Monday Revisited

I have to backtrack a touch, since the fire distracted me from other important Monday events.

Monday morning I called my "health insurance company." From the beginning, they made it impossible to get anything concrete with my name, dates, and benefits on it, constantly referring me to their general brochure. Had they not been the insurance through my school, I would have assumed they didn't actually exist and were some sort of scam or money laundering outfit. Well, I should have gotten something writing, because now they say my benefits expired back in July. What? I still can't get a frigging clear answer (customer service keeps feeding me lines from their general BS list and I'm beginning to think they don't actually have access to their own records) , but I have a guess as to what happened and it is partly my fault for not figuring it out sooner (even though they didn't mention my lack of being insured the several times I contacted customer service since July).
So I was extremely frustrated and a little freaked out because a lapse in my insurance means my next provider can consider my migraines a "pre-existing condition" and refuse to pay for their treatment for a year, and that is bad. But it isn't "killed a puppy" bad, as NBF put it, and my parents seemed to think it was "killed a puppy" bad, and I took it as "killed a puppy" bad, and it was all very tragic and "a clear indicator of my problems with basic organization and executive functioning skills that I have to do everything within my power to fix as soon as possible before I ruin my own life." My parents and I feed off of each other when it comes to this sort of intense demanding perfectionism, and it's not healthy. This is why I need to live in another state, some time before the invention of the telephone.

That was the morning. In the afternoon, I saw a neurologist. I printed out an amended version of the Things I Have Tried list for him and we spoke for less than 20 minutes, but still managed to get through the following:

• I have done a shitton in my pursuit of migraine panaceas
• Either my last doctor or my understanding of my last doctor was incorrect, because while Depakote and Topamax are both epilepsy drugs, they are very different and Topamax is absolutely worth trying, even after Depakote failed
• It is strange I have never been given a steroid in injection or "pill pack" form to break my cycle of headaches.

So I started Topamax, which builds up in my system and I take daily forever, and some generic steroid pill pack, which I take less and less of every day for a week until I take none at all.
Monday night was terrible. I was back to my worst level of pain and I gobbled down the Vicodin in desperation at 3 AM.
But since then, things have been much better. I went out for coffee (well, chai lattes) with NBF this evening and even in bright lights and loud music and talking, my head only poked at me a little. Maybe this will finally do it for real and I can get out of this piece of shit mother fucking 5+ week cycle of hell. That would be delightful