Thursday, October 15, 2009

My Head is Like Drowning

I find myself wondering how others do this. How do people remain sane with chronic pain in the brain? (Ok, not in the brain, exactly, but there was all this rhyming. I couldn't stop.)

Some days I feel like all I do is complain. Someone asks me how I am, and I hate to tell the truth, but sometimes I do. I come here and write and write and write about my pain and what it's done to me and how I cope, or don't. I cook sometimes, clean as often as I can and mostly try to just make it through. I'm not, really. Making it through. I'm failing miserably and flailing helplessly. You know, I once swam to the deep end of the wave pool, just to see if I would drown. The feeling I had as the waves pushed me under the normally benign, heavily chlorinated water, was the same kind of futile struggle I'm going through now. I know I can swim. But I keep getting pushed under. I can't get a breath. And everyone around me is swimming happily, riding the waves and even splashing at me in play. I'm not sure if they are mistaking my thrashing in panic for jest, or if they don't care. Maybe I swam out too far, and get what I deserve. Maybe, I've taken the metaphor too far and it doesn't make sense anymore. It happens.

I read the blogs and search the forums and google the buzzwords searching for my answers. I'm not looking for a cure, just a hint on how to survive this without losing myself.

3 comments:

WinnyNinny PooPoo said...

Hang in there! Somewhere there has to be a remedy that works at least half assed!!!

Some people with my headache (hemicrania continua) use baclofen. Never tried it, for some of them it works and our pain is constant waxing waning 24/7. It's an old drug used for spasm in MS. You may have already tried it, but its not one I see listed on many headache blogs...I know you probably don't need another suggestion, but I hate that your head is so bad and you are so young! - just call me old...

Heather said...

I know it's hard when you're in pain, especially in pain with no breaks, but here's what I do to help:

-pray
-focus on the positives
-know that it WILL get better, even if only for a short moment
-I know this sounds bad, but I remember that there are others even worse off than me

Hang in there - keep swimming. :)

Betsy said...

God - I wish I had a foolproof way to get through it. I think that for me, the only way has been trying to keep the hope alive - hoping that there's something out there that's going to stop the pain. And then I just get by one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time and sometimes, even one second at a time.

I thought my last episode of status migrainosus lasted a year...but when I checked my calendar, I realized it was a year and a half - even I'm blown away by how the heck I got through it without losing my mind. And then I realized that it was that refusal to give up hope and that stupid stubborn insistence on putting one foot in front of the other. That time, acupuncture worked like a dream for me. Now it's started again (daily since 9/13/09) and the acupuncture isn't working. So I'm back there again...hoping and perservering. May you find what gets you past it...