Headaches

Today is the day of the week allocated for a headache. I wake up in the morning with the pain and it fails to diminish throughout the remainder of the day. Despite medication the headache persists. Eventually, I accept the pain and try to ignore it. When that fails, I give up entirely and go to sleep. 

Occasionally, the headaches occur more often than just once a week. Sometimes, I don't wake up with them. Instead, at some point in the day, there's little alarm bells going off in my head; a constant drum alerting me that the pain is coming soon and to take preemptive action. There is never a false alarm. If I take something as soon as I feel this way, usually (blissfully) I can prevent the headache. But if I fail to do so, either from apathy or because I simply can't get the pills in time, the pain comes in one giant wave and sits in my head and no amount of pills can take away the pain. I try to ignore it, but, similarly to the headaches that are present when I awake, this particular brand is a stubborn one. Inevitably, I give in to the pain and try to escape it through sleep.

Experiencing this weekly, sometimes every other day, has become a part of my daily life. There is a bottle of Aleve in my car (just in case), a bottle of Ibuprofen in my purse (just in case), a bottle of naproxen sodium next to my bed (just in case). Always within reach is some little miracle of a pill that can prevent the pain. And if I wait too long, if I don't have the pills or can't finagle access to a pill, the pain will come. 

The pain is not created equal. While I can predict that it will be frustrating, distracting, and mentally blocking, sometimes it is more severe. Always, there are side effects. Nausea is frequent, if not always, present. I get irritable, introverted, tired. So tired. It helps to sleep off the pain, but occasionally I will be in so much pain that even the dense tiredness I am experiencing cannot push the pain away enough to drift off into sleep. And sometimes the nausea is so awful I have to vomit. While that can actually help alleviate the pain (for a little while), I've never been a fan. It's also embarrassing. 

I feel sometimes as though I am a slave to my headaches. As though, constantly, I am tethered to the fear that this afternoon, a headache will wiggle its way into my life again, or that perhaps tomorrow, I will wake up with a blaring headache as annoying as a constant horn going off in your peripheral vision and it will be present all day long. That was today's headache. This morning, I woke up with it in my head. Chugged an entire bottle of water and took two Ibuprofen. I even took a three hour nap. Still, twelve hours later, the pain persists. It is debilitating. I cannot concentrate very well, nor summon the energy to do a whole lot. Finals are next week and the concept of studying just makes my head hurt more. It's already hard enough to concentrate without the headache; with it, the task is almost impossible.

I suppose headaches are just going to become a constant in my life that I will just have to get used to. At practically twenty years old I am not looking forward to at least another fifty years of weekly pain. Hopefully, as medical and pharmaceutical technology advances, they'll land on some miracle drug that will cure this pain forever. One can only dream.