Headaches are severe daily again. Sigh. Going to see my primary care doc tomorrow to try to get a referral to acupuncture, and so I decided to write up a timeline to give her an overview of how things have progressed.

The Headaches That Ate My Brain
as of March 20, 2015

Timeline

• February 2014: First noticed frequency of headaches: often severe. ( Read more... )

No doctors mentioned this possibility to me, but my online research today indicated that eye redness (and eye dryness, which the GP noticed when I saw him on Saturday) can be side effects of antihistamines ... such as the Claritin I've been taking for the past 4 weeks since I had that persistent cough in January. So the Claritin seems to have taken ( Read more... )

My body is weird ( Read more... )

Caught a cold, most likely thanks to a guy at CWC who mentioned on Monday that he'd started getting sick the previous day, which prompted me to think, "And yet you decided to show up today & expose dozens of other people. Thanks a lot, CWC guy ( Read more... )

I had my first acupuncture appointment yesterday at AIMC (Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College) and am hesitant to go back ( Read more... )

My codeine withdrawal symptoms are mostly gone now, just slight gastrointestinal problems every couple days. Mostly, I'm just living one long, terrible headache. Well, that isn't fair: sometimes it lets up for a few hours at a time, though I usually realize afterward that it's because I was doing something very distracting & therefore just didn't ( Read more... )

The withdrawal symptoms are much better now. No nausea today at all. Only slight digestive difficulties. Headaches still terrible, but I don't think that's a withdrawal effect anymore; I think it's just the headaches that caused me to start taking codeine in the first place. They feel different than the codeine withdrawal headaches: sharper, and ( Read more... )

Got the biopsy results from the dermatologist. The latest unusual mole was benign but "atypical" (showing abnormal cells that indicate a risk of melanoma), but the doc says she's sure that she removed the entire thing & so isn't worried. This is what she says about almost all of my moles she biopsies. Only once have the lab results come back with ( Read more... )

This week I got to thinking about something. The pain doc didn't seem to be taking me seriously when I told him about my withdrawal symptoms last week-not until he actual observed some of them for himself-and I'm pretty sure it's because I don't behave the way most people seem to expect when I'm miserable. Even when I've been at my worst-when I was ( Read more... )

Saw the pain doc today. He was surprised by how severe my withdrawal has been, but said that I am still showing visible symptoms. He saw me sweating and shivering in his office, my hands shaking slightly, my face flushed. The nausea and the headache were better today, but the diarrhea continues unabated & my body temp is still very wonky ( Read more... )