Sorry I haven't written in ages. The occipital neuralgia headaches are back. Or, rather, headache singular, because I've had the same headache non-stop for the past 6 weeks or so. Today it's a 9 on the scale of 0-10. Fun fun. I've tried acupuncture, I've tried massage, I've tried doing my PT stretches much more often. Nothing is helping. In the ( Read more... )

Fuck. I didn't do my PT neck stretches reliably while we were on vacation or during the week+ that I was sick after we got home ... and my occipital neuralgia headache is back. It's not at its worst (yet), but my scalp is very painful again (feels like getting stabbed in the head every time I brush my bangs to the side) and nothing helps the ( Read more... )

I'm having one of my "Jesus Christ!" headaches for the first time in months. They've been coming on slowly, but today is the first really bad one that woke me up early & wouldn't let me fall back asleep. I've been doing neck stretches & such, but can't help occasionally clutching my forehead and cursing, "Jesus Christ!"

Damn headaches!

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... )

A nice day yesterday. Not too much headache, not too much digestive difficulty, no nausea to speak of. An date evening out with Shannon, including a walk up and down Shattuck (looking for a restaurant that wasn't closed on Tuesday nights, which apparently does not include Venus, La Note, or The Very Sad Restaurant [a nearby new Greek place called " ( Read more... )

Had acupuncture on Tuesday, immediately followed by my first PT appointment of this second go-round. Then an appointment with the pain doc the next day.

Acupuncture
I like the acupuncturist I saw at Berkeley Community Acupuncture on Tuesday & saw her again to day. (Her name is Elena.) The whole clinic is really great, very relaxed and casual. ( Read more... )

Notes to self re: technical terms & locations of online info for some of the stuff Brain Doc says I have, because I like to understand things, especially when they're about me:

• occipital neuralgia (a.k.a. C2 neuralgia): pinched nerve in the neck between the C1 and C2 vertebrae (see greater and lesser occipital nerve definitions below for confusion ( Read more... )

Brain Doc
Saw the neurologist yesterday, and he says I'm still having two different kinds of headaches, though now they are related: muscle contraction headache and occipital neuralgia. (When I saw him previously, the headaches were complicated by cataracts and codeine, as well.) This "two kinds of headaches" diagnosis makes sense of a problem I'd ( Read more... )

Headache: holding a pretty steady 8 out of 10 for the past few days (and I do mean "steady")

Nausea: holding a pretty steady 8 out of 10 for the past few days (and I do mean "steady")

Body Temp: holding a rather unsteady 1-10 out of 10 for the past few days (and I do mean "unsteady ( Read more... )

Today is my first day with no codeine whatsoever. My last Tylenol #4 tablet was yesterday at 11:50 am (almost exactly 24 hours ago), at which time the headache was excruciating. It's worse now ( Read more... )