January 2nd 2010

So, I thought I'd go ahead a ramble a bit about headaches. Please remember I am not a medical professional in any sense so the words offered here are from personal experience only.
I have suffered from headaches since somewhere around the time Holly was born. I don't really remember having them much before that but I also don't have a very good memory:)
Please also note that in no way am I saying this has anything to do with Holly:) I do wonder if the hormones involved in having my beautiful daughter were part of some trigger.
So, having these headaches over the years has been at times disturbing, at times discomforting, at times dangerous....as in, if this is how it feels to be alive....and so on. We have moved around a fair bit so I have not had a steady physician in my life. I was told on at least one occasion to just go home and relax. I was in so much pain and nauseaus on that occasion that I begged Steve to just buy some type of hard liqour so I could pass out...I never have been a drinker and never will as it just does not sit well with me, but I was desperate.
When we lived on the farm the doctor gave me migraine medicine Imitrix to try, it worked sometimes and sometimes it didn't and it was very expensive so the times it didn't work made my headache worse with the stress of knowing how much money I just swallowed with no relief.
Alot of times a sinus-allergy over the counter medicine would work, but I would have to take quite a few of them, more than the recommended dose and there is quite a bit of information out there now about how bad that is for you.
Well this past year they have been getting worse and more frequent. I finally went to the clinic and the first doctor intially gave me some serious pain medicine....they didn't do much. He told me to come back and get on with the new doctor that was at the clinic so I could have some steady follow-through. The new doctor gave me a sample of Replax. And I now have a new life. This medicine...for me....works. I don't have to take it right at the start of a headache, it works whenever I take it, so I can kind of wait an episode out to see if it's going to get better or get worse, and if it gets worse, the medicine will take it away. I've had a month now with no days "lost" to headache agony. Again these pills are not cheap, however one works for an entire episode, not one a day or every 12 hours, but one gets rid of what would have been a 3 or 4 day headache. And so that's that.
One thing I learned once it seemed it was narrowed down to migraine type headaches I went on the internet to do some research (my favourite past-time, I love learning little tidbits of information this way). Apparently the anti-depressant I had been on for the last 5 years or so (Effexor) is sometimes prescribed as a daily medicine to prevent migraine headaches, so the fact that these headaches increased both in duration and occurance since last year (when I quit taking the anti-depressant) is probably not a coincidence.
The holiday season is over at work now, we will be back to our regular hours. It was a good season at the store I think. Even in these hard times...and maybe because of them....people wanted to make sure their pets had fun holiday treats and toys.
For New Year's Eve Steve and I watched the World Junior Hockey game between Canada and the US. And then I fell asleep. I haven't seen too many New Year's beginnings in my lifetime.
We decided on Chinese Food for our dinner and Steve had a nice social time at the local establishment with what seemed to be 1/2 of the city there to pick up their dinners too. I think he was there over 1 hour for a 20 minute estimated pick-up time.
Hope you all had a Happy New Year's Eve and that the new year will be all that you wish for.