Pains

While I try to be very positive on the blog, this post is not positive. Be warned. Only Trevor knows the full extent of what I live with day by day, until this post.

Since I was a teenager, I have had frequent headaches, which have never reacted very well to medication, but have been tolerable. Lots of people have headaches, right? Well, when we got married and moved to Vancouver, they started becoming worse and worse, and, to top it off, the headacheS has become headache, singular - I have had one headache for a couple years now, nonstop, the tension kind. I have also begun experiencing frequent migraines on top of the tension headache. Since moving back to Lethbridge, the intensity of the tension headache has increased, and I feel as though I could take migraine medication at least once a day. I currently have a prescription for the migraines that are the kind that dissolve on your tongue, which cost $16/pill (fortunately, we have 80% coverage, but they are still expensive). Those take the edge off of the migraines when they are really bad. Taking 1200mg of ibuprofen takes the edge off, some days, too. Nothing else - not Tylenol 3, not regular Tylenol, not Diclofenac, but that's all I've tried. Some days I feel quite hopeless about it.

I have been regularly seeing Trevor's uncle, a chiropractor, since we moved back to Lethbridge, and I only need to see him once a week right now, so all is as best as it can be with my head and neck. They have been messed up since a few car accidents a couple years ago. I also began seeing a massage therapist, with very disappointing results. He expected to be able to get rid of my headaches, with very little success. In fact, he was discouraged in himself and told me he usually gets much better results. The last time I saw him was three weeks ago, on September 2, and just after the massage I felt better, and then as I was paying I realized I felt exactly the same as when I had walked in. So I abandoned that whole track.

This same evening, I developed terrible chills as I was going to bed and couldn't stop shaking for two hours, during which I drifted in and out of sleep. The disturbing thing was that I didn't have a fever. My head hurt with a vengeance, And I was miserable, nauseous, lying in bed, crying, hating life, wishing for a big axe to swing down from the heavens and cut my head off, the Second Coming, a plane crash in our bedroom - anything to stop the pain. When I started to feel numbness in my fingertips, I called the health line, and they, of course, told me to go in to the ER. I drove myself.

Once there, I didn't have to wait too long and was skipped ahead of three or four people who were there before me. The doctor talked to me, and I told him my quality of life was very poor due to the headaches, told him the history, symptoms, blah blah blah. They gave me Gravol for the nausea, and two other meds, one of them started with C. By this time I was happy for anything. One of the meds they gave me made me tired, and I was already half asleep as it was 3am by the time I got the meds. I slept a little, and the nurse asked me if I wanted morphine. I said no, since it makes me very ill. I got home at 6am and crawled back into bed.

The next day, I was tired, but otherwise, the meds kept the pain at bay. It was back by dinnertime.

The ER doctor sent me for a CT scan the following Thursday, and my doctor's office called me last week to tell me all was normal on the scan. Big help. I'm going back, again, to see my doctor on Monday.

I feel as though I need to get this solved to move on with life - having chronic pain is something that cannot be understood until it is experienced. I had little sympathy for those who complained of chronic pain before this experience. Relentless pain like this is absolutely exhausting. Pain takes a shocking amount of energy and it frequently leaves me feeling drained physically and mentally. I understand Dr. House better, that's for sure.

Aside from the desire I have to be able to accomplish more in a day once I have the energy back that the pain is sucking up now, I also need to resolve this pain before I have another baby, so that I can get through the pregnancy, and because I won't be able to take anything for the pain during the pregnancy.

Could it be that all these things are to give me experience, like the scriptures say? To teach me something - empathy, what suffering is, how to endure? To liken my experience to the Savior's, when he felt more pain that anyone on earth will ever feel? The scriptures say "The Son of Man hath descended below them all - art thou greater than He?" Certainly I'm not greater than Him, and if the Lord sees fit to allow the suffering, then I look to His example - hoping that this cup will pass from me, soon, but if not... let my will be turned to the Father's will for me.

How grateful I am that my husband, Trevor, holds the same priesthood that was held anciently by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and the Savior, and that he can administer blessings to me by that priesthood. I know that the Lord can heal me, and that I will look back on this as something which helped me to grow - but I eagerly wait for the trial to end, just the same.