Tuesday, February 24, 2009

More of Me

to love? I wonder... but blogs are largely navel contemplation devices although some of us mix in other material from time to time... but yeah; its a glorified journal. So now that we've established I don't need to apologize for talking on and on about myself on my blog, let's get down to business....

Last post found me reporting on trip to neurologist. Since then I've lived in two states: headache pain or unconscious from headache remedies. Not ideal, really. Nor acceptable. Today when my headache was back to just about back to get emergency care level, I called my neurologist who thought it expedient to proceed with occipital nerve blocks . Although the procedure of sticking needles into inflamed nerve tissue in your skull sounds dubious at best, it makes sense that the lidocaine and steroids would indeed sooth irritate tissues so if that's what is causing the headache, it follows... so I found myself with needles poking in my head, burning lidocaine, waiting for the promised numbness. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Nuttin'. No help at all.

Much scratching of heads. Clearly, a headache that has resisted treatment including a double shot of dilaudid for a month is seriously entrenched and objective one must be chasing THIS one away before settling into a routine, and likely less aggressive, regimen for prevention and rescue. How amazing is this? For prevention, I have these:

Topamax (an anti-convulsant currently enjoying great success in migraine prophy)
Seroquel-- low dose (anti-psychotic at high doses, has much seritongernic activity---allegedly just the ticket for migraines)

Now, should these meds fail to prevent the onset of migraine, I should take the following:

Frova -- a drug of the wonder-triptan class
Xanax -- because a)migraines make people anxious and, b) biochemically migraines and anxiety are serotonin-based maladies. It may- not be really possible to treat one without treating the other.
Phenergan -- because nausea is a huge part of the migraine experience
Fioricet-- an old school analgesic for migraines, just in case.
Maxalt -- another triptan to rotate in the regimen to avoid likelihood of rebounding
Zofran -- an antinausea, anti-emetic---ditto for rotating with phenergan..

Yeesh.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

ah, kathy, i just found myself mumbling 'shit'... what can i say, same old same old - pleeeaase get better soon!

Special K said...

Hmmm. Have you tried... sticking a fork into the palm of your hand? Oy, I feel for you - I've ended up in the emergency room too with a migraine - not good, not good. Hope you find relief soon...

Anonymous said...

With all that they want you to go through I think cutting off your head would be the best and quickest relief. Too bad you would be DED. I hope something works for you soon. I just can't imagine it at all. LYFE Nonna

KHM said...

No kidding, Nonna---cutting off my head sounds like the best thing very often. Thank goodness I have these kids here to remind me that I serve some useful function no matter how debilitated I might be at particular moments.

And we haven't even begun to talk about how much this all costs. And we have "good" insurance. But we're getting ready to begin botox injections for prevention and those are like $600 per vial plus the doctor's fee...none of it covered by insurance...

Special K said...

Are you really getting a Botox shot? I've heard good things about those fixing migrains!

KHM said...

I've been reluctant to put toxins in my head up till now but truthfully, K, I'm considering just about anything. So yeah---as soon as this current headache is broken we're doing the botox injections.

Doc asked me this: "were I to put 10 tablets in front of you, 9 of them will cure your headache, 1 of them is cyanide, at this moment, how long would it take you to make up your mind about what to do?" I'd think about it a looooong time and I'm still not entirely sure what I'd pick. 90% odds of success are a lot higher than I 've been offered before---of course 10% odds of dying are much worse than my usual outcomes... I just usually WISH to die...

Anonymous said...

Kathy, didn't you have a hysterectomy awhile back? Do they have your hormones under control? I had lots of migraines when my hormones were totally screwed up.
Just a thought. Sorry to hear you are having migraines, they can be debilitating.

KHM said...

yes, I had a hysterectomy but these headaches totally preceded that and I still have my ovaries so there's not really much cause to think my hormones are out of whack other than my obvious age-associated changes which are very well controlled these days with just a few vitamins... thanks for thinking of me, though. I'm sorry to hear you suffered with headaches. Its no fun. I just heard from my doc they're going to toss me in the hospital for an intensive dihydroergotamine infusion therapy to try to break this one and then do the botox... fun, fun...