Neurology, Neurosis

An hour and a half on the train this morning with temperatures around -3°F not including windchill and I got my car back in time to drive to my neurologist appointment. I held January 11, 2009 as a special date in my heart for some time now, since that was when my "pre-existing condition exclusions" expired on my insurance. Translation: migraine- and depression-related medical shit now gets paid for. And while there's still no new incredible cure for my lame vessel of a head, I'm getting an MRI as soon as I schedule it so we can see pictures of my lame head. It's been about 10 years since my last MRI, but I'm not particularly hopeful that updated photos will say anything new. Maybe there's something that this much better neurologist can see or catch, but from everything he says, I'm an extremely typical severe migraine patient and the best we can do is pain manage with drugs drugs drugs and acupuncture and anything else I find that helps. Because my left eye droops when I'm migrainey, I'm supposed to look in the mirror the next time I'm mid-migraine and see if my left eye and nostril are also runny and if the left side of my face is red and splotchy. If so, I have a very specific type of migraine (definitely probable candidates...I know that's the sinus side that gets cranky) called Paroxysmal Hemicrania. If so, the one and only treatment is an NSAID called that indomethacin that I'd take daily, possibly instead of the gazillion pills I'm on now. Downside: indomethacin does terrible things long-term to your guts, particularly your stomach and kidneys. I'd have to get all of my everything else checked constantly, and if anything started going downhill, I'd have to stop the only medication that's been found do really help that type of headache. My migraines aren't going to kill me, but they can't really be fixed, either. And no birth control pills, like, ever, even with the ovarian cyst thing and the evil clotty crampy periods and my promiscuous unprotected sex. Ok, two out of three. But once again, I'm reminded of how much modern medicine still doesn't know. We think our bodies are supposed to work and when they don't we should be able to fix them or quit whining about it and overcome and Just Do It and No Fear and all those other slogans and mottos and things people say on ESPN and to 9-year-olds in football helmets. But fighting isn't working for me. I should go back to the meditation center, except that felt like a fight with myself, too. I have to stop fighting myself and my body all the time. I'm trying so hard to accept what I am. It's hard and it hurts because I still get mad at myself for not just being ok or at least accepting my not being ok. I've always been much quicker to understand things on an intellectual level than to feel them, and it frustrates the hell out of me that I can't just make myself feel what I think.
I just want to be happy.
I'm taking the steps that are supposed to help all of that (going to therapy, on happy drugs, trying to cultivate new friendships and keep stoking old ones, concentrating on the good things in my life...which I actually do but I use this blog to get my whining and bitching out since I'm spending so much energy the rest of the time trying to put a positive spin on everything).

I always have a hard time in winter. I need to declare a time to drive down to Nashville and romp around with HDS in the warmer and our dogs can try to eat eachother. I wish it was less than an 8 hour drive, but maybe that would help. I don't know. I keep looking for these things to help or cure or fix. That's part of who I am, too, and that needs to be ok, too. More time in the meditation center with the Buddhists, less time in the internal throes of Jewy guilt.