you will get through it too.

Right now, my eyes are tired. The world is tired also.