I get a lot of headaches. I’ve always gotten a lot of headaches. My eye doctor will tell me it’s my vision, eye strain, what have you. I’m used to popping an ibuprofen or two a few times a week.
The past year or so, I’ve been having a very bad reaction sometimes after drinking a glass or two of red wine. I’d wake up with an absolutely horrible headache, a dull ache that wouldn’t go away for anything…no amount of water drinking, ibuprofen, excedrin, would do anything. It would get gradually better and usually by the fourth morning I would be good as gold. Yes, three days. I didn’t mention this to my doctor because 1)I think it had only happened once or twice since I last saw the doctor and 2)because it seemed to be alcohol related and so I figured, well, I’ll just stop drinking red wine.
Which mostly worked, until Tuesday morning, when I woke up with a dull headache that I thought, well a workout will help that and then by noon was dealing with a full blown headache compounded with grips of nausea and blurriness. And I hadn’t had anything to drink for several days before hand (though I recall being tired, and having neck pain, but neck pain is a fact of life for a violinist, at least on occasion!). I felt like a loser, but I ended up having to cancel my teaching that day and just laid around doing very little, napping quite a bit. I figured by the following day I would be doing better, but then I had trouble sleeping and no matter which way I lay down my head hurt and I spent some time in the bathroom feeling like I was going to throw up.
The next morning I didn’t feel better, so I called my doctor, and they couldn’t fit me in until the following day, so I headed to an urgent care center for the first time in my life. Things that are broken in our health system: I still don’t know how much this will cost me. I have excellent insurance, except it’s a high deductible PPO plan, which means things are negotiated but I still have to pay up to the deductible, which is low for a high deductible plan, but still. And of course, nobody knows what anything costs at the point of service. Like, this isn’t news, we all know these things suck, and yet, we act like this is just fine and normal and that it’s totally acceptable that I’m sitting in an urgent care center being asked questions and the doctor thinks maybe we should do a brain scan and I’m texting with Louie wondering if that’s necessary, how much it will cost, and trying to figure out if there’s any way we could possible know if that would be in or out of network (since our deductible is different for those two options.) We decided there was actually no way to know (he is no stranger to insurance companies) and I actually opted NOT to get the brain scan. Maybe I will later, if another doctor tells me I need it.
In any case, they think it’s migraines, that I have been having migraine headaches and that I was in the middle of one. They hooked me up to an IV for what they called a “headache cocktail” and I stayed there for about an hour and half, hooked up to the tubes, watching HGTV on mute (the noise annoyed me) and being generally uncomfortable. It did help the headache slightly, and I haven’t had any nausea since, and they sent me home with some more drugs to take, and I’m supposed to do a follow-up with a neurologist or maybe my regular doctor. I’m on day 3 of the headache now, and it’s still here, but it’s very mild and I can handle it. I couldn’t sleep well last night, probably some of the drugs, and I know it’s going to be a long day of teaching today (I see 7 1/2 hours of students across 8 hours and those things tend to spread) and another long day tomorrow, so if nothing else, hopefully I can sleep tonight.
I did tell my students yesterday the gist of what was going on. I always try to pretend everything is fine, and then occasionally cancel a day of teaching, but I had already done that and really did want to teach the day for money reasons. I ended up having to cancel a couple in order to get settled after the doctor’s (and squeeze in a nap and a shower in the hopes I’d wake up from the nap magically better…did not happen). But then I taught a few hours and it was fine. I’ve taught through headaches before, but it’s just when you are wracked with nausea it’s much harder.
I don’t know what happens next, other than I will be following up. The internet is full of helpful, not helpful, and somewhat terrifying information. I think this probably happened about three times last year, maybe four, and this is the first time I’ve had an incident like this completely independent of red wine (the first few times it happened I hadn’t yet made the connection), so who knows what brought it on. It’s also possible that I’d been taking a bit too much ibuprofen the past few years—I hurt my neck during a concert/sleeping funny a couple weeks ago and I’d been taking some medicine for that. The internet says headaches can be caused by taking too much medicine, so after I nip this one in the bud I’ll try to resort to topical treatments for awhile.
It’s not fun, being sick, is it? And as a self-employed person I don’t get sick days, so any time off is money lost (plus the money spent at the doctor, which again, who knows what that is going to be? Seriously, I don’t know if it’ll be $200 or $1200 or??) It’s the cost of business, and I run my budget low assuming that I’ll have some lost income (plus my taxes are always a who knows what that will be so I save plenty), but it’s really stupid. I didn’t get to choose my doctor either since they were booked up (and the appointment that was available wasn’t with the doctor anyway, it was with a nurse practitioner who would be perfectly qualified, but a complete stranger, so all that bs about choosing your own doctor, is simply bs. You get who you get, and you can try to choose, but when you get sick, you wait in line, you get who is available, and you have no idea what it’ll cost you.) Our health care system sucks, and every time I use it I am reminded of that, and I am also reminded that I only get to have the good health care I have throughout my boyfriend’s employer. Otherwise I’d be on the exchange, and paying hundreds of dollars a month for an even worse plan and constantly living in fear of losing my health care when the GOP decides to finally pull the plug on the ACA…why is health care only something for the rich? Okay, rant over, for now.
While writing this blog I got an email that my first student has canceled. I got up early for them, but really I got up early because I couldn’t sleep any more, even though I feel like I barely slept. I am tempted to just cancel my entire morning and go back and lie down, but I think I’d better not. Ooh, on the bright side I pick up our “crop box” today, our second one. We will be getting fun stuff like mushrooms, blood oranges, watermelon radish and white turnip. I have recipes and plans in place, and don’t even plan to do much pickling as we have two jars of pickled things still left to eat (one jar of carrots/green radishes left, plus a half jar of pickled red onions.)
The week has been a bit of a bust. I planned to do a fair amount of practicing for an upcoming gig (we got the music really late and ended up having approximately a week to learn an opera before the first rehearsal) but due to my migraine, I have done no practicing. I am not too concerned, as I’m trying to let go of things I can’t change, and I’ll be fine for the first rehearsal, but it’s frustrating. You know I like planning and getting things done. And here it is Thursday again, and I feel like it should be Monday and I want a do-over of the week, but instead I’m headed into my two busiest days without having accomplished all the things I like to accomplished during my less busy days. I am basically caught up on emails though, and the other things are mostly things I’ve been pushing back anyway, so another week won’t hurt.
I think I’ll get another cup of coffee before I have to go teach, now that I have time. Or maybe a half cup, so I don’t overdo it on caffeine.
